Cooler Master HAF 912 ATX Mid Tower Case $50 at Newegg

I have a Cooler Master case and I will NEVER buy another. It is a COOLER MASTER Gladiator 600 RC-600-KKN1-GP. The thing looks great and has great features but is made out of such thin sheet metal that it makes loud vibrating noises. The noise will come and go. I have bent door tabs, shimmed parts with rubber, and tried to bend other stuff inside case. Noise goes away and with in a day it is back. Just buy putting a shim under one leg of the case makes the noise go away for a day but it always comes back. I have screwed the DVD drives in the case and that did the most help by making the drives a structural support member in the case but it is just such a thin flimsy made case. I have wasted plenty of time on this case and I am very disappointed with Cooler Master as it took forever for them to replace the broken ESATA front panel connector. The case showed up with broken parts inside. The quick clips that hold the cards in the case had two clips broken. I could go on but Cooler Master is not a good source for cases. Looks great, performs rotten. It took Cooler Master over 30 days to send the repair parts so I could put my system together and because of that I was not able to return this POS case.

^ Why didn't you just return it immediately w/o waiting for the repair parts?

Sadly your experience is common, even typical of many brands today in the ~ $50 price range, though your specimen might have had a little rougher shipping and handling than some. Also, the same factory, even the same base design used on several coolermaster cases is also used on other brands but I don't recall which at the moment.

You did most of the typical things that help, though there are a few more options to fix rattles, or design choices that help to quiet a case but many of them reduce airflow unless you are paying a premium for a high(er) end case.

- No direct path from case interior to exterior. If you can shine a light from inside the case and see the light source from the outside then sound also doesn't have to bounce around and be muffled before escaping.

- No removable drive bays or sliding quick release components. If they are present you can remove them and use screws if screw mounting is possible. Sometimes they have metal spring tabs that can be bent a little and it helps.

- minimal or no perforations on the side panels for fans or filter panels. Like with thicker sheet metal, higher mass means lower vibrations and as above it avoids a direct line of (sight) earshot from sound waves bouncing around inside and the room environment. Side panel windows can also contribute to this.

- In some cases using pliers, like vice grips, can tighten some rivets that may be loose. In other cases some less obvious things can help like a squirt of super glue here and there, or your choice of glue or adhesive so long as it starts out thin enough to wick into gaps where two pieces of metal sit against each other.

- Determine which parts are vibrating. Often it is low quality/imbalanced or worn fan (bearings). If you hold the fan at the plug end of its cord dangling downward while it is running at the target or max RPM, if the fan is…

#1, read up on hard drive suspension. My main case is an old Antec SLK3700. It's nice and roomy, is made from some fairly thick metal, and it has 120MM fan mounts in the front and rear. It also randomly vibrated and rattled before I suspended my hard drives with mini bungee cords. It is fscking unbelievable how much quieter my computer is now.

Turn off your computer and touch it. That's what mine feels like when it's running.