DescentBB

My case is so loud I could hear my computer louder than his across the hall in my roomate's room last year.

Also, from getting so many sampling libraries of real instruments lately (I prefer to design all my electronic sounds, but for real orchestral sounds nothing beats sampling libraries) I currently have 760GB of space. I am about to get another HD which will bump me over the 1TB barrier in total storage. Half of this is going to be used as a mirror storage in case of a failure. I am very paranoid about data loss now.

Anyway, I need more HD bays than I currently have (I have some HDs sitting on the floor) and the case I have provides really no noise protection... and for music production it stinks having a really loud noise in the room all the time, or if I want to listen to ambient music its kind of a ruiner.

So I want to spend about $200, but I would spend more if it really made for a significant improvement. Currently I know my Voodoo 5 probably adds noise with 2 fans. If I changed to a PCI V3 with a heatsink instead of the fans I know that would help. I only need to play d3 and I have no desire to play any modern games.

I'd like to buy the case and decide if its worth swapping the cpu fan before dealing with it...

Anyway, suggestions welcome. I have seen some Lian-Li cases (e.g. LIAN-LI * 73SL) for around $150-250, but I was looking for some help. I need 4 HD bays, 6 preferable for future expansion.

I'd also assume a case without some form of insulation is likely to be a rip off... after all I could just buy some low rpm fans and call it a day

The easiest thing I can think of is to buy an Isobox. An Isobox is just a souped up way to say sound proof box. I imagine you could just stick your case in one of those and have INSTANT quiet.

But as far as PC cases, I would pick up a Lian Li PC6077 mid-tower or maybe even a PC71 full-tower case.

I would ditch the Voodoo 5 (out of date and not really worth the trouble to water cool) and maybe replace it with a Radeon 9600 SE (passively cooled) video card.

I wouldn't bother to water cool the CPU unless you felt you really wanted that extra dB noise reduction. Instead just get an SLK-900 (if it will fit your CPU) and a good quality QUIET 80 mm fan.

You still have the problem of loud hard drives. Since you already have a collection of drives, I can't exactly suggest that you go out and buy a bunch of drives specifically designed to be quiet. The best thing I can think of is to line your case with some kind of sound proofing material. Melamine foam could be used to cover the insides of the case, which would provide a substantial reduction in noise levels.

Those are just a few ideas. Computer noise has never bothered me, so it doesn't even come into consideration when I buy parts, so....

~Dev

Most quiet cases don't have sound deading mats in them. In general your noises come from a few main things like motors(fans, drives), turbulance from the fans, and vibrations. By decoupling your drives and fans you can eliminate quite a bit of noise from the vibrations, and good quiet cases(Antec Sonata for example) will have decoupling things built in, such as rubber harddrive mounts and such.

Definetly look at the recremended products list at SilentPCReview, and glanc over the listing of articles they have on tweaking a system further. You should apply some of their home remeadies to your existing setup first.

Antec SONATA as your base and get a External 1394 HD Enclosure(s) for your backup (just put your HD's in them) stackable and portable(which i think you would utilize)

stay away from USB 2.0 only enlosures, yes they claim to have about the same transfer speed but at the cost of serious CPU usage, firewire does not (Stay away Trolls this is not your bridge)

one of mine

The Antec P160 has the same low noise features as the Sonata (rubber grommeted HD mounts, 120mm low noise fans, etc), but is consirably larger than the Sonata and made of aluminum, rather than steel. There are 4 HDD mounts in the case, but with a little ingenuity, you could easily get 6 hard drives in this case. I own a P160, and I've worked with Sonatas. Both are great cases.

Sonata cons would be the limited space and the door covering the drives. My partner has a small music recording setup and is constantly in need of access to the drives as well as the front mounted controls of his Yamaha sound card. The door seems to get in the way and he has even contemplated removing it. I just wonder, Birds, if that door is gonna get in your way.

P160 Cons. Hmm, I cant really think of any, other than the fact that I would have liked a plainer looking bezel, a little less "James Bond" looking.

One cool thing about both cases is the fact that the rear fan is a big old 120mm. You could easily mount a radiator back there and convert the case to water cooling. Of course, water cooling would be your most silent setup, but you'd be blowing your budget considerably.

Article from slash dot...

http://www.bigbruin.com/techtips/techtip009.html

Birds, I'd also look into setting your drives up on a raid device- that way you can have full redandancy without using 50% of your drive space.