Cooling 2 Hard Drives

halfpower · Post by **halfpower** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 11:20 pm

I've been told that I need an extra case fan in the front of my computer if I have two or more hard drives. Most people would pop a Nexus on the front. I have no idea how to throttle a front case fan and am wondering if I could just put a passive cooler on. What about those little $8-$25USD hard drive HSFs? Are they noisy? Is there some way I could rig a smart fan controller to read temperatures off two hard drives? There must be a passive solution. I'm at a loss.

halfpower

Natronomonas · Post by **Natronomonas** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 11:49 pm

Throttle by using a bay rheobus or rewire a molex to deliver 5 or 7v to the front fan. Or, try a zalman type fan controller if it's a 3-pin.

I have 4 hdds in the front of my case without a fan, but I'm looking for one since it's getting pretty toasty in these 30C days down here (Melbourne, although it is cooler than usual for this time of year).

I wouldn't get a HDD caddy or whatever that has a 40mm fan in it, it will drive you crazy. Maybe the Zalman heatpipe if you must, otherwise I would just put a fan at 5v on them - the air movement makes a big difference.

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 12:09 am

halfpower wrote:I've been told that I need an extra case fan in the front of my computer if I have two or more hard drives.

Really? Is that a felony or a misdemeanor?

I would get a hard drive temperature monitoring program to check your temps before you decide what to do. I have a program called Dtemp that I think I got from Hitachi (don’t remember), but there are others.

If your drives run at 40C or less most of the time, I would not worry about it. Even at 45C, I probably would not add a fan. However, there seems to be a wide variation in opinion about this, mostly having to do with the pursuit of perfection than with any real need.

I have two systems, one with 2 drives, the other with 3 drives, and no HD fans. Temps are about 40C in winter and 43C in summer. The system with 2 drives is 5 years old with the original disk drives.

halfpower · Post by **halfpower** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 6:32 am

m0002a wrote:
halfpower wrote:I've been told that I need an extra case fan in the front of my computer if I have two or more hard drives.
Really? Is that a felony or a misdemeanor?

Sometimes one can make the argument that the data on their hard drives is worth more than the computer itself.

This will be my first build. Having little to no training in computers, I want to do my homework so that every thing goes smoothly.

halfpower · Post by **halfpower** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 6:39 am

Natronomonas wrote:...I would just put a fan at 5v on them.

Are Nexus fans well regarded at 5V?

JimK · Post by **JimK** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:37 am

IIRC some Nexus fans (orange 120??) will not start at 5 volts. You may need a Fanmate or use a 7v connection.

Post by **Rusty075** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:39 am

At 5 or 7 volts the Nexus fan will be effectively silent. Its noise will be below that of your HDD's. The Recommended Fans article lists several simple ways of getting reduced voltage to your fans.

With the quiet fans available now, there's generally less need for a "smart" controller. It's simpler (and inherently more reliable, not to mention cheaper) to just hardwire the fans at a speed that provides enough cooling for the "worst case". Since the HDD's are a constant source of noise that will always be louder than the nexus fan thats cooling them, there's really little benefit, noise-wise, to having that fan be variable.

But I would second the opinions above that you should get the system, assemble it, and get some idea of what temps you are actually looking at before worrying about fan voltages. There's too many varibales involved at this, and all the advice you'll be getting is just guesswork.

Cooling 2 Hard Drives

Cooling 2 Hard Drives

Re: Cooling 2 Hard Drives

Re: Cooling 2 Hard Drives