Soft mounting drives the Antec 900

[fpbear]

When I saw how quiet the Antec 900 is at the store, I bought it without thinking about the hard drive seek noise. When I took the case home I noticed that the hard drives are held tight against flat metal surfaces which will act like a huge amplifier of noise. Now I know for sure that my 150G Raptor is going to sound annoying in this case (the old Raptor 75 was never a problem in my previous Antec Sonata II case).

Any tips on mounting the Raptor drive with some silicone in between so that at least it is not using the flat panels as a noise amplifier?

Antec made a quiet case with excellent air flow, but ignored the fact that hard drives make a lot of noise. They would have been better mounted floating on silicone like with the Sonata series. Changing to this mounting style would not affect the air flow.

 

[Zepper]

Most Antec cases use some kind of rubber bushings for isolating the HDDs a bit - I think the 900 does as well. Pick it over a bit more. I just scanned one review which commented on the lack of any rubber isolation for the HDDs. So I guess you'll have to buy a CoolerMaster device module or one of those noise reducing mobile racks for your noisy drives. OTOH, maybe you could rig some kind of isolation in the cage you have. Mcmaster.com has quite a few types of vibe damping bushings and pins. And I sell the nylon cable clamps that help in rigging bungee or "athletic shoelace" isolation mounts - click on the link in my sig.

.bh.