Silverstone shows of mid-tower with 200mm intake and exhaust
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Those HDD-cages are always problematic.. I like the P150 design maybe most. You can easily get the drives out, but it doesn't restrict airflow too much. On the design seen here and for example on Sonatas the drives are very easy to take out and change, but the cage itself sits on the way of the airflow. In normal design the HDDs and the cables are sticking toward the back of the case and they are PITA to remove when the motherboard and cards are in place.. So it's always a compromise. And I think I like this one.
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FartingBob
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Id have to see more pictures of that front intake before making my mind up.
This photo in particular makes it look like an major design flaw, but in reality im sure it cools the drives and provides a decent airflow.
The large fan is a definite bonus. I wish more fan makers would make bigger fans like this. Its still very difficult to find a fan bigger than 120mm from most of the known suppliers of silent fans.
This photo in particular makes it look like an major design flaw, but in reality im sure it cools the drives and provides a decent airflow.
The large fan is a definite bonus. I wish more fan makers would make bigger fans like this. Its still very difficult to find a fan bigger than 120mm from most of the known suppliers of silent fans.
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thejamppa
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And add's noise when air is forced thru those creating turbulence sound and considering fan pushes pre-heated air inside the box for VGA card and CPU when drive cage is front of forward cooling fan like that.FartingBob wrote: This photo in particular makes it look like an major design flaw, but in reality im sure it cools the drives and provides a decent airflow.
Hmmm, the primary factor when choosing a case is the number of HD it holds? You can mount a 120mm intake fan near the top left side of the case near the 5.25 area and use 3.5 to 5.25 convertors for each drive, you don't need that many drives these days...Anyway, just an idea.jhhoffma wrote:But no passive airflow for them, drives tend to cook up there when not cooled effectively. Also why buy a case that holds 7HDDs if you'll only end up putting them in the 5.25"?kaskuli wrote:There are other places to put hard drives...like 5.25 bays...
The side shots of tha HDD cage shows that it is far less restrictive than most other sideways cages so if the cage was half full and you alternated use of the drive bays, it shouldn't be too bad.Bluefront wrote:The single front intake fan, completely blocked by the HD cage, is cause for concern. Fill the cage with drives and the airflow will be severely blocked. Even with one or two drives, you'll have problems with intake noise.
I think you'd have trouble with flow restrictions in any mid tower caser that had 7 HDDs mounted in it. Also, the vibrations transmitted to the chassis would probably add a fair bit of noise as well.
All in all, it's not a bad effort although I also have a dislike for sideway HDD cages (bring back the SLK3000B).
While I agree the cage is likely to block the air flow from that fan, even 7 HDs are going to produce that much heat. Maximum HD puts out 10 watts. That's it. Seven of them comes up to 70 watts, that's if all 7 are maxing out which is highly unlikely.
You can figure about 700 watts per cubic foot per second of air you run through, depending on your ambient and what temps you are willing to allow. That number is based on 30 ambient and 50 max out. A good 120 mm will put out about .5 to .6 cfs at about 1000 RPM which is fairly slow and fairly quiet. Some will be quieter than others and some will put out more air than others. But its a pretty good rule of thumb. Better yet, use 30 to 35 watts per delta C. That's at sea level and relatively normal humidities. Higher altitudes and lower humidities will reduce that some, not much.
A typical 120 mm fan has about 14 square inches of fan area, so that air is moving through there at about 74 ips or about 6 fps. That's about 4 mph. Not exactly ripping along. Most of the noise from a fan is made by the fan blades moving through the air, not the air moving through the fan. At 1000 RPM, that blade tip is moving at about 240 ips or about 20 fps / 14 mph. Doesn't sound like much but if you move something through the air at 20 fps, it makes noise whereas at walking speed, you don't hear the wind rushing past your ears. The cutoff point is about 10 fps, above that will make noise.
Once that 6 fps air comes out from that fan, it slows way down as it enters the much larger duct that your case constitutes. With a 200 mm fan, the tip velocity can come way down with the RPM because of the much greater fan area. I don't have any specs on 200 mm fans but just scaling it up from a 120, you'd get 2.78 times the fan area, about 39 square inches. For the same tip velocity, that fan should be turning at about 600 RPM. The Antec Big Boy Tri-Cool at 600 RPM puts out 108 cfm at a claimed 27 db. That's 1.8 cfs, 3 times the volume of a typical 120 mm. The Antec 120 Tri-Cool puts out .65 cfs at 25 db at 1200 RPM. or .93 cfs at 28 db at 1600 RPM.
In any case, you are not going to get much noise from the air moving through the case. The only exception to that would be if there is enough resistance to air flow that the fan backs up and stalls, then you will get plenty of noise.
