If you really want to keep your PC quiet, you cannot avoid decoupling your hard drives. In contrast to the silent solid-state drives, the mechanical mass storage drives, regardless of whether they are 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch in size, always make noises due to resonances. On the one hand the basic hum of the rotating magnetic disks ("platter"), on the other hand the "tinkling" of the read / write head when it aligns itself to a certain position. To remedy this, you can either get creative yourself or rely on the offers of various accessory specialists. In the past they have developed a number of methods for HDD decoupling which have proven to be particularly successful.
DIFFERENT METHODS OF VIBRATION DAMPING
The main thing is to reduce the transmission of vibrations from the drive to the housing so that the noises of the drive do not resonate in the entire PC case and are thus increased.
- The most widespread method is considered to be the one in which the larger 3.5-inch hard disk drives in particular are decoupled from the hard disk cage with washers made of rubber or silicone. With this method, either a free 5.25-inch slot is required per drive or the hard drives are still screwed into a 3.5-inch bay. Many housings already offer this option ex works.
- A very good result is the "braiding" of the HDDs in rubber bands, which are to be stretched in the housing or in special 5.25-inch frames. As a result, a large part of the vibrations cannot even be transferred to the computer case.
- The most sophisticated solutions include entire special housing for one or more HDDs, which in turn are housed in the tower. The hard drives are not only decoupled by means of rubber washers, but their own volume also penetrates much less strongly from the casing.
