HDD Array Water cooling, any kits out there?

[tim_n]

go for the cheap option. Buy a cheap aldi fridge for £50. Drill a hole into the side, stick in your powercords etc. Seal with duct tape and glue gun. w00h00 - cool PC & beer.

Don't take that seriously. Please.

[arthurleung]

go for the cheap option. Buy a cheap aldi fridge for £50. Drill a hole into the side, stick in your powercords etc. Seal with duct tape and glue gun. w00h00 - cool PC & beer.

Don't take that seriously. Please.

Yes thats cheaper, but becareful of condensation, and it'll most likely be noisier than a simple fan (compressor)

[SilentDeath]

Yes thats cheaper, but becareful of condensation, and it'll most likely be noisier than a simple fan (compressor)

And the fire risk when it overheats. Compressors used in such mini-fridges/chillers are very low power and die quickly if they are used at a high duty-cycle.
They are designed so insulation keeps the heat out which doesnt quite work if you have 4 hdd's at 15w each inside them...

[dorky]

hi everyone,

my reason for water cooling the hard drives, is my computer area isn't air conditioned, and so ambient room temps can get up to 32'C during our hot Australian summer. Even with fans, I found I kept killing my hard drives and decided I needed another solution. That's when I started thinking about water cooling them.

I could have installed an air conditioner in the room, but air conditioners use a lot of power, so I would have ended up getting a big power bill every month. But if I installed watercooling... then.... this wouldn't use hardly any power, and should justify the the cost of water cooling by saving on my power bill each month. Yippee!

But if you want to water cool hard drives, you will need a hardcore pump, so I got the most hardcore pump I could find, the Iwaki WMD-30RLZT pump (see the "low flow/high pressure" performance curve here):

http://www.ober-read.com/IW_WMD_Pumps.htm

This pump can handle heavy loads (high pressures) but still pumps at a low-flow type flowrate commonly used in computer water cooling. My system works quite well (I have 13 water blocks in total).

To help flow a little more, I modified the waterblocks to use 1/2" tube fittings instead of the original 3/8" fittings.

For info on how to do this, refer to here:
http://www.datamine.tk/forum/forum_p...p?TID=422&PN=1

My hardrives are also securely fixed in place, (therefore can't vibrate around), and my pump is dampened within the case to minimise vibration inside the computer.

Mixing metals (copper/aluminium) is also ok to do. See a detailed FAQ explaining this here:

http://www.datamine.tk/forum/forum_p...p?TID=450&PN=1

I've also just overclocked my system from:

2x 3.2ghz (24x133fsb - 2-4-4-6)

to:

2x 3.6ghz (22x164fsb - 2-3-3-5)

And I wanted to see if the HD Tach benchmark values changed.


HD Tach Benchmarks:

2x 74gig Raptors @ Raid1:


4x 250gig SATA @ Raid5:


The results look pretty similar with/without fsb overclocking, as the results haven't really changed that much. Overall it looks pretty good. My system is quiet, cool, and can handle extreme temps, no probs!

...another interesting point side affect is that my computer case now also weighs a ton!

So it's like "hey yo people, it's a real heavy "C"... awright! kowabunga!"

("C" meaning computer, used in a similar way to "G" meaning gangsta)

Ummm... I think it's past my bedtime. I'd better go, before I embarrass myself any further...

[arthurleung]

hi everyone,

my reason for water cooling the hard drives, is my computer area isn't air conditioned, and so ambient room temps can get up to 32'C during our hot Australian summer. Even with fans, I found I kept killing my hard drives and decided I needed another solution. That's when I started thinking about water cooling them.

I could have installed an air conditioner in the room, but air conditioners use a lot of power, so I would have ended up getting a big power bill every month. But if I installed watercooling... then.... this wouldn't use hardly any power, and should justify the the cost of water cooling by saving on my power bill each month. Yippee!

But if you want to water cool hard drives, you will need a hardcore pump, so I got the most hardcore pump I could find, the Iwaki WMD-30RLZT pump (see the "low flow/high pressure" performance curve here):

http://www.ober-read.com/IW_WMD_Pumps.htm

This pump can handle heavy loads (high pressures) but still pumps at a low-flow type flowrate commonly used in computer water cooling. My system works quite well (I have 13 water blocks in total).

To help flow a little more, I modified the waterblocks to use 1/2" tube fittings instead of the original 3/8" fittings.

