The hard drive that I decided to use for this enclosure is a Western Digital WD300BB. This is a 30GB EIDE 7,200 RPM hard drive with a 2MB cache. Western Digital says this drive produces 35-38 dBA depending on if it’s idling or seeking. Compared to many other drives, especially the many Seagate I own this is very loud. This hard drive is in a secondary computer of mine that sits about three feet from my ears. Normally if the house is quiet I can hear the hard drive accessing and to me is quite annoying. Once the thermal tape is applied to the heatsinks you will need to mount them to your hard drive. Included with this kit are four screws that will secure them in place.
Be sure to line up the holes and get the screws started before you adhere the heatsinks to the drive. If you just stick the heatsinks on and try to add the screws after you will probably have a hard time. If you try to align the screws after you have stuck the heatsinks on you will probably end up pulling them off to realign them since the holes will probably be off enough preventing the screws from going in.
With the foam added to the enclosure and the heatsinks added to the hard drive things are almost finished. The last step of putting it all together is to sandwich all the parts together. I simply centered the hard drive in the enclosure so that I would be able to plug the IDE and power cable in. With that done you will need to secure the enclosure together with four screws, two on each side. After you tighten down all the screws the enclosure is ready to go back into your computer. There are four screws provided so that you can mount this enclosure into a 5.25″ drive bay in your case. Installation of the enclosure into your case is basically the same as installing any optical drive. Just slide it into place, secure it with the screws, and plug in your cables.
Testing
Testing was done simply by listening to the drive before and after the drive. I know I could have used a decibel meter to gauge the actual difference in sound but many times that doesn’t mean a whole lot. Also the fact is that testing with a decibel meter in a non-professional environment would not be very accurate. Because I do not have the proper sound studio to get a fully accurate reading this sort of testing would most likely be off. Although its great to see low decibel ratings from fans so you know about what your getting, I would rather hear the difference than seeing numbers.
Before installing the hard drive to the enclosure I did a lot of testing and listening with the hard drive. I got a good idea of how loud it was at different distances from it as well as the degree of noise depending on what the computer was doing. I mainly tested the hard drive outside of the computer so that I would hear it more than I normally would with it inside the case. Needless to say the drive was very loud and I could easily hear it, even at around 6 feet away. Sitting where I normally do in relation to the computer I could hear it pretty loud, loud enough to irritate me at least.
After installing the hard drive to the Luxurae hard drive silencer the noise was gone! I literally had to put my ear right next to the hard drive to hear it accessing. If I sat where I normally do in relation to my computer I couldn’t hear the drive at all, even with heavy access. To be honest I didn’t think this product would work as well as it does, call me a skeptic. Regardless of my pre-testing thoughts I can truly say now that this product does work, and works extremely well! This product from SilenX does what it says it will do, and does it really well. I simply can’t express enough how well this product works and how happy I am with it.
As for heat, unfortunately this particular drive does not have a built in thermal probe. I also was not able to fit the thermal probe I had into the enclosure to get a good temperature reading. Therefore I decided to again go with a subjective comparison of the hard drive before and after adding it to the enclosure. I do not feel that the hard drive was much if any hotter after installing it into the enclosure than it was as a bare drive. Although the temperature may rise some due to the lack of ventilation this should not be enough to adversely effect a normal drive. When you start restricting air from drives that generate heat, like SCSI drives the story may be a little different. However, in the case of most IDE and SATA drives the temperature difference is going to be fairly insignificant.
Conclusion
If you loathe computer noise and are always looking for ways to make your system quieter, this product should make you happy. If you could care less about noise and have tons of fans in your computer this product wouldn’t do you any good. Not only does this enclosure work really well by reducing the noise from your hard drive but it doesn’t cost a lot. For only $40 you can pick up this enclosure directly from SilenX. Along with the noise reduction properties installation is a breeze and should only take about 5 minutes. This enclosure is also compatible with all 3.5″ drives up to 15,000 RPM so this means whether you have IDE, SATA, or SCSI this will work for you. Top all of this off with some added cooling from two heatsinks and thermal tape and you have an all around great product.
Overall I could not find any negative aspects to this product, therefore I am awarding it a 10/10 and the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank SilenX for providing this enclosure for review. Head on over to their website and pick one up, they also have tons of other silent and noise reducing products to choose from.
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