Summer weather & cooling

[Tifosi]

My hard drives are getting cosy circa 40c so some cooling is in order


http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=130267

Are these any use? Good? Bad?

How do they mount if my drive is in a cage how much clearance do they require.

I currently have a four drive cage in a Lian Li


Drive 1
Empty
Drive2
Empty

this would become

Cooler
Drive 1
Cooler
Drive 2

Note these are 3.5" bays.

Any other suggestions the rack already has an 80mm fan but it doesn't seem to be effective I think i need to upgrade the fan and put a controller on it since I think the fan is not working of the SMART readings and just relies on the BIOS which without SMART is useless.

[dangel]

Personally, I like to position the drives so that they recieve airflow from an incoming case fan - that way they get 'fresh' cool air without making additional noise etc. I guess it depends on your case tho. Keeping drives cool is a very good idea - i've yet to have a actively cooled drive fail on me (touch wood) whereas i've seen several dell cases with no airflow literally cook a drive in 2 months flat..

[Tifosi]

Unfortunately due to the case design not possible.

That thing says Noise level 29.74 dB(A) which is pretty loud if im not mistaken.

Also I am wondering do you mount these on top of the drives or beneath?


http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_3830.html

Maybe Vantecs offering could be better?

[DanceswithUnix]

The instructions say to mount them underneath, which seems a little odd to me but then whilst I have not tried a drive cooler I do tend to get good service out of Akasa stuff. Still, it does smack to me more of cooling the temperature sensor (which is probably on the PCB) rather than the hard drive itself. Perhaps if you put one between both drives it will move plenty of air around and cool both.

What sort of room temperature are you getting? My computer room is at ~30C so it is not suprising that my hard drives are logging 40 degrees (Western digital) and 39 degrees (Samsung).

edit: I notice that Scan do a rather cheap passive cooler. If you already have an 80mm fan pointed at the drives then perhaps just raising their surface area is all that is needed.

[OJAtkinson]

These screw into the bottom of the hard drive using the lower screwholes. Their purpose is to blow air onto the motor, the top of the drive is a essentially a heat spreader to take the heat away from the motor, so if you keep the motor cooler the entire drive should be cooler.

They do have some effect and I haven't noiced too much noise however they do make your drive larger (the spec says they are 17mm so check you have that much space between drives) and a good fan blowing across the drive will do just as good a job.

[Tifosi]

Insightful first post much appreciated and Welcome!

I take it that you have one in this case. What version do you have and would you buy it again?

I dont think I can fix another fan in, due to the nature of the cage.

[arthurleung]

I used to use those heatsinks until I found out the vibration from the fan had increased the wear on the ball bearing of my HDDs

They don't need much airflow and IMO those fans are a hell lot too excessive..

[Hans Voralberg]

I used them and frankly they're not worth the money. If you can put a fan in front of the HD put one behind then (as in in the middle of the hd rack and the mobo/gfx)

[OJAtkinson]

Insightful first post much appreciated and Welcome!

I take it that you have one in this case. What version do you have and would you buy it again?

I dont think I can fix another fan in, due to the nature of the cage.

Thanks I try to be helpful

I have the Akasa one, I'd probably buy again if the case I was using didn't have any fans on the drive bays. I've also tried the passive heatsink style ones that Scan often give away, they are OK but screw into the side of the drive so a lot of case won't accept them and of course you need fans blowing over the heatsink to make them work well.

[jamena]

dunno if 40C is "bad" for your drives ... but as mentioned above your best best is probably a fan blowing across the drives rather than any heatsinking. Of course this depends on your case design. Until recently I had an Antec case which had a 120mm intake fan at the lower front of the case which pulled in cool air and pushed it through the HDD cage. I'd be surprised if your Lian Li case didn't have intakes somewhere there too? If not you could probably cram in a tiny little fan or just cable-tie in a small fan in each of the empty bays to much the same effect?

