Postville 80GB - sizzling/cracking noise?

[idata]

Hi,

i just installed my new Postville 80 GB into my MacMini and I am quite happy with the drive; it's as fast and silent as expected - with one irritating exception: it makes sporadic sounds that I would describe as decent "sizzling" or "cracking", especially when the drive is in heavier drive or read activity. Is this a well know problem? How is it explainable?

Thanks a lot!

[idata]

That problem description sounds pretty similar to what I have here with my 160GB G2. The noise is very faint and I only notice it during high disk use. After opening my computer and listening, I found that the noise was actually coming from the CPU/Power Supply area of the case. So, it's probably coil whine from the voltage fluctuations and, pre-SSD, was masked by the noise of a regular hard disk. Here's more detail:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=56007&highlight= http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=56007&highlight=

[idata]

Thanks for the answer! I wonder that scarcely anybody noticed this so far. So, would you say that we have to accept this noise as "normal"?

[idata]

How loud is the sound you're hearing? Mine's quiet enough that I went for months not consciously noticing it. Plus, for the most part, I only hear it during virus checks.

Working from the assumption that the noise you're hearing is the same as what I'm hearing, there are a lot of things that could be limiting its notice. First, I'm not sure if it's coil whine caused by the power supply, itself. Or, if it's something in the motherboard circuitry caused by the CPU going into and out of power save modes. In the thread I referenced, I mentioned that changing the energy state options in the BIOS changes the sound. So, I tend to lean towards it being a combination of CPU, BIOS settings, and power supply (in my case, an E8400, most energy state savings on, and a Seasonic S12 II SS-430GB). Then, there's the masking affect of other components. In my case, my old hard drive was the loudest thing left in the case and was loud enough to mask the sound. With that gone, I can't even tell the computer is on except for the power button light. Most people probably have multiple, horribly sounding fans in their cases. So, even with an SSD, their systems aren't quiet enough to hear any possilble coil whine. And, then, there's the environment. Probably no one in an office environment could hear this noise. The ambient sound levels would mask it. In a home environment, traffic sounds, air conditioning, television, music, etc. could very well cover it up.

As far as living with the noise, that's what I've decided to do. In that other thread, they suggested under-volting the system so that it wouldn't change energy states all the time. But, after investigating how to do it, I decided it just wasn't worth the effort. I could try a different power supply (just in case that's the underlying issue), but swapping power supplies in this computer case (Antec Solo) means disassembling and re-assembling everything. Again, it's just not worth it.