- Joined
- Apr 16, 2011
- Messages
- 172
- Motherboard
- GA-Z77MX-D3H-TH
- CPU
- i5 3570K
- Graphics
- 7870
- Mac
Thoughts on modding an iMac 2010 27" to deaden HD vibration/sounds.
iMacs are, on paper and most often in the flesh, usually quiet (for those familiar with the problem, skip my long preamble and read beneath the dotted line). I am not having a go at Apple, of whom I remain a big fan; it might have taken them a while but they have in part addressed/resolved the issue for some users whose models contained Seagate SP25 revision 1TB drives.
Unfortunately, a relatively sizeable minority, using Seagate or other makes of hard drive, are not quiet and unless you have heard the problem, you would be forgiven for thinking the noise is liveable with. I want to come up with a construction mod for those that aren't quiet/for people stuck with noisy hard drives. In this case, the 2010 27" 'Seagate' model. I know, there was a product recall on certain Seagate 1tb hard drives that make iMacs sound like a bass-rumble coffee percolator, bloop-bloop-blooping away and I have one of those SP25 revision Seagates but... I don't want to send the iMac in to be serviced; I don't want dings in the aluminium/scratches, which too many users have reported, and I was going to upgrade the hard drive, fit an SSD and USB3.0 card to the mini PCIE, anyway. What has struck me is reading how noisy even replacement drives can be with this 2010 model. It seems to be luck of the draw how quiet your sample is. There are endless forum threads about it. Again, unless you have heard the weird bass-rumble, you won't know how unsettling it is.
As my 2010 Seagate-iMac model will have the proprietary Seagate temperature sensor cable, I am going to have to fit a Seagate hard drive. As I understand it, before, it was thought the hard drive would have to be firmware flashed by Apple or the cooling fans would permanently spin at full speed, but apparently some people, when upgrading, were plugging this temperature cable back in the wrong way up. The drive I am looking at is a 2TB Seagate and not notably quiet, compared to the 3GB model which has patchy reliability reviews and which is more than I want to spend on this upgrade. So -
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Looking at pictures of the iMac's internals, it appears that the 2010 iMac's hard drive is held in by an upper relatively thin aluminium rail with silicone grommet mounts for the screws, while the lower part of the HD is secured by Silicone plugs. I am not sure if there are silicone grommets mounting that rail, and so on, to the iMac's shell but imagine so. Where with my desktop computers, I make a cats cradle suspension out of silicone (cut from £1 silicone backing trays) to reduce HD noise, there is of course no room in the imac to do that.
I am very much open to suggestions. At the moment, here are my thoughts.
1) Accepting that some larger capacity hard drives are noisier than others, try and establish how much of the secondary 'blame' can be laid on the relatively thin and presumably resonant-ish aluminium hard drive fixing rail, or is it what that rail interfaces to in the iMac that is the problem. What part or parts are causing the iMac's shell to act as a resonating chamber? Are there material differences in the 2011/2012 model's mounting? There are youtube sound samples of the bass crump-crump sound, it's very distinct and unsettling as from the usual quiet HD chatter. Should I add decoupling silicone washers there, if there aren't any, and if room? Or should I prefabricate replacement fixture parts that are acoustically dead - i.e. get a piece/pieces of scrap steel of similar thickness, saw them, file, drill? Has anyone gone that route? I don't intend to make any new holes in the case.
2) In that my iMac seems to run on the hot side and I like quiet, encasing the hard drive in a factory-made HD vibration/sound killer case, if there was even room to do so, doesn't seem like a good idea; I would dearly love to fit some more expensive/better fans but that would ruin the look of the beautiful case.
3) I would like to fit sound deadening, as some people fit to car doors, but I read that it significantly adds to the weight of anything that it is applied to, which would make the already reasurringly-heavy iMac a bit too heavy and I would think it would make airflow even worse.
4) Fit a lower spec laptop drive which I could suspend from a cradle of silicone threads. Though I am tempted to do that, and appreciate that some spin at 7,200rpm, I would much prefer to fit a more durable 7,200 desktop drive. I am open to the idea of fitting a green/5,900rpm drive, especially if it is cool running and in that I also want to fit a 128GB SSD. My preference, though, is a 7,200rpm model. I use bootcamp and there is only finite space on a cheap 128GB SSD.
I think my best bet might be to prefabricate parts, or at least that is what I am going to try. That upper aluminium rail, for instance, could be made thicker (if repalcing it with something 3x thicker isn't going to effect air flow?), there's even room to strap a length of steel to that rail with thin cable tidies. As you can see from the picture, Apple have gone to some lengths to dampen the vibrations/sound with silicone grommets/plugs/washers and I appreciate that anything that I might try will make only a small difference, beyond obviously replacing/upgrading the SP25 revision Seagate 1TB and hoping I do well in the noise lottery, but I am open to suggestions beyond that, even for small differences.
