Hello and please forgive if this is an obvious question.
I am about to move my HTPC into a Silverstone LC04 case, which has only one 3.5" drive bay with very little room for decoupling. In fact the drive bay is basically a set of mounting holes on the case floor (it has to be screwed in from under the outside of the case) and a small tab extending from the top of the case to hold the drive sideways against the outer wall.
In the SPCR review and thread, there is talk of modifying the case for use with grommets, but for now I don't really think the gains would be worth drilling my pretty new case. Once I get a sense of how noisy the hard mounted drive really is I may think about modification.
Anyway, as long as I'm hard mounting the drive, I figure that I ought to take maximum advantage of the aluminum cage for heat dissipation. So my first question is this: I feel like I read somewhere that the bottom side of the hard drive (the side with the PCB and no label) is significantly hotter than the top side. First is this true or did I imagine that? Or maybe it's hotter but only by a tiny amount?
Second, assuming that the bottom side really is hotter, it seems that the ideal configuration would be to put the bottom side against the cage/outside wall of the case to let the case itself act as a large heatsink rather than pointing it into the case where it will add to internal case temps. What I'm worried about is the PCB on the bottom side. If I mount it touching the aluminum case wall, is there a chance that the solder points will short across the case? Is that a stupid question?
Thanks for any input. If it helps, the drive is a WD15EADS (Western Digital 1.5Tb Green Power Drive).
Hardmounting and Hard Drive Cooling
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Since the PCB side isn't flat the heat dissipating area is going to be much smaller. If you really are going to hard mount it (I would really try to avoid it) position it with the PCB up. That way you get maximum area touching the chassis and you also prevent all that heat from the PCB side from getting trapped in the small air pockets underneath.
However, the cooling effect you would gain from using the chassis as a heat sink would not be significant but the noise will. Just resting the HDD on some thin rubber or foam is a real improvement over hard mounting.
Nice looking case, anyhow!
However, the cooling effect you would gain from using the chassis as a heat sink would not be significant but the noise will. Just resting the HDD on some thin rubber or foam is a real improvement over hard mounting.
Nice looking case, anyhow!
Thanks for the input!
The mounting screws are set so that the drive is vertical. So neither side will really be up, but I take your point about surface area. I'll leave the PCB side facing in for now just in case there is any gain from metal to metal contact with the flat surface flush against the case wall.
Eventually I'll probably decouple the drive one way or another. I'm thinking sorbothane strips between the drive and all metal contacts, then possibly using an elastic restraint system to hold it in place rather than the screws. If I really wanted to justify starting with the hardmount, I'd say I'm using it as a control sample to test how much noise reduction I'll get, but I'm not that systematic in truth.
In other cooling news I've got an 80mm Nexus fan for the side exhaust and I'll start with the stock Intel cooler. At below 55%, that cooler is basically inaudible and the case size seriously limits my options for aftermarket coolers. The main heat source in this rig is the chipset (integrated GeForce 9300). I'm not sure what kind of room I'll have for an aftermarket cooler with the optical drive cage so close, so I haven't invested in one yet. One possibility I'm considering is to remove the fan from the intel cooler and place a 120mm silent fan over both the CPU and chipset heatsinks to keep them both cool.
Thanks again for the input. I'll keep you posted on my experience with the HDD.
The mounting screws are set so that the drive is vertical. So neither side will really be up, but I take your point about surface area. I'll leave the PCB side facing in for now just in case there is any gain from metal to metal contact with the flat surface flush against the case wall.
Eventually I'll probably decouple the drive one way or another. I'm thinking sorbothane strips between the drive and all metal contacts, then possibly using an elastic restraint system to hold it in place rather than the screws. If I really wanted to justify starting with the hardmount, I'd say I'm using it as a control sample to test how much noise reduction I'll get, but I'm not that systematic in truth.