Ideally, the best place for fans would be between the hard drives and the motherboard bay, as far from the outside of the case as possible. It's the fan that makes the noise, not the air.
You can figure about 700 watts per cubic foot per second of air you run through, depending on your ambient and what temps you are willing to allow. That number is based on 30 ambient and 50 max out. A good 120 mm will put out about .5 to .6 cfs at about 1000 RPM which is fairly slow and fairly quiet. Some will be quieter than others and some will put out more air than others. But its a pretty good rule of thumb. Better yet, use 30 to 35 watts per delta C. That's at sea level and relatively normal humidities. Higher altitudes and lower humidities will reduce that some, not much.
A typical 120 mm fan has about 14 square inches of fan area, so that air is moving through there at about 74 ips or about 6 fps. That's about 4 mph. Not exactly ripping along. Most of the noise from a fan is made by the fan blades moving through the air, not the air moving through the fan. At 1000 RPM, that blade tip is moving at about 240 ips or about 20 fps / 14 mph. Doesn't sound like much but if you move something through the air at 20 fps, it makes noise whereas at walking speed, you don't hear the wind rushing past your ears. The cutoff point is about 10 fps, above that will make noise.
Once that 6 fps air comes out from that fan, it slows way down as it enters the much larger duct that your case constitutes. With a 200 mm fan, the tip velocity can come way down with the RPM because of the much greater fan area. I don't have any specs on 200 mm fans but just scaling it up from a 120, you'd get 2.78 times the fan area, about 39 square inches. For the same tip velocity, that fan should be turning at about 600 RPM. The Antec Big Boy Tri-Cool at 600 RPM puts out 108 cfm at a claimed 27 db. That's 1.8 cfs, 3 times the volume of a typical 120 mm. The Antec 120 Tri-Cool puts out .65 cfs at 25 db at 1200 RPM. or .93 cfs at 28 db at 1600 RPM.
In any case, you are not going to get much noise from the air moving through the case. The only exception to that would be if there is enough resistance to air flow that the fan backs up and stalls, then you will get plenty of noise.
Ideally, the best place for fans would be between the hard drives and the motherboard bay, as far from the outside of the case as possible. It's the fan that makes the noise, not the air.
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Bluefront
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Actually a restricted intake is a liability to both positive and negative pressure cases......from a noise and cooling perspective.
This case looks particularly bad because of the closeness of the drive cage to the intake fan. You will get a terrible back-pressure effect with this sort of setup, which results in increased noise, and reduced airflow.
It would probably be quieter to just eliminate the front fan, and use the rear and PSU fan for the airflow (negative pressure).....and try to cool the drives with some other setup. This sort of airflow arrangement is a major failure of many/most stock cases, and it is made even worse when you fill up the drive cage with many hard drives.
This case looks particularly bad because of the closeness of the drive cage to the intake fan. You will get a terrible back-pressure effect with this sort of setup, which results in increased noise, and reduced airflow.
It would probably be quieter to just eliminate the front fan, and use the rear and PSU fan for the airflow (negative pressure).....and try to cool the drives with some other setup. This sort of airflow arrangement is a major failure of many/most stock cases, and it is made even worse when you fill up the drive cage with many hard drives.
The front fan wouldn't make much difference to the airflow if it wasn't running unless your had the rear and PSU fan running at very high CFM (when any flow noise around the front fan would be irrelevant).Bluefront wrote:Actually a restricted intake is a liability to both positive and negative pressure cases......from a noise and cooling perspective.
This case looks particularly bad because of the closeness of the drive cage to the intake fan. You will get a terrible back-pressure effect with this sort of setup, which results in increased noise, and reduced airflow.
It would probably be quieter to just eliminate the front fan, and use the rear and PSU fan for the airflow (negative pressure).....and try to cool the drives with some other setup. This sort of airflow arrangement is a major failure of many/most stock cases, and it is made even worse when you fill up the drive cage with many hard drives.
If the drive cage was only half full (say 4 drives in alternate bays), the cage looks sufficiently open that a slight negative pressure from slow running rear and PSU fans would not be enough to either cause noticable flow noise nor have measurably restricted airflow - many cases have restricted intakes which would be worse (eg Silverstone's TJ-07). If the front fan was running at anything other tha very slow speed, I agree that the close proximity of the drives is likely to cause noise due to backpressue on the fan blades but sufficient cooling just for the HDDs in a negative pressure setup doesn't need much airflow (to the point where the need of a front fan is questionable but can be reassuring for some).
Again, even though I dislike sideways cages from a philosphical viewpoint, this one seems well enough implemented as the slots are much larger than with many other sideways HDD bays. Yes, it would be very restrictive when fully loaded but what non-server case wouldn't be with 6 or 7 HDDs? Plus the drives' noise would be clearly audible with such a setup.