Calling all Antec P150/SOLO owners!

cyberspyder · Post by **cyberspyder** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 12:58 pm

What's the measurement for the space inside the HDD cage?

Brendan

Sooty · Post by **Sooty** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 1:12 pm

130mm

cyberspyder · Post by **cyberspyder** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 1:38 pm

Sooty wrote:130mm

THANK YOU!!!!!! I thought I had to cut away part of the HDD cage to make the THermochill fit, but apparently, it that's correct, it should slide right in!

Brendan

born2code · Post by **born2code** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 3:33 pm

Really, 130 mm? That being the case, why does it use 92mm fans?

josephclemente · Post by **josephclemente** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 4:55 pm

born2code wrote:Really, 130 mm? That being the case, why does it use 92mm fans?

Yes. My gauge is showing 130.3 mm. I think the case uses 92mm fans in order to fit two of them. A 120mm fan would fit, but only one.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 6:49 am

born2code wrote:Really, 130 mm? That being the case, why does it use 92mm fans?

Check out this pic. The P150/Solo uses a removable mounting plate for drive bay access, and it's wider than the 92mm fans that mount on it. Note that 2 x 120mm would be too tall for the available space.

ckamc · Post by **ckamc** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 11:16 am

120 isnt really needed... and I can testify about that!

havent had the money yet to get some 92 fans and have a 120 fan lying around (but its a thermaltake) and since my hdd temps were starting to scare me as summer isnt here yet I installed it.

its loud *duh* but my hdd now posts temps of 28c with a 1950rpm fan runniing, used to read 42c with no cooling.

I can imagine now PERFECT a 1000rpm 92 fan in terms of both cooling and quiet.

edit: images for people to giggle at

cyberspyder · Post by **cyberspyder** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 12:03 pm

Does this include the 'lip' at the back of the cage?

Brendan

Jarrett · Post by **Jarrett** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 9:13 am

Is HD cooling really necessary? Should I just remove the grille that covers it instead?

RAFH · Post by **RAFH** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 8:00 pm

That's a matter of personal preference. I like to keep everything cool. And I do monitor it all. But to each his own. If you have a good exhaust fan it will be pulling air in through the front anyway, its the way the case is designed. Of course, it will have to work harder than it would with some fans up there pushing.

Like I said, to each his own. If I had just one drive, I might not bother. But I have two Raptors and two 250 GB Samsungs and I figure that's enough heat to bother the mainboard, grqphics cards and CPU. So, two Nexus 92s cost me $30 or so and use about 2 watts and make very, very little noise. I figure with their being buried so deep the load they take off the exhaust fan balances out the noise they make.

Jackal5 · Post by **Jackal5** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 12:08 pm

I was just starting to prep my case last night. Does the grilling over the fans add to the noise level as air is sucked into the front or blown from the rear of the case?

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 1:23 pm

its loud *duh* but my hdd now posts temps of 28c with a 1950rpm fan runniing, used to read 42c with no cooling.

Google just posted a study showing that low HD temps actually increased the failure rates. Temps in the 20-29 failed more than drives at 55C. Harddrives at 42C are actually right in the sweet spot of reliability. Take those fans out and get your drive back to 42C. Overclockers are WRONG! Low temps don't help anything except when you are trying to reach extreme overclocking values of 4Ghz.

RAFH · Post by **RAFH** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 2:54 pm

autoboy wrote:
its loud *duh* but my hdd now posts temps of 28c with a 1950rpm fan runniing, used to read 42c with no cooling.
Google just posted a study showing that low HD temps actually increased the failure rates. Temps in the 20-29 failed more than drives at 55C. Harddrives at 42C are actually right in the sweet spot of reliability. Take those fans out and get your drive back to 42C. Overclockers are WRONG! Low temps don't help anything except when you are trying to reach extreme overclocking values of 4Ghz.

Citation?