In other cooling news I've got an 80mm Nexus fan for the side exhaust and I'll start with the stock Intel cooler. At below 55%, that cooler is basically inaudible and the case size seriously limits my options for aftermarket coolers. The main heat source in this rig is the chipset (integrated GeForce 9300). I'm not sure what kind of room I'll have for an aftermarket cooler with the optical drive cage so close, so I haven't invested in one yet. One possibility I'm considering is to remove the fan from the intel cooler and place a 120mm silent fan over both the CPU and chipset heatsinks to keep them both cool.
Thanks again for the input. I'll keep you posted on my experience with the HDD.
I started putting this computer together this morning and realized that the outer wall of the case will not be in contact with either side of the HDD. There is about a 1-2 cm gap there, I guess for air circulation since part of the facing wall is vented.
For whatever reason, that was enough to convince me to go ahead with decoupling. What I came up with was to line the bottom of the case where the HDD sits with noise isolating material. Not having easy access to Sorbothane, I went to the shoe store and found some insoles made of a very soft and sticky material. I haven't ever seen true Sorbothane and I doubt that's what this is, but it seems an awful lot like how I've seen it described. And at $5 for four of these suckers, it's a great deal. I've attached a photo of the package, it's SofSole brand "Gel Ball-of-Foot Comfort Insole."
So I put two underneath the drive, each folded in half to increase the effect. Then I removed the "cage," which was just a small tab at the top of the case with two holes drilled in it. Don't need that anymore!
Instead, I used two of those adhesive mounting base things you can get at the hardware store. I attached them to the front wall of the case, strung some round elastic cord through them, fed the cord through the unused mount holes on the case fan at the opposite end, and tied the cord in the middle. The I twisted the cords several times to increase tension, slid the HDD into the loops, and rested it on the doubled-over insoles.
I have to say that I am really happily surprised with how well this worked. I actually think there is less drive noise now than there was in my old case where I was using a suspension mount to hang the drive from the 5" drive cage. I think in that configuration, some of the vibration got transferred to the cage, which was fairly flimsy. Now it is going to the very thick front panel and dissipating in the insoles.
My only concern is the fan. It is anchored to the case with those rubber isolater things and the shock mount system pulls it one way slightly. It isn't making any noise and it is still aligned with the exhaust vent, but I wouldn't mind finding a way to anchor that end of the elastic to something else.
Here's a picture of the drive completely mounted.
For whatever reason, that was enough to convince me to go ahead with decoupling. What I came up with was to line the bottom of the case where the HDD sits with noise isolating material. Not having easy access to Sorbothane, I went to the shoe store and found some insoles made of a very soft and sticky material. I haven't ever seen true Sorbothane and I doubt that's what this is, but it seems an awful lot like how I've seen it described. And at $5 for four of these suckers, it's a great deal. I've attached a photo of the package, it's SofSole brand "Gel Ball-of-Foot Comfort Insole."
So I put two underneath the drive, each folded in half to increase the effect. Then I removed the "cage," which was just a small tab at the top of the case with two holes drilled in it. Don't need that anymore!
Instead, I used two of those adhesive mounting base things you can get at the hardware store. I attached them to the front wall of the case, strung some round elastic cord through them, fed the cord through the unused mount holes on the case fan at the opposite end, and tied the cord in the middle. The I twisted the cords several times to increase tension, slid the HDD into the loops, and rested it on the doubled-over insoles.
I have to say that I am really happily surprised with how well this worked. I actually think there is less drive noise now than there was in my old case where I was using a suspension mount to hang the drive from the 5" drive cage. I think in that configuration, some of the vibration got transferred to the cage, which was fairly flimsy. Now it is going to the very thick front panel and dissipating in the insoles.
My only concern is the fan. It is anchored to the case with those rubber isolater things and the shock mount system pulls it one way slightly. It isn't making any noise and it is still aligned with the exhaust vent, but I wouldn't mind finding a way to anchor that end of the elastic to something else.
Here's a picture of the drive completely mounted.