my computer sits on an upturned yellow plastic milk carton beside my chair and desk and the Barracuda hard drive - i believe - was making a thrummmmarrrr-thrummmmarrrr oscillating noise, felt as much as heard i seem to have reduced a lot but not all of the thrumming by placing a piece of 3/8th" dense foam between the computer and carton - foam is the stuff bought at a camping supply store to use as a mattress when back-packing/camping are there any other ways to reduce such noise ?
Best would be to get an SSD. No spinning nor vibrating components. Not sure what noise you're describing, but sounds like it shouldn't be making it. It's a good idea to look for a HDD replacement at the first sign of it acting flaky or making unusual noise.
yep that's true... I didn't know... Anyway with or without TRIM it doesn't change a lot... It's because the model from Micron (partenering with intel in ssd ) are ready to go... ( 250+ mo/s )
Madshrimps test showed small file write speed was approximately cut in half when the drive was dirty... then returned to normal speed after running TRIM on W7, 64-Bit. On my XP rig, my "clean" speed and "dirty" speed are approximately the same.
yes, discovered SSDs after i'd purchased the computer, then there's the 'Whisper quiet' case: http://genericcomputer.com/i-803-ANTEC_SONATA_III_CASE___Tower___Whisper_quiet___500W_.html however i wonder if there's some kind of sound/vibration mingling of the fan and hard drive that creates an extra noise
The most likely sources of noise are the various fans and HDD vibration. You can replace one or all of them to eliminate/reduce noise.
To follow Scat; you need to try to create a silent system from scratch. Use a SSD, and make sure that the power supply is either fanless or has a fan with low noise. Always swap out the PSUs you get with a case with a choice one to avoid noise. You should also get a CPU fan that's very quiet. Last, make sure not to overclock your CPU - sacrifice power/speed and receive silence in return. Silentpcreview.com is one site to look for tests and parts.