For info on how to do this, refer to here:
http://www.datamine.tk/forum/forum_p...p?TID=422&PN=1

My hardrives are also securely fixed in place, (therefore can't vibrate around), and my pump is dampened within the case to minimise vibration inside the computer.

Mixing metals (copper/aluminium) is also ok to do. See a detailed FAQ explaining this here:

http://www.datamine.tk/forum/forum_p...p?TID=450&PN=1

I've also just overclocked my system from:

2x 3.2ghz (24x133fsb - 2-4-4-6)

to:

2x 3.6ghz (22x164fsb - 2-3-3-5)

And I wanted to see if the HD Tach benchmark values changed.


HD Tach Benchmarks:

2x 74gig Raptors @ Raid1:


4x 250gig SATA @ Raid5:


The results look pretty similar with/without fsb overclocking, as the results haven't really changed that much. Overall it looks pretty good. My system is quiet, cool, and can handle extreme temps, no probs!

...another interesting point side affect is that my computer case now also weighs a ton!

So it's like "hey yo people, it's a real heavy "C"... awright! kowabunga!"

("C" meaning computer, used in a similar way to "G" meaning gangsta)

Ummm... I think it's past my bedtime. I'd better go, before I embarrass myself any further...

That is pretty awesome, but the problem with individual Water cooler blocks are:
1. The drives occupy 1 5.25" oppose to 0.66 5.25" by putting in adapters.
2. Lots of small blocks cost more than a large block.
3. More blocks = More friction = Need a stronger pump
4. Pushing a higher pressure = higher risk of leaking

Now I thought of another idea. If you can heat pipe a CPU cooler, heat pipe a GPU, heatpipe a harddrive, why not heat pipe an array of harddrive?

Foe example using 9 5.25" slots all fitting harddrives.
6 Harddrives on the upper part using 4 5.25" slots
6 Harddrives on the lower part using 4 5.25" slots
A large "heat exchanger" block on the center. The heat from the 12 harddrives transferred to the heat exchanger by heatpipes.
12 Harddrives * 15W = 180W, about the same as Dual 6800GT SLI. So there are kits out there to deal with such level of heat.

With that solution (if someone going to make it), you don't need a lot of water blocks. Less water friction. Heatpipe should be way cheaper than a water block.

[dorky]

A custom made rig would be really good, and shouldn't be that hard to make.

With my system, I can fit 5 drives into 3x 5.25' bays by standing the drives on their side. It's a really good way to save space. I will try taking some pictures to help explain.

By stacking 5 drives into 3x 5.25' bays, I have worked out that I can fit 12 watercooled drives in a 3U sized comptuer case. This is my next goal, as I will be converting my system to a 19" rack system in the future. Here is a link showing my current system:

Link

Note: these pictures are a little dated, and do not show some recent upgrades. But I now have 6 watercooled hard drives in there.

Some things to think about, is allowing air to reach the hard drive breather ports, and also being able to beed any trapped air in the tubing after draining the system. Usually if you can still move the array around, then you should be able to bleed any air from the system.

One of the downside of having so many seperate water blocks is trying to bleed air from the system if required. With 13 waterblocks, this can take a little more time. I also use a non-conductive liquid (FuidXP+) in my system so that I don't have to keep changing liquid all the time (it has a longer usable life than water/coolant).

From my own experiences I would have to say that, having a larger case can make life a lot easier when water cooling. My thoughts on cases now is "bigger is better". As more room, makes life much easier. one of my next goals is to convert my system to a 19" rack system and then add several terabytes of hard drive storage. All the hardrives will be watercooled (of course).

Try having a look at some of the cases at this place:

http://www.servercase.com/

I'll probably hold off for another 12 to 18 months before doing it, as hard drive prices continue to fall. I've done a lot of homework, and already worked out how I can fit 26 watercooled hard drives, cooled by 3 seperate water cooling loops, into a single 19" rack system...

[Butcher]

Considered scsi dorky? Most scsi drives are built to withstand harsher environments than IDE/SATA and have better warranties to boot. Of course you pay for that, and as a bonus they're also faster.

[dorky]

I thought about scsi... but I need to build several terabytes of storage and scsi would be rather expensive (imagine several terabytes of scsi). but SATA is fast enough for me.

I have good HDD burst speed in my benchmarks above (around 215MB/s).

[Butcher]

Yeah, problem is you achieve that burst speed in about 1% of actual reads from the HDD.
Sustained speeds aren't bad though - especially off the RAID5 array.