Introduction
Introducing Magic Fleece
During one of my frequent chats with Amil from Chillblast, he started rabbiting on about me reviewing something called "magic fleece". Initially I was confused about why he had decided to drop his hardware store and start selling Harry Potter jumpers, but fortunately he quickly explained. Magic Fleece is a new noise dampening material from Noise Control, the people who make the legendary Silverado. Put simply it is an insulating layer of flexible cork board covered on one side by adhesive and on the other by thick black carpet. The idea is that you stick it all over the inside of your case, and it reduces the sound of the 8 Deltas to acceptable levels. Alternatively if you already have a quiet PC, it will reduce the sound to near silence.
To understand how noise dampening material works, lets take a quick look at what sound actually is. Very simply, sound is the vibration of any given substance. The substance can be air, water, metal. In fact the only place in which sound cannot travel is a vacuum (so all those fancy explosions you see in Star Trek etc are utter bull****). The vibrations that produce sound are not the result of an entire volume moving back and forth at once. If that were the case, the entire atmosphere would need to shift for any sound to be made at all! The vibrations occur among the individual molecules of the substance, and the vibrations move through the substance in sound waves. You can read all about the properties of sound on this page here, if you found that interesting  .
The pressure fluctuations of the sound wave cause the material to vibrate. These movements are so small they are normally not visible, however it is this movement which results in re-radiated sound from the panel. It can also trigger off vibration in supporting structures. Sound transmission loss depends on the surface density of the panel (kg/m³). It increases by 6dB per doubling of mass. This is often referred to as the 'Mass Law'. You can read all about the properties of insulation on this page here.
The Magic fleece therefore, by increasing the mass of the panels on your case, effectively reduces the sound energy hitting the computer case side panel, negating much of the resonance emitted by your multitude of screamers.
Let’s take a look at some more pictures of the stuff.
This is the top of the fleece, it is extremely densely woven carpet. When I pull back the backing-sheet on the underside you can see the adhesive coated cork insulation material.
For your cash ($57.79 or £39.99) you get 4 of these large pieces (40 x 38.5cm) and 2 small pieces (20 x 38.5cm) for the top and bottom of your case. Let's look at installation and performance.
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