With my other two fans arriving from CyberDruid, I now have all 3 of my 120mm fans replaced with Silenx ones.
I am not a big fan (no pun intended) of Thermaltake's plastic mounting system for the case fans. They are a bad enough to take off, but to put back in place is even worse. After about 10 minutes of fidgeting, I managed to take the old rear 120mm fan and clip off:
I wanted to give the rubber grommets supplied by Silenx a chance as well, and they obviously wouldn't work with the clips. I also decided to put a rubber vibration dampener between the fan and the case for added acoustic insulation. With the grommets in place and the dampener applied on top, the fans look like this:
This fan was mounted as shown directly onto the rear 120mm fan spot.
To mount a Silenx fan onto the iCage using the rubber grommets, a little bit modding with a drill bit had to be done because Thermaltake's screw holes are much too small for the grommets to fit into:
To widen the holes, I used my roommates power drill. Luckily he wasn't home, so I didn't have to ask.
I had an aluminum iCage and a steel iCage, so I chose the aluminum one to experiment upon since it would be easier on the drill bit. I first tried a 5/32" drill bit, and although the hole was wide enough for the grommet to fit through, it left some sharp shavings along the drill hole edges because Thermaltake used a shaft for the screw threads instead of a hole. I widened each hole to 3/16" and the sharp edges went away so I felt it was safe to assemble the fan the same way as I did with the rear 120mm fan spot. As you can see, it worked perfectly:
And for those of you who think the grommets wouldn't hold the fan on well enough, this should prove otherwise:
Finally, it was on to the Silverstone CFP51-B drive bay that houses my 4 Raptors.
It looks crowded in there, but my drives stayed at about 35 degrees C with the default Silverstone fan. Ambient temperatures were around 25 degrees C.
The CFP51-B is very well designed, with two "fins" that support the actual bay housing on either side, but that are isolated via rubber supports so that vibrational transfer from the HDDs to the case is minimized.
In the above photo, you see one of the fins lying next to the HDD housing.
Taking off the front panel/bezel was quite simple; it only required unclipping the 2 tabs on each side.
Two of the tabs can be seen extending beyond the black front panel over the housing.
Now that the front panel is removed, you can see that the stock fan comes with a grill, and that the bezel has a plastic mesh that is curved inward, presumably to mitigate turbulence created by the air moving around the aluminum, logo-bearing bezel that can be seen when looking at the CFP51-B from the front of the case when it is installed.
The bolts used to attach the fan to the HDD housing are a bit odd. They are similar to the ones that Thermaltake uses on the Armor case doors to attach the acrylic to the metal in that they have 4 outer prongs and an inner shaft that pushes the prongs outward to latch them into place.
You can also see the 4 pieces of meshed aluminum that are held onto the HDD housing by two mall pieces on each side. I decided to take those off (this decision was made after most of these pictures were taken) to allow for better airflow to the HDDs. In doing so, I realized that Silverstone skimped on the quality of the aluminum on this part of the casing since it doesn't support much of the HDDs' weight - it is quite ductile and easily deforms if you are not careful!
I was happy to see that I didn't need to remove the HDDs to place the grommets into the holes, and also pleased that Silverstone didn't use small screws like Thermaltake so no modding of the housing was necessary. The grommets and vibration dampener were applied like with the other two Silenx fans:
I wasn't about to try to hold the fan onto the CFP51-B housing with the HDDs inside. The bottom of the HDD housing has holes for ventilation, but it would have liked to have seen the same at the top as well.
From there all 3 fans were placed into the case... Unfortunately, shortly thereafter I noticed that the vibration dampener was causing the fans to be off balance so a clicking noise would develop every so often in one of the fans. I eventually removed all 3 vibration dampeners and haven't had any problems since then. My HDD temperatures dropped 2-3 degrees C with the new Silenx fan and removal of the 4 aluminum mesh pieces. Unfortunately no flowrate was given for the default Silverstone fan - I only noted that it ran at 1100 RPM before my fan controller died and tried to take my system with it.
Future upgrades planned:
Vantec Nexus 205-B Fan Controller (which I will sleeve)
Ultra X3 1000W PSU (replacing my leaf blower)
2 x HD 2900XTs
Stay tuned, folks!