I can't take credit for the picture, found on ifixit.
iMacs are, on paper and most often in the flesh, usually quiet (for those familiar with the problem, skip my long preamble and read beneath the dotted line). I am not having a go at Apple, of whom I remain a big fan; it might have taken them a while but they have in part addressed/resolved the issue for some users whose models contained Seagate SP25 revision 1TB drives.
Unfortunately, a relatively sizeable minority, using Seagate or other makes of hard drive, are not quiet and unless you have heard the problem, you would be forgiven for thinking the noise is liveable with. I want to come up with a construction mod for those that aren't quiet/for people stuck with noisy hard drives. In this case, the 2010 27" 'Seagate' model. I know, there was a product recall on certain Seagate 1tb hard drives that make iMacs sound like a bass-rumble coffee percolator, bloop-bloop-blooping away and I have one of those SP25 revision Seagates but... I don't want to send the iMac in to be serviced; I don't want dings in the aluminium/scratches, which too many users have reported, and I was going to upgrade the hard drive, fit an SSD and USB3.0 card to the mini PCIE, anyway. What has struck me is reading how noisy even replacement drives can be with this 2010 model. It seems to be luck of the draw how quiet your sample is. There are endless forum threads about it. Again, unless you have heard the weird bass-rumble, you won't know how unsettling it is.
As my 2010 Seagate-iMac model will have the proprietary Seagate temperature sensor cable, I am going to have to fit a Seagate hard drive. As I understand it, before, it was thought the hard drive would have to be firmware flashed by Apple or the cooling fans would permanently spin at full speed, but apparently some people, when upgrading, were plugging this temperature cable back in the wrong way up. The drive I am looking at is a 2TB Seagate and not notably quiet, compared to the 3GB model which has patchy reliability reviews and which is more than I want to spend on this upgrade. So -
------
Looking at pictures of the iMac's internals, it appears that the 2010 iMac's hard drive is held in by an upper relatively thin aluminium rail with silicone grommet mounts for the screws, while the lower part of the HD is secured by Silicone plugs. I am not sure if there are silicone grommets mounting that rail, and so on, to the iMac's shell but imagine so. Where with my desktop computers, I make a cats cradle suspension out of silicone (cut from £1 silicone backing trays) to reduce HD noise, there is of course no room in the imac to do that.
I am very much open to suggestions. At the moment, here are my thoughts.
1) Accepting that some larger capacity hard drives are noisier than others, try and establish how much of the secondary 'blame' can be laid on the relatively thin and presumably resonant-ish aluminium hard drive fixing rail, or is it what that rail interfaces to in the iMac that is the problem. What part or parts are causing the iMac's shell to act as a resonating chamber? Are there material differences in the 2011/2012 model's mounting? There are youtube sound samples of the bass crump-crump sound, it's very distinct and unsettling as from the usual quiet HD chatter. Should I add decoupling silicone washers there, if there aren't any, and if room? Or should I prefabricate replacement fixture parts that are acoustically dead - i.e. get a piece/pieces of scrap steel of similar thickness, saw them, file, drill? Has anyone gone that route? I don't intend to make any new holes in the case.
2) In that my iMac seems to run on the hot side and I like quiet, encasing the hard drive in a factory-made HD vibration/sound killer case, if there was even room to do so, doesn't seem like a good idea; I would dearly love to fit some more expensive/better fans but that would ruin the look of the beautiful case.
3) I would like to fit sound deadening, as some people fit to car doors, but I read that it significantly adds to the weight of anything that it is applied to, which would make the already reasurringly-heavy iMac a bit too heavy and I would think it would make airflow even worse.
4) Fit a lower spec laptop drive which I could suspend from a cradle of silicone threads. Though I am tempted to do that, and appreciate that some spin at 7,200rpm, I would much prefer to fit a more durable 7,200 desktop drive. I am open to the idea of fitting a green/5,900rpm drive, especially if it is cool running and in that I also want to fit a 128GB SSD. My preference, though, is a 7,200rpm model. I use bootcamp and there is only finite space on a cheap 128GB SSD.
I think my best bet might be to prefabricate parts, or at least that is what I am going to try. That upper aluminium rail, for instance, could be made thicker (if repalcing it with something 3x thicker isn't going to effect air flow?), there's even room to strap a length of steel to that rail with thin cable tidies. As you can see from the picture, Apple have gone to some lengths to dampen the vibrations/sound with silicone grommets/plugs/washers and I appreciate that anything that I might try will make only a small difference, beyond obviously replacing/upgrading the SP25 revision Seagate 1TB and hoping I do well in the noise lottery, but I am open to suggestions beyond that, even for small differences.
I can't take credit for the picture, found on ifixit.