[arthurleung]

dunno if 40C is "bad" for your drives ... but as mentioned above your best best is probably a fan blowing across the drives rather than any heatsinking. Of course this depends on your case design. Until recently I had an Antec case which had a 120mm intake fan at the lower front of the case which pulled in cool air and pushed it through the HDD cage. I'd be surprised if your Lian Li case didn't have intakes somewhere there too? If not you could probably cram in a tiny little fan or just cable-tie in a small fan in each of the empty bays to much the same effect?

All HDDs are at least rated to 50'C. I keep a constant of 42'C across all my drives and they've been fine.

[Tifosi]

my drives usually run in the low thirties and the BIOS alarm was sounding. The issue is that I am away most of the week and leave it running to remote into. If I'm away and it overheats I'm a bit limited as to what I can do.

Problem with the drive cage is that its mounted at the bottom of the case at the front and there is no air intake. The real issue is that the drive are mounted perpendicular to the usual style so the length of the drive is across the width of the case i.e. so you can slide the drive straight in. There is no space at the back or front of the cage i.e. which are the side panels of the case to fit fans let alone mount them with airflow.

[jamena]

my drives usually run in the low thirties and the BIOS alarm was sounding. The issue is that I am away most of the week and leave it running to remote into. If I'm away and it overheats I'm a bit limited as to what I can do.

Problem with the drive cage is that its mounted at the bottom of the case at the front and there is no air intake. The real issue is that the drive are mounted perpendicular to the usual style so the length of the drive is across the width of the case i.e. so you can slide the drive straight in. There is no space at the back or front of the cage i.e. which are the side panels of the case to fit fans let alone mount them with airflow.

heheh, it'd seem Lian Li didn't think it through then ... My Antec case also had the HDD rack mounted across the width of the case at 90 to "normal" but there was room for a 120mm intake fan on the outside of the case behind the front faceplate. In fact the side-on HDD cage was designed specifically to allow airflow through the HDD cage, the side-on orientation of the drives aiding this and keeping cable clutter nicely out of the airflow. From what I've seen of most Lian-Li cases there are intake vents at the bottom front of the case. You could mount a fan on the outside of your case? If the HDD cage is solid-sided then you could think about modifying it what case model have you got?

Anyway... sounds like your drives are cool enough. You could enable remote desktop, and wake-on-lan and stuff so that you could suspend and wake up your pc/hard drives remotely. I used to leave my PC on 24/7 pretty much and it did okay. Even the old P2 server locked in a cupboard with no airflow only crashed when people left the central heating on full rather than timed ...make a backup of anything important though


p.s. Also as it's summer weather at the moment ambient is rather higher than last month which might be why your drives are warmer than usual?

[ajones]

I use the Akasa cooler on my AT133 drive (the only way I could keep it cool enough to run without corrupting the OS installation). They cool the drive well enough, but are noisy. I've currently got mine connected to a Silverstone fan controller to reduce the noise and am happy with it on the desk.

If you have a 5 1/4 inch bay free, have you considered an "Icy box" type caddy?

[Tifosi]

http://www.lian-li.com/Product/Chass...-V1100plus.htm

I think I need to upgrade the front 120mm fan, and I don't think I have fitted the rear 120mm fan. I know I dont have the PCI blower installed. I can't actually remember will need to wait until the weekend to check.

WOL won't work with my router

[jamena]

http://www.lian-li.com/Product/Chass...-V1100plus.htm

It looks like it is designed to have a fan(or two?) at the front pushing air into the HDD cage(s) at the bottom there? Always try to have about the same amount of air being pulled into the case/case-region as is being pushed out - that way the fans aren't fighting pressure differences so much and you get a more useful/regular airflow... some fans move more air than others of course but generally for each fan pulling air into the case there should be a similar fan pushing air back out?

you could use remote desktop to check in on your pc from tmie to time, and if the hdd temps are rising worryingly you could either shut the pc down, or at least stop the application that is accessing the hard drive frequently. Check in the power saving settings and turn on the hdd shutdown after X hours of inactivity, things like that. Or ... switch your pc off when you're not there