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 3:24 pm

RAFH wrote:
autoboy wrote:
its loud *duh* but my hdd now posts temps of 28c with a 1950rpm fan runniing, used to read 42c with no cooling.
Google just posted a study showing that low HD temps actually increased the failure rates. Temps in the 20-29 failed more than drives at 55C. Harddrives at 42C are actually right in the sweet spot of reliability. Take those fans out and get your drive back to 42C. Overclockers are WRONG! Low temps don't help anything except when you are trying to reach extreme overclocking values of 4Ghz.

Citation?

PDF

viewtopic.php?t=38343

Here's a thread about it. It goes against conventional wisdom, so that makes it a hard pill to swallow for cooling fanatics.

J. Sparrow · Post by **J. Sparrow** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 6:56 am

It has been noted that the google labs' report compared different drives, meaning that cooler running drives (failing) are likely to be older 5400 rpm samples, while the hot running ones might have been recent 7200 rpm drives. The latter has greater power consumption, but they are also newer and (hopefully) more reliable.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:26 am

J. Sparrow wrote:It has been noted that the google labs' report compared different drives, meaning that cooler running drives (failing) are likely to be older 5400 rpm samples, while the hot running ones might have been recent 7200 rpm drives. The latter has greater power consumption, but they are also newer and (hopefully) more reliable.

This should be discussed in the original thread, but I'm going to add, that this it's still irrelevant. Your comment is purely a speculation. Those hard drives could have also been placed in a cooler environment. I have no idea why cooler running ball bearing hard drives should fail faster then FDBs, when ball bearings are generally considered more reliable.

But let's keep this google study discussion away from this thread, if you feel there's something to add, say it here -> viewtopic.php?p=322331&sid=c1382d91afe3 ... 7456a48a45

J. Sparrow · Post by **J. Sparrow** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:05 am

Don't heat up, I'm not going to hijack this thread

this issue it has been already discussed in that thread (see whiic's posts), and I was just repeating it here to offer an alternative point of view.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't think we need to ubercool our drives; but those google labs' results about high temperature might be misleading in an unpleasant way, if Seagate's white paper is to be trusted.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:31 am

J. Sparrow wrote:Don't heat up, I'm not going to hijack this thread this issue it has been already discussed in that thread (see whiic's posts), and I was just repeating it here to offer an alternative point of view.

I'm not heating up, I just think it is/was a bit unnecessary to discuss it in this thread when there already is an existing one. I'm sure the OP can read both sides arguments from there. As far for whiic's posts... I think he views are highly biased, because it's hard to shake off "religious" dogmas from fanatics (see my point on conventional wisdom).

As far as I'm concerned, I don't think we need to ubercool our drives; but those google labs' results about high temperature might be misleading in an unpleasant way, if Seagate's white paper is to be trusted.

I don't think it's really relevant whether a hard drive fails faster when "ubercooled" or not. What is relevant in that study, is that drives running in hot 50-55 temps don't really fail significantly more then drives running in normal 35-50c range. The defense, that you and whiic use is, that the low temp failures might be due to old samples, while hot drives might have been recent 7200 drives. This can also be turned around. The "hot" failures after 3 years of use, might just as easily be an anomaly caused by older inferior manufacturing process and not heat related. Googles sample size was over hundred thousand drives, no other study can touch that.

So the whole point in this google study and why people refer to it here is, that you don't need front fans to keep your hard drives below safe 55 celsius, unless of course you pile many hard drives on top of each other.

This is SPCR. Autoboy, me and other are just trying to help others to cut their computer noises, by advicing to drop out the unnecessary fans. I'm going to continue to advice people not to buy and use a front fan unless hard drives are running over 50 celsius.

OK, now I'm following my own advice and dropping this subject.

J. Sparrow · Post by **J. Sparrow** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:30 am

Cutting down fans is good advice; I've got a Solo with an old Quantum 7200 RPM drive, and I run it without a front fan, too.

That's because when I put my hand on it it's only somewhat warmer than my hand. OTOH I wouldn't be too happy running it at 50+ degrees (burnt finger), it's so easy to take it down to the "sweet spot" without spoiling the quietness of most systems.

Google labs' results? I won't put too much faith in them as they can replace failing drives without losing a single byte (and they probably have some kind of insurance or other financial protection on them). Can we do the same?