SILENT Hard drives?

Hardware HDD's & SSD's
1

For ages I've been trying to achieve a SILENT gaming PC... silent fans, huge heatsinks, sound dampening material ect., to conclude that my WD Caviar Black HDDs has been the sinner the whole time...

So I need recommendation on -> silent <- mass-storage (~5400RPM 2TB) devices. WD Green? WD Red? Seagate? Samsung? Hitachi?

I'm going to use a 128GB SSD for system, drivers and various programs. Motherboard chipset is H77 so Intel Smart Response Technology (aka. SSD caching) is an option for improved performance on slow HDDs.

... I just want a silent system!!!

2

i personally would use a couple of SSDs in RAID 0 if i wanted complete silence but of course that option is expensive. However i hear that the WD Blue drives are pretty quiet and the WD Green drives are some of the quietest drives on the market now.

3

SSD storage is not an option... there is no way in hell I'm going to buy 4x 2TB SSDs for a mid-range system XD

As mentioned, SSD caching is an option. That would greatly improve performance on regular "Eco"-drives.

4

hmmmmm..... prolly green or red.... you will notice some performance drop though

5

WD blue is far too loud.

Green is still audiable but probably the most silent you can get.

In my system the loudest thing is still my WD Green, however when it's not being used you can tell windows to switch it off.

6

maybe a few WD green drives with a ton of sound insulation wrapping

7

What are the differences between WD EZRX and EARX models, other than EZRX uses more power and being a little more expensive? 

8

far as I can tell, their the same

9

OK, so I'm going to sell my two WD5001AALS drives. First thing on the list is a 120GB SSD and Vista -> Windows 8 Upgrade. Then I'll get some harddrives for mass storage (until then, using my Seagate 500GB laptop harddrive)

10

Do it the way I did it - move disks to another room (another pc with iSCSI / samba / nfs) and water cool everything. You won't be able to tell if its on or off :D

11

SSD's...

12

atm I have 10x 2TB disks, how many SSD's is that and how much would they cost?

13

Vista to Windows 8? That's like a newer vista. Go for Windows 7. Or at least wait until Windows 8 has a service pack.

14

WD Reds would be the best that I know of, they are 5400RPM and since they are NAS and server drives reliability is key. Reds have very, very tight tolerations on spindle "wiggle" so it won't be rattling.

I agree with bassfire, Windows 8 is new and still needs work, 7 would be better IMO.

 

Good luck with the upgrade though dude!

15

All HDDs make noise, Black isn't that much louder than any other drive.