Does hard drive noise in your PC color affect SQ?

I've had my system set up with a laptop running jRiver pulling my music from my server. But recently the hard drive on my laptop crashed. Because I didn't want to be without tunes I brought my server into my music room installed jRiver and started playing music. I was amazed that the former server PC sounded much better than the laptop server combo. I mean much better!!

I've looked at the Zuma design and others and I know most people think that keeping the hard drives out of the listening room a high priority.

So I've been doing some research and it is possible to buy fanless power supplies by Seasonic, fanless CPU coolers, and there are several ways to keep the hard drives from vibrating by using screws with silicone grommets, etc. I will be adding super quiet fans that will be set to only cone on if there is a temperature problem. Right now I have fans on the server power supply and they never come on. I do use a fanless CPU cooler as well. I really gave to put my ears right next to the PC to hear anything at all.

SOTM makes filters for hard drives and fans which I plan to use when I build a new PC.

In a PC system like the Zuma which has no drives, is it electrical noise one is worried about or is it the possible noise of the drives and fans themselves?

I really believe that having the drives, CPU, PSU all in one system can really be almost silent, with careful choices of hardware. I have some evidence that your PC might sound better this way then retrieving the music files from a NAS.

Has anyone else experimented and found the same results?

Thanks for reading and responding,

Steven.