SilenX Luxurae Hard Drive Silencer - [OC]ModShop
  
Title : SilenX Luxurae Hard Drive Silencer
Author : Brandon Turnbull
Date : Monday, February 14, 2005
Vendor : SilenX

Introduction

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Noise reduction is something that is slowly starting to become more of a focus in computers these days. More companies are manufacturing products that run quieter or even better, silent. There are also more technologies being implemented to reduce noise output, things like PWM (Pulse Wave Modulation), heatpipes, and quieter hard drive motors. All of this is a great thing, at least in my opinion. For many years I have been trying to inform people of the fact that their computers don't HAVE to be loud to run well or even be overclocked a decent amount. Hard drives have gotten better over the years as far as noise levels go. However there are still old drives out there that are really loud and new fast drives that are also quite noisy. Reducing noise as much as possible in a system means quieting everything down that you can. Normally if you have a loud system you wont be able to hear the hard drives over everything else. However if you are working on a silent system you know that when everything else in your computer is quiet or silent that your hard drive is more noticeable. Because of this you will probably want something to eliminate that annoying sound as much as possible. With that said when a product like this comes across I become very intrigued.

All of the parts come packaged in a cardboard box that is about the size of a regular optical drive. All of the parts within the box are protected with plastic and padding to prevent damage during transport. One of the best ways of reducing computer noise is with acoustic foam, and that's what SilenX decided to use. This Luxurae hard drive silencer comes with two foam pads that are a little over 1cm thick. These foam pads are very dense and should do a good job reducing hard drive noise.

The enclosure come unassembled which means your going to have to put it together. It is made of up 2 pieces of metal that will eventually come together to consume the hard drive. The foam that is provided for this setup also needs to be added. When you remove the plastic from the back of the foam you will find a very sticky adhesive. I would suggest doing the larger piece first since it fits in the bottom half (taller of the two). Once you get the bottom piece added then center the smaller piece in the top half (shorter) and stick it in place as well. With that task complete the noise reduction part of the drive is ready to go, but don't forget the cooling.

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SilenX made a wise decision to provide additional cooling for your hard drive. Since the drive will be enclosed within a small unventilated space it will not get as much air as it normally would. If you like, you can add some fans to it so that there is some air moving by each side of the drive but this would somewhat defeat the purpose of reducing the noise with the enclosure. Anyways, provided are two black aluminum heatsinks and some thermal tape. This combination of cooling should do a good job removing some heat from your drive. Peel off the blue plastic from one side of the tape and carefully align and stick it to the heatsink. Be sure to stick it in-between the holes so that you can easily install them later.

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Continued...  

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