ProfQ

Started testing Norco SS-500 with Coolink SWiF2 silent fan. Cage is populated with 4 2TB Hitachi green Drives in the cage. Slot E of the SS-500 is currently empty with vent closed. -Intial testing conditions: Cage- Norco SS-500 Fan- Coolink 801 SWif2 80mm Ambient temperature 24 C Temperature inside Fractal XL case 29 C Temperature of 2TB drives 1 hour into preclear of new drives: Hitachi serials AM0D, and VM3D are in slots A, and B of the SS-500, holding steady at 36 C. Hitachi MY1D (also running preclear), holding at 37 C Hitachi 83PD (Disk 9 in Array)- placed in slot C of the SS-500, holding steady at 37 C. Encouraging as prelim results, I think. Will finish preclears (couple of cycles), add these new drives to array, move a Seagate Green into slot E of the cage, run a parity check over the weekend and report back. Edit: @6:30 Hrs of preclear, drive MY1D was at 39 C, others remained at 37 C. Edit2: Due to an unrelated issue, had to restart all testing. Now at approx 9:30 Hrs of preclears (Zeroing step 2). Temps stable as before with Drive MY1D at 38 C, and the 3 other drives in cage at 37 C. Ambient temp at 23 C, temp inside Fractal case at 29 C. Ramon

Ready to start testing the drive temps in my Norco SS-500 with the SWif2 Silent fan, as promised. Three New Hitachi green 2TB drives have arrived. Will populate the Norco and start with preclears of these new drives, then run parity over the weekend. Should be able to report back with temps by Monday. Ramon

Thanks for the new wiki, Shawn.

Hi Raj, Very good point. Thought of that possibility yesterday and although this 801 Coolink fan flows at 23.4CFM, quite good for an 80mm, it is less than factory in the cage and it might not be enough fully populated. Thus, I've been planning up to test with green 2TB drives first. Can't actually go out and buy 4 more drives right now to fully populate the Norco cage with Hitachi greens, but the Fractal case is full of drives, so there's room to do some testing this weekend. Just bought a couple more Hitachi greens to see how it goes (found them on sale in Melbourne-should be here in a day or two). Once those new Hitachis get here will move two Seagate greens from inside the Fractal case and fully populate the Norco cage w Green drives to test temps and report back. If that works and temps hold safely in the Norco cage while running a parity check and/or preclears, might then try with the Hitachi 7200s currently running bet 35-37 C inside the Fractal case. -Thanks. Ramon

Can you get the temp on the drive during your next parity check please? Be interesting to see how this may affect it. I run the stock fan with the one empty slot closed. The 4 drives in it right now are at about 30 C and during a parity check bump up to maybe 32C. Shawn No worries, Shawn, will do. FYI-the Hitachi drive's temp stabilized at 30 C after an hour or so under use w this new fan -ambient at 23 C. Drives inside the Fractal running at 32-37 C. Will run parity again this weekend and report back. Ramon

Finished quieting down the Norco SS-500 cage. Easier than I expected. Replaced the Zalman 80mm fan with a Coolink SWIF2-801 from QuietPC. The Coolink has a bit less airflow than the Norco fan, 22.4 CFM at 12V, but is rated at only 11dB. Zalman was 28CFM, but noisy. The Coolink is basically inaudible. Also opened the air sills in a couple of the empty drive bays of the SS-500. This seemed to help. My server is back to near silent. Hitachi 2TB holding at 4 Degrees above ambient (27 C), 30 minutes after start up. Hope this helps. Ramon

Thanks for the input Shawn. Your feedback gave me a couple of ideas since I still have time before fully populating my new drive cage. Since my temps, even w heavy use, are quite low ATM, will play with opening/shutting vents in the empty drive slots and with reducing the voltage on the Zalman. Will also buy a quieter fan such as a Coolink or Noctua 80mm, and test those. At this stage, I'm afraid most probably will end up finding a suitable closet for the server, as a solution since it went from a quiet PC noise to a small server noise, IMHO. Thanks, Ramon

I've installed the Norco SS-500 drive cage in my Fractal XL with just one 2TB green drive. In spite of using a Zalman 80mm fan, this setup is too loud for me. My Fractal went from virtually silent to noticeably loud. I know, quite subjective, but not quite acceptable for my home office. With the Zalman fan at a full 12 volts, the 2TB Hitachi Green's temperature held at 30 Degrees C during preclears with a relatively low ambient temp of 22-23 degrees. Will try reducing fan voltages first, recheck temps and decide if another type of fan is needed to quiet down the 5in3 cage. But results with this cage setup are far from satisfactory at this stage. Any ideas?

Thank you Shawn for such an excellent review! Mostly based on what I saw in this thread, I've bought a Norco SS-500 cage to expand the drive capacity of my Fractal Designs XL case. The Norco 5in3 has just arrived. It shows excellent build quality and very limited instructions (basically none except what is printed on the box). Will install the cage in the next couple of days. First order of business was to replace the Norco fan with a quieter unit. I've installed a Zalman 80mm fan. Have 7 volt and 5 volt fan resistors at hand in case I can reduce the fan speed while keeping safe temps. Only drive that is going in for now is a Hitachi Green 2TB. Will slowly populate the 5in3, and report accordingly. Thanks again. ramon

For the last 5 years, Silent PC Reviews has been my guide in fan selection. Here's the link to their web-page with recommended fans, where you'll also find a few links that could provide more info. http://www.silentpcreview.com/article63-page1.html Hope it helps.

So that would imply that a fan controller would be useful? I'd prefer to have an automated system, though (software or mobo). I have in my Fractal XL an NZXT Sentry 2 fan controller. With it, I keep my fans between 50 and 70% if on Manual mode, this keeps my temps in check most of the time. During parity checks the 7200 drives hit the 40s. This controller is for 5 fans max, and it has 5 temp sensors that can be placed as needed to keep tabs on your component temps. This plus an Auto mode, that once set up, regulates the fan speed to keep the temps within your desired range. Living in Australia, it has been crucial for my tower.