Originally posted by: Pauli
Originally posted by: mrscintilla
This may be too technical... Why is silicon gel better than clothe? Isn't it the softer, the better?
Cloth or thick felt washers may help a little bit, but alot of vibration energy will still be transferred from the fan to the case because you will still need to use screws to attach it. In this scenario, the screws will still be transferring quite a bit of vibration, causing the case to resonate a bit. The silicon mounts absorb nearly all of the vibration and don't transfer it to the case.
Yeah, that's a very good explanation.
Also, I think cloth will still transfer more vibration from the actual fan frame onto the case frame than silicon gel will. I mean, I don't normally think of cloth when I think of something with significant sound absorption properties.
The reason I liked the looks of those Vantec gel kits is that I don't have a lot of free time these days and I wanted something that's pre-made, effective, and also fairly inexpensive. They fit perfectly onto the frames of my fans -- they take all of 5 or 10 seconds to install. They come in 80, 92, and 120mm sizes, and like I said before, they make one for PSUs too.
BTW, Antec makes the same things, except they were more expensive by a couple dollars so I chose the Vantecs. Incidentally, another cool thing I noticed is that in the kit are some screws and also some small, thin gel washers (made of the same gel) that I used in mounting my CD-RW drive. That was a nice little bonus.