Silent PC, HDD choice?

[Tea]

I'm building a silent PC for a customer who does a little music recording. We have selected a silent PSU (fanless in normal operation, but has a fan fitted for overload if needed) and a whopping great fanless heatsink. We are not looking at an SSD - it's only an 8GB i3 and an ordinary HDD will be fine, also large and cheap, but I notice that Seagate have a line of drives supposed to be designed for AV work. Are they noticeably quieter? Anyone used them? Is it worth the bother? My guess is that an ordinary Seagate 1 or 2TB desktop drive will be fine, but I'l like to hear any views.

 

[P5-133XL]

AV HD's are designed for streaming (not noise abatement). They are designed so that their caches produces fewer pauses while streaming high definition video. With simple music listening I wouldn't bother with the additional cost of an AV drive. The higher the RPM's and the faster the seeks the noisier the drive is! The best drives for HD noise tend to be the green drives that have slow seeks and slow RPM's and also tend to be the cheapest drives in existence.

 

[Tea]

Thanks Mark! A standard drive it is then.

 

[Chewy509]

Here is a recent review on SilentPCReview that includes Acoustics for current drives: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1364-page5.html and http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1376-page5.html

 

[P5-133XL]

Just as a side thing, there are utilities (very often attached to the Diagnostic utility from the manufacturer) that would configure a drive for performance or quiet mode. The default tends to be for performance. So, if you want to do a little extra effort, you may be able to downgrade the seek speed and thereby the noise of the drive you choose.

 

[Bozo]

Why not a SSD?

 

[Tea]

Cheers lads. All good info there. Why not an SSD? Capacity and price, the usual reasons. We might swap in an SSD later if the system is too loud, but I don't expect it will be.

 

[Mercutio]

I suspect a 5400rpm notebook drive would be an even better choice than a green drive, now that I think about it. Slightly more expensive, yes, but you'll have the opportunity to add additional insulation without modding your enclosure.

 

[P5-133XL]

I won't disagree Merc. A Notebook drive is a better choice for noise.