Hard Drive Cooling?

[Hicks12]

Any recommendations on how to cool a hard drive in a 3" bay(dont want to use my 5" bays lol). Is 40C a bad temperature because thats what my aaks is getting in my cm690 case, know idea what cooling is good but i didnt want to spend much, probably around £5-£10.


Thanks.

[PeterStoba]

Nexus Frizbee

[DDY]

40°C is fine, above 50°C and you should start to worry.

Doesn't the CM 690 have a front fan which blows towards the HDD? If that is the case that's all the cooling a HDD needs.

[Mithrandir]

The only option i think is to use a front intake fan but having just looked at photos of the case I have to say it's a no-go. You could try getiing a 12cm fan blowing into the HDD cage area.


For reference my 3 HDDs vary. The worst one is around 35 oC, the next one is 30 oC and the third 25 oC. In this hot weather they are about 3-4 oC hotter but I've noticed they are always in the 5 degrees increments.

[Hicks12]

40°C is fine, above 50°C and you should start to worry.

Doesn't the CM 690 have a front fan which blows towards the HDD? If that is the case that's all the cooling a HDD needs.

yup it does but for some reason it doesnt seem to be helping it much. SO far its 43C now after being on for a bit, might be the temperature but its not to hot today. Will check that cooler out in a few.

[Mithrandir]

Is the fan between the chassis and the HDD cage area?

If so you could try putting a fan on the other side so it can draw the air out.

[Hicks12]

Is the fan between the chassis and the HDD cage area?

If so you could try putting a fan on the other side so it can draw the air out.

Sounds like a good idea, you mean put the fan closes to the gfx card? so that it sucks it over the hard drives correct? Ill try and dig out a fan lol, ive ran out of fan controller spaces on thsi 6 pin one o.O

[Mithrandir]

Sounds like a good idea, you mean put the fan closes to the gfx card? so that it sucks it over the hard drives correct? Ill try and dig out a fan lol, ive ran out of fan controller spaces on thsi 6 pin one o.O

Yup, hopefully this will assist the flow of air, just need to find a way of fixing the fan.

[LuckyNV]

The main problem with the CM690 is excessive layers in the fan areas.

Example the front fan, there is metal mesh, dust filter, plastic grill and then a metal fan grill - WTF Coolermaster!?

I have the early CM690 and I cut the metal grill on the fan holder, dropped 4C on the HDD temps.
Fan is a Yate Loon low speed (1300rpm) @5V, fan speed I estimate 500-700rpm

Right now idling 4 HDDs @ 43-45C in a Room temp of 28C (HOT)
Milder weather its 40C idling.

If I use full speed, its idling about 35C.

I'm sure I can drop temps more if I remove the plastic grilling.

HDDs generally have an max operating temp of 55-65C. HDDs don't really increase too much under load unless you're defragging for some time or something equally task heavy.

[kalniel]

yup it does but for some reason it doesnt seem to be helping it much. SO far its 43C now after being on for a bit, might be the temperature but its not to hot today. Will check that cooler out in a few.

Hmm that's strange - I have the centurion 5 that only has an 80mm fan in front of the disks, but it keeps them at 25-30C when I can be bothered to hook it up. Is the fan on any kind of controller? It might be worth just plugging it straight into the PSU.

[Hicks12]

yeh its on a controller but having it on full is louder than id like so i keep it around medium, just noticed it was on low LOL(must of forgot to change when watchin film) but its still around 40C now.

edit: ok put a 92mm fan in front of it and its droped the temps of my other drive from 37C to 30 but my main(akks) i still hanging around 40C, must be because the 92mm fan isnt high enough to reach it .

[Xtanto]

Google released a document about their thousands of hard drives and it seemed to show that temperatures lower than 50C were not increasing the lightly hood of failure. I would not worry unless you get up to the high 50C.

[pow4]

I put an old CPU heatsink on mine, which helped to bring the temperature down by a couple of degrees

[peterb]

Google released a document about their thousands of hard drives and it seemed to show that temperatures lower than 50C were not increasing the lightly hood of failure. I would not worry unless you get up to the high 50C.

IIRC, the papeer also said that temperatures that were low seemed to cause early (or earlier) failure. 40C? I wouldn't worry qabout it.

[Emirzan]

I put an old CPU heatsink on mine, which helped to bring the temperature down by a couple of degrees

How did you fix that in place? I was tempted to do something similar but thought it would rattle/vibrate and the increase in noise would drive me crazy so I didn't bother.

[pow4]

How did you fix that in place? I was tempted to do something similar but thought it would rattle/vibrate and the increase in noise would drive me crazy so I didn't bother.

I just taped it with my HD and some thermal paste between.