Normally, when computer enthusiasts try to decrease the noise being produced from their computer, they focus more on their fans, but hard drives can make a fair amount of noise too, however, they are often overlooked due to the fact that silencing hard drives is a lot harder to do. The product we will be looking at in this review is the GUP Smart Drive 2002 Copper, which is an enclosure for your hard drive that dampens the noise produced.
Features:
Features Of The Smart Drive 2002 Copper |
Noise Dampening: |
The Smart Drive Enclosure quiets hard drive noise by at least 4 decibels (difference is greater with a noisier hard drive) |
Compatibility: |
The Smart Drive 2002 Copper can be mounted in the front or back position of your 5 1/4" hard drive bay and works with 3 1/2" hard drives. |
Weight: |
2.5 lbs |
Dimensions: |
6.95" x 5.7" x 1.3" (DxWxH) |
Re-usability: |
The Smart Drive 2002 Copper is completely re-usable (the hard drive can be removed and replaced when you upgrade your computer). |
The enclosure can dampen the noise produced from your hard drives by 4 decibels or greater, which is a good amount for hard drive noise. In order to decrease this noise, a fairly large enclosure is needed, resulting in this drive casing a 3.5” hard drive in a 5.25” drive bay. A large amount of metal is used in the device, so it weights 2.5lbs which is somewhat heavy for an enclosure.
Contents:
Included with the package is the actual enclosure, screws, installation instructions, and a molex connector. The installation instructions are unfortunately all in Japanese so they will not be helpful to most people. The molex connector is used if your PSU’s molex connector isn’t capable of reaching the enclosure in a 5.25” drive bay.
Examination:
The core of this Smart Drive is composed of highly conductive copper plates, and the outer shell of the hard drive is made from black anodized aluminum. Since the hard drive is completely encased in the enclosure, there are small fins on the enclosure to aid in the dissipation of heat. The enclosure is compatible with parallel ATA and serial ATA (SATA) drives.
Performance:
A Western Digital 80GB hard drive was installed in the enclosure. Installation of the hard drive was quite simple, you simply remove the six screws in the bottom of the enclosure and then pop the drive in. Connect the wires and then seal the enclosure back up, it is that simple. It was noticed during installation, that in order to connect an IDE cable to the hard drive, you need to use the flat wide IDE cables rather than the nice round IDE cables. The power and ATA wires are fed to the hard drive through the small gap in the rear of the device. The decrease in noise produced from the drive was noticeable.
Conclusion:
Even though the enclosure is quite simple, it dampens a good deal of noise from the hard drive. If you are very fussy about noise in your case whether you have an old hard drive which sounds like a little child screaming every time you have it on, or just prefer absolute silence, I would recommend you head on over to End PC Noise and purchase this product. The difference between the Smart Drive 2002 Copper and the Smart Drive 2002, is with the copper, the hard drive temperature actually is lower. A downside to this product is that it’s a slightly high price to pay for silence (~ $75) but well worth it if a quiet PC is important to you. It is also quite heavy, so using this enclosure in a PC that you move around a lot will add an extra 2.5 lbs to the weight.
Pros:
∙ Passive cooling
∙ Noise reduction of 4 decibels or more
Cons:
∙ Expensive (~ $75)
∙ Heavy - 2.5 lbs
