coffeejunky

Hi all,
Just thought I would give this kit a mention.
I wanted something to quieten the vibrations from my HDD, and was going to get the Scythe HDD Stabilizer Kit. However, while I was looking I found this kit made by Akasa, so I thought I would give it a try. It was also a few pounds cheaper, which is always good.

Well, the kit arrived today, here is a picture of the box -


And inside there are the two heatsink mounting plates, with a little bag of four screws for the HDD and four for the 5.25" mounting.



The heatsinks themselves are pretty heavy and fairly robust -



You can see the large rubber bush that is designed to isolate the vibrations, however I am not too sure how well they work, as the mounting point is solid, which may transmit some of the vibrations. it would be better if the threaded point were isolated from the heatsink portion IMO.



One of the best feature of this kit is the heatsinked design, which should cool down the hard disk, very often vibration reducing kits reduce the drive's ability to radiate their heat and cool down using the chassis metal. The thermal tape is of good quality and shoudl significantly improve thermal transfer. To make sure the HDD doesn't come loose there are four mounting screws to attatch to the HDD.



Installation was simple, and the design looks very nice. This kit would certainly compliment a velociraptor.



Once the kit was attached to the hard drive, I attempted to install it in my PC case. This is where I was confronted with a problem. Because the heatsink fins almost touch the walls of the 5.25" bay I could not install the Lian-Li drive bay covers. I got round this by installing the problem faceplate first then sliding the HDD silencer up to it. However, the faceplate is now locked in unless I remove the HDD. This would not be an issue for pretty much any otehr case, but if you have a Lian-Li case be warned installation may be a bit trickier. You could always take a hack-saw to the last few heatsink fins.

My HDD used to sit in the Lian-Li 3.5" to 5.25" bay converter for floppy drives. The HDD temperature was 46*C after some use, which is normal for the Caviar black series.
After installation the drive is noticeably quieter, not silent, but seek noises are less noticeable.
Furthermore, perhaps more surprisingly my drive now sits at 34*C



So all in all, I am very happy with the purchase, and at £5.59 including postage its a pretty good price too.

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Babylonian

wonderful review
many thanks
REP+

after reading ur review i was confident enough to purchase this kit from the site u mentioned
i ordered it on the early morning of 4th of June, and i received it on the morning of 5th of june !
it was a free delivery too !
i bought it so i can use it to install my hdd at the bottom of an Antec Mini P180 case, and hence be able to remove both hdd cages and install 2 front intake fans instead of one



imho, every owner of an Antec Mini P180 case should purchase this kit !

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thepiratemonk3y

I'm considering picking up a pair of these for my Antec 900. Can't decide between this or the Scythe Hard Disk Stabilizers though. Anyone here have experience with both?

coffeejunky

Well, I haven't had any experience with the stabilizers. I would think the scythe would do a better job at isolating the noise, maybe at the expense of cooling/looks. If you're anything like me, just go for whatever is cheapest

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Swiftes

Nice review mate, I wish I hadn't spend the few quid I had left in PayPal, as I could have got one. Sigh.

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alex98uk

Looks nice. I've been using the Nexus Double Twin HD mounts and vibration dampeners, they are very good to.

Thanks for your review Coffee, rep+

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thepiratemonk3y

That's the thing, the Scythes are cheaper for me being in the US. That and Akasa stuff seems to be pretty pricey over here just because its all imported which is truly unfortunate.

With whatever setup I choose these are going in an Antec 900 and will have a fan blowing right over them so I don't think heat/cooling is going to be a big issue.

spiderdim

hey guys I test it too that product. Looks nice with good prize. i think it will help a lot of people with case which takes few hard disk drives

http://www.cpusers.gr/showthread.php?t=2676

fedex1993

Looks good. What program you using to see the temps and read speed and what not?

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coffeejunky

That is CrystalDiskInfo
http://crystalmark.info/software/Cry...o/index-e.html
Its a really handy tool. It can also set AAM, which can drastically reduce HDD noise at the cost of increased latency.

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