My slightly unorthodox HDD fan setup.. any problems?

Ana · Post by **Ana** » Thu Aug 19, 2004 10:27 pm

Hi!

I just rigged my two S-ATA Seagates like this:

(I changed the crappy GIF with a proper pic)

The grey block represent the HD mount clips on the Sonata, the white rectangles with black outlines are the HD:s, the thing I did was that I flipped the sonata clip 180 degrees so that the HD is upside down. I suppose there would be no problems with this drive orientation. The 80 mm fan is blowing upwards, and the system hd (which is of course the more active one) is upside down, being cooled.

Do you notice any fundamental flaws on this setup? Seems to cool my HD's OK. Do you have a good software to recommend for HDD temp monitoring?

(And sorry for the crappiest MS Paint image ever

)

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Thu Aug 19, 2004 10:52 pm

I'm sorry, I tried, but I couldn't make much sense out of the image

I assume you have two Sonata drive cages, the upper one flipped over. What's holding the 80mm fan in place? What's the brown thing in the image? Airflow?

Was it necessary to have this setup? I noticed that the front 120mm seemed adequate (if not exceptional) in cooling my drives. I'm considering blocking some of the holes on the surface that the front fan mounts onto to improve cooling by encouraging the fan to pull air in from outside.

For monitoring drive temperature in Windows I use dtemp. MBM5 can do it as well, I believe.

You may want to consider placing your system drive below. I noticed that my drive above (two identical drives) always seem to be a few degrees warmer. Then again, an axial fan seems to cool better by blowing than by pulling air.

dukla2000 · Post by **dukla2000** » Thu Aug 19, 2004 10:55 pm

(IMHO) you can mount hdd in any orientation, so if it works for you then dont worry. My only comment is both the fan intake & exhaust are really close to the drives and obstructions close to the fan intake/exhaust cause much more noise than the same object a bit further away. Also (IMHO) if you have reasonable ambient temps and case airflow then I cant see the point in fans for hdd at all: hdd are only disippating 10-15W at most and it doesn't take rocket science to cool that.

In theory you can use Dtemp (under Win) or hddtemp (& gkrellm under Linux) to report the SMART temps reported by your drives, except with SATA drives this is far from routine as some drive/controller combinations dont seem to play ball. e.g. I cant get temps from my Samsung SP80/Via 8237 combos, whereas SP80/Intel controllers seem ok.

Straker · Post by **Straker** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:16 am

i was pondering something a tiny bit like this, make a "duct" out of three drives mounted to each other as an upside down U, with the bottoms facing inward, and suspended as one unit... then blow a fan through the hole. would be cute if nothing else. not sure if there's any point with fewer drives though.

Ana · Post by **Ana** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 5:09 am

Yeah, sorry about the sub-par image

The strange lookin thing between the blocks is indeed the fan, and those white blocks are hard drives, the upper one is flipped around. The red area is making a pitiful attempt at indicating the airflow path.

I only have one 120mm case fan at the back, and I was thinking that probably most of the intake air does not circulate through the front mask, thus cooling the hard drives, but rather from the side intake vents. Noise is not really an issue, since I can't hear my setup over my fridge anyhow. Maybe when I move in to a bigger apartment I might want to do something about it, but now the ambient noise covers the computer almost completely. (Yes, I know, it's terrible.)

The fan is suspended to the side of a vacan slot with cable ties.

-------
| HD | <- Upside down
-------
^^^
--fan--
^^^
-------
| HD | <- Normal orientation
-------

Sandwich style!

The fan is running at 5V, and the HDD:s feel cool to the touch now. They used to be quite hot and a few weeks ago the other one died. I had no dedicated HDD fan or ventilation then, so I started suspecting temperature related issues.

I really have no specific questions, I just wanted to show what I've done and maybe if you'd have an idea or a few, I'd appreciate them

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 5:24 am

Interesting idea. The thing is, hdds get hot on the side (usually). Your setup produces a very roundabout way of getting airflow over the sides (you get 10 points for original thinking though

)

Filling in the front 120mm area on the Sonata has more purpose than just cooling your hdds. The pull/push configuration that is formed with the back fan aids in cooling all of the case, including southbridge, graphics card and your overall case temps.

Ana · Post by **Ana** » Sun Aug 22, 2004 12:59 pm

dtemp reports 37 and 34 degrees, by the way. I have no idea which is which, but I guess that the lower HD is hotter, since the fan is blowing on the top one. Mission accomplished, I think

Maybe I'll post some pics if I get a hold on a digital camera, if anyone is interested.

Straker · Post by **Straker** » Sun Aug 22, 2004 5:53 pm

well, the sides are the same chunk of metal as the bottom is, so shouldn't make much/any difference unless the entire bottom is covered by the PCB.

i had the same problem after quieting some stuff a while ago - one of the remaining noises sounded almost the exact same as my fridge compressor like 12 feet away, kept craning my neck to figure out which noise was which.

Ana · Post by **Ana** » Mon Aug 30, 2004 7:24 am

Okay, now there's a proper pic online. Maybe this clarifies a bit

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Mon Aug 30, 2004 9:21 am

Blowing any fan at a solid surface at so close a distance as you show, is a questionable use of airflow. The created back-pressure slows down airflow, at the same time increases noise levels. I'd much prefer to see the fan blowing/sucking through the opening between the drives. Of course how you mount a fan depends on space requirements.....and how the drives are sitting.

But if it works for you......

Ana · Post by **Ana** » Mon Aug 30, 2004 9:28 am

Bluefront wrote:Blowing any fan at a solid surface at so close a distance as you show, is a questionable use of airflow. The created back-pressure slows down airflow, at the same time increases noise levels. I'd much prefer to see the fan blowing/sucking through the opening between the drives. Of course how you mount a fan depends on space requirements.....and how the drives are sitting.

But if it works for you......

There wasn't enough room to mount the fan so that it would blow between the drives. That is probably just a temporary solution, I'll get an another 120mm fan sometime soon. But meanwhile, it seems to work ok and it really isn't very loud at 5V.