I recently purchased an Antec case, and this thing is just noisy as all hell. It sounds like i've got a 737 under my desk. I was wondering if anyone in here has ever attempted to dampen their PCs before? I'm looking into damping material to fit on the inside of the case. I've seen products that enclose 3.5" hd's to noiseproof them, but i think it's safe to say that can't help heat dissipation. Plus I only have 1 free 5.25" bay and 2 hds.
I was thinking about just going and purchasing some normal Dynamat from the local pro audio shop. I'm also going to get some temperature controlled speed varying fans.

Anyone done this? Any comments?

thanks

My machine is silent thanks to QuietPC.com. I am using the Silent Drive enclosure on my IBM DeskStar 7200RPM drive and it still works.

The damping material can help by reducing case vibration, but it's not likely to cure a jetliner sound issue.

Your best bet is to investigate where the noise is coming from. It is most likely to be either the CPU fan or the power supply fan. If it's the CPU fan, then consider upgrading your heatsink to a larger copper heatsink that will take an 80mm fan, combined with a Papst/Panaflow fan.
If it is the PSU fan, then putting a temp-dependant fan in might help. Either that or a manually adjustable fan.

You might also want to consider adding a quiet case fan blowing into the case. This will help you to lower fan speeds elsewhere without giving up too much in terms of case temps. It will also have the added benefit of balancing out case vs ambient air pressures, so less dust will be sucked into the case. (Remember to put a filter over the case fan!)

Im using a quiet power supply from pc power and cooling, sound dampening material (quietpc.com), 2 silentdrive enclosures (quietpc.com), 2 quiet case fans (quietpc.com), and a zalman flower cpu cooler (quietpc.com). The silentdrive enclosures and the cpu cooler made the biggest difference. I know the silentdrive enclosures are useless to you, but consider the cpu cooler. The dynamat wont make much of a difference.

Sean

I've heard that you can also liquid cool your computer. You can try doing a search for that, I think the name of the company is koolance or something like that.

It is koolance, they're actually close to me in Washington State.

http://www.koolance.com/

Heh... I'm in a similar boat. I built my own machine with the big old Antec 1030b. I unhooked the two extra fans and it turned out the fan on the video card was going bad... replaced that and the now the hard drive sounds like a phaser on overload.

Well I decided to get a brand new Seagate Barracuda on the recommendation of a friend. I'm installing it this weekend... it's supposed to be completely silent.

On a somewhat related note, audibly I cant even tell this new Dell here at work is even on… It’s creepy.

Im interested in how loud the barracuda turns out to be. Please let us know once you get it installed.

Thx
Sean

Sorry for the delay... I put the Seagate in my home PC and it is much quieter than the other drive (a 27GB Western Digital).

Funny thing is, this new work Dell has a 120GB Western Digital and it's nearly impossible to hear. Anyway, the Seagate runs quiet enough to make me happy.

I have just replaced an IBM deskstar with a 60G Seagate, it is an order of magnitude quieter than the IBM.
I also replaced my standard small case fan with a much larger one with a variable speed. It is also mcuh quieter for the same air volume.