P182 Biggest GPU ?

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master811
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P182 Biggest GPU ?

Post by master811 » Sun Sep 16, 2007 4:59 pm

If I was to have both of the middle HDD bays used, whats the best GPU that could fit, I assume a 8800GTX would be too big, how about a 8800GTS or a 2900XT?

Also, when there are drives in the middle bay, is it still possible to fit a fan to the front of the bay (i.e. between the bay and the filter)? I know it can't go on the back.

SoopahMan
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Post by SoopahMan » Sun Sep 16, 2007 5:17 pm

The P180/182 is freaking massive. If you've never seen one in person I bet it's much larger than you think. And the P182 adds even more steel so I bet it's much, much heavier than you think.

With the VGA vent gone I doubt there's a graphics card on the market that won't fit in that case.

By the way I don't recommend installing drives in that middle bay, regardless of graphics card fit - a nice big graphics card is going to put out a nice large amount of heat. Worst case is passive cooling on the card, and no fan in front of the middle drives. You'll cook them like an oven.

Now, if you did put a fan in front of the drives (which may push the bay close enough to impede graphics card size), then you'd have positive flow across them hopefully keeping the GPU heat away from them. Hopefully. But the P182's lower bay is so perfectly designed to isolate drives that I'm not sure I'd bother with the middle bay - I haven't on mine.

autoboy
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Post by autoboy » Sun Sep 16, 2007 7:12 pm

Having to dramatically cool harddrives is a myth. Drives can operate reliably up to 55C. Drive failure does not increase with temperature until you reach 60C. It is still a good idea to have some airflow over drives, but very little is required and if you design the airflow correctly in your case, the intake air from the vents will be enough to cool the drives to less than 45C. If they needed cooling, the designers would integrate heatsinks into the drive case like the Raptor.

The drive bay in the p180 does not allow enough room for the 8800GTX from what I remember. I don't know the specifics, but I do know that the previous poster is not correct. I just wanted to make sure you didn't use his advice without looking more into it.

miahallen
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Post by miahallen » Mon Sep 17, 2007 1:51 am

I have an 8800GTX in my P180, and I still have room for 7 HDDs.
I have removed the upper HDD cage altogether, and added a Silverstone 5.25" bay converter to fit 4 extra HDDs, but then I modded it to suspend three (instead of the four hard mounted).

nick705
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Post by nick705 » Mon Sep 17, 2007 3:30 am

autoboy wrote:Having to dramatically cool harddrives is a myth. Drives can operate reliably up to 55C. Drive failure does not increase with temperature until you reach 60C.
Please, don't just proclaim things as if you were quoting from some holy scripture. Where are you getting those figures from?

miahallen
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Post by miahallen » Mon Sep 17, 2007 12:52 pm

nick705 wrote:
autoboy wrote:Having to dramatically cool harddrives is a myth. Drives can operate reliably up to 55C. Drive failure does not increase with temperature until you reach 60C.
Please, don't just proclaim things as if you were quoting from some holy scripture. Where are you getting those figures from?
There have been quite a few studies published recently showing these results.
viewtopic.php?t=7677&postdays=0&postord ... cf9519de10

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Mon Sep 17, 2007 2:58 pm

I would still try to keep temps below 45-50C on the harddrives.. bottom chamber with a nexus 120mm and a corsair hx520W has no problems keeping my 3 drives cooled sufficiently (40-41C on seagate drives, 36-38C on samsung 500GB), fan varies between 30 and 65%

Konnetikut
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Post by Konnetikut » Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:57 pm

I have a WD 500GB in the bottom chamber with a HX-520 but no fan. 42-45, which seems reasonable enough, so I probably don't need an extra fan (although later on I can add a fanmated YL if need be)

EDIT; wow, this has gone off-topic.
bottom line: if you take out the middle cage, you should be able to fit anything.

yamahaSHO
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Post by yamahaSHO » Mon Sep 17, 2007 10:34 pm

I just fit an 8800GTS with a fan on the upper HDD bay and it still has some room. I would assume you could put both drives in and still have it fit (probably even more room). You can install a fan on the front of the HDD's.

I'm still putting the system together, so give me some slack. I found I need a 4-pin CPU extender and I think I am going to get rid of the two CD/DVD/Burner drives for 1 SATA DVD Burner and then wait for the hybrid HD DVD and Blu Ray drives to come down in price.

Image

master811
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Post by master811 » Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:40 am

Thanks for all the replies, that pic above makes it appear though there is easily enough space to have a HDD in the middle bay (without the fan at least)?

Question though, does having a fan at the front of the middle bay (rather than at the back as shown above) affect the position of where the bay or the HDDs within it? Does it push them forward, or does it make no difference as I've not found any pictures to show it clearly. From other pics it seems as if the front bit is recessed for a fan, although I haven't been able to tell if the fan actually goes into the recess?

yamahaSHO
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Post by yamahaSHO » Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:00 am

The front mounted fan should not affect HDD location. You do have to use a narrow 120mm fan (120x120x25). My thick Panaflo would not fit, but my thinner Yate Loon fans do.

autoboy
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Post by autoboy » Wed Sep 19, 2007 3:31 pm

I stand corrected on the p180 and GTX. I just saw it when I was busy and wanted to make sure that the poor guy didn't just use one person's recomendation that didn't seem to have any evidence behind it, just like my cool harddrives arguement actually! Yes, google just did a large scale test and found temps had no impact on failure rates. As long as they stayed within specified tolerences.

EsaT
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Post by EsaT » Fri Sep 21, 2007 5:26 am

autoboy wrote:Yes, google just did a large scale test and found temps had no impact on failure rates. As long as they stayed within specified tolerences.
It's just quite different situation to have very fine tolerance mechanical device operating at constant temperature instead of temperature sawing up and down at least once in a day, more probably much more often.

And in fact failure probability curve turned upwards after 46C. (curve bottoming at 35-45C)
Also there was this part:
What stands out are the 3 and 4- year old drives, where the trend for higher failures with higher temperature is much more constant and also more pronounced.
But even that can't be generalized much like "summed" failure probability vs temperature graph because there might be dozens of different drive models with possibly different materials and designs from different years which could considerably affect to results. Only sure way would be testing big number of identical drives and looking how they behave, and then doing same for different drive model to see is behavior similar or different.

In every case before than can be generalized to home computer HDs effect of regularly repeating temperature changes should be known. (and considering thermal stresses of temperature changes end line would quite probably say the bigger the delta-t the more failures increase)

nick705
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Post by nick705 » Fri Sep 21, 2007 7:31 am

autoboy wrote:Yes, google just did a large scale test and found temps had no impact on failure rates.
No, they didn't (you're doing it again).

The study is here in the unlikely event anyone interested hasn't seen it yet, although IMHO it's of limited value anyway without a great deal more data regarding the drives themselves, their usage patterns and other conditions under which they were running.

Even if you take that particular study at face value, I can't find anything in it supporting your claim that drives run at a constant 59C won't have significantly higher failure rates than those run at, say, 35C, that failure rates only rise with temps above 60C, or even that drives run constantly at the manufacturers' maximum recommended temperature (normally 55C) will have the same life expectancy as those kept in cooler conditions.

I'm afraid it looks like you made up those figures on the spot, much like 86.7% of statistics... :P

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