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An hard drive on the beach?

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Mercury Lenth

Registered
Joined
Jan 18, 2003
Location
Montreal
I’m thinking about silencing my hard-drive with sand: by submerging it between 2 bags of sand.

Sand has a poor heat transfer rate, so I intend to water-cool it under those sand bags, but does that cooling will be enough?

Does anyone have tried this?
Any good/bad experiences?
Opinion?
Comment?

Thanx for any info

~ Mercury
 
Sand!?! Why? Foam works fine.. I guess if you're trying to put all 3 elements in your case sand would be a good idea... earth, water and fire.. Fire might be a problem.

Sorry, this is not meant as a flame, just wondering why you wouldn't simply use foam, seems so much easier.

K.I.S.S.
 
Well, to make it dead silent, I doubt that foam will make my drive completely silent (Even when seeking) ?

Does house isolating foam would do?

And the important Q is: Does water-cooling would be enough to not make it fried under foam or sand?

Note: I'll pass on fire, it's too distracting ;)
 
Yes, watercooling will be enough, check out the cooler I made for mine, it's not under sand but I'm sure it would work, it's under foam right now, just standard packing foam (not the same as the pic, that was temporary (fleece)). It's cheap and easy to build. Post some pics if you do it, I think you'd be the first to try.

http://groups.msn.com/Bernhard2/watercooling.msnw?Page=2
 
Nice setup.

Hehe, nah I won't take credit for that, I got the idea from another forum (witch focus on on silent PC), but he/she wasn't watercooling it though.

What would the best pre-fab HD water-block? I was looking at the D-TEK one...
 
Go out to a auto store or car audio (best buy has it too) and pick up a couple of sheets of dynamyt sound dampner.

Two layers will make the drives dead silent, and I wouldn't worry about cooling the drives (unless its a IBM 75gxp:D)

Sand is messy and sounds like a bad idea.
 
Hey that sound damping stuff from car audio places sounds like a great idea, I'll have to try that. As for commercial HDD coolers, I wouldn't know, I figured they were a bit pricey so I built my own. What's the Silent PC forum? I'd be interestested in checking that out as well, that's what I'm going for on my comp.
 
Oh, and I would definately recommend cooling them if you wrap something around them, mine were getting up to 54C under heavy load even with no foam! Wouldn't wanna try that with foam. I have an IBM 60gxp and a seagate iV
 
I imigine the forum he's talking about is http://www.silentpcreview.com//

It's a nice site, but not a lot of watercoolers there.

And yeah, I'd use foam. Sand sounds like a good idea, but I don't think It'd work much better than foam, and be a little more difficult to implement.

Rather than dyamat (avaible at bestbuy, actally), I'd check out http://www.b-quiet.com/ - it's exactly the same thing, except b-quiet it much cheaper. Before you do that, though, I'd hop on pricewatch and order me up some Pax.mate insulation- which is actually meant for sound dampening. Dynamat & b-quiet aren't meant for this, but rather to stop vibrations (which usually lead to the loudest noise-but can be stopped with foam). Now I've never used pax.mate, but I've heard it's good...that and the Magic Fleece line sold somewhere or another.

Fire. LOL!!
 
Indeed, that the place, I've PMed him since I heard that we cannot post links to other forum here.

Foam, what kind of foam would you use?

House isolating foam?
Packaging foam?
Camp bed foam?
Doesn’t matter?
 
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