Rosewill Thor as server case: Airflow to 3.25" drive bay [SOLVED]

[Juniper]

Is anybody here using a Rosewill Thor case as server? It would be awesome if you could share how you solved the airflow problem of the case's 3.25" drive bay.

 

Problem:
For now I have put 2 drive cages from an Antec 900 case in the 5.25" openings of my Rosewill Thor case. Those 6 hard drives are running temperatures around 20s C. On hot summer days low 30s, even through parity check.

First I tried using the 3.25" drive bay on the bottom of the Rosewill Thor case, however there is no airflow: The case has a 230mm intake fan at the front, and the drive bay sits perpendicular to it. What little air the front fan provides needs to go through slots on the side of the bay. Almost no air arrives at the drives. Even with just 1 drive in there it got too hot within a short time.

The case has a side door with another large fan. It has holes to exchange that fan for 4 120mm fans, but that air wouldn't arrive at the drive bay, only at the graphic card. I thus tried turning the door with the fan upside down, and mount it on the other side of the case. The fan would actually reach part of the drive bay from the back, but there is not enough space to close the door.

The drive bay is mounted with rivets, with no way to take it out. I cannot turn it to allow for more air to get to the drives. Even if I could drill out the rivets, and take out the 3.25" drive bay I didn't find any screw holes or other provisions to put in another drive bay with fans.

The drive bay has no way or even space to add fans in front of or behind it, and I can't modify the stainless steel case door to add openings for fans.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Juniper

[Juniper]

I figured it out, and made a test installation with altogether 12 drives (all the drives I possess). The array itself has 6 drives in 2 5.25" drive cages from my old Antec 900 case. The Thor case has 6 slots in its bottom drive bay which I filled with my other drives (mix of 3TB and 2TB Seagate and WD drives black and green). They all had windows partitions and data on them... But it was all backed up to the server

 

The hottest of the extra drives, 2 WD blacks and the 3TB Seagate, I put in the middle to keep them warm once they warm up. I mounted the 6 extra drives as unassigned drives, and to simulate load I copied large amount of data to and from them. After a while the extra drives temperatures stayed stable from 19 C to 27 C, 7 C hotter than the array drives in the well ventilated Antec drive cages. That was much lower than before the case modification. Back when I used the case as a Win10 PC I tried adding drives in the drive bay. They quickly went up to 40C and higher. I had to take them out again, and use the drive cages instead.

 

Of course it's the cold season now. But even during the summer the 6 drives in the Antec cages staid in 20s C. They only went up to 34 C during parity check. The drives in the drive bay highly likely will stay +7C higher under load than the drives in the Antec cages. Means they might go up to 41C for parity check.

 

But keep in mind for this test install I put the hottest drives in the middle of the drive bay. And those drives were about 5 to 10 years old. In a real-life scenario I would buy new, modern drives for the array to put in the drive bay.  Also: the fans I used in the test install were existing, old stuff from my closet. In a "real-life-build" I would buy new, high-airflow fans.

 

So how did I do this:

 

The Thor case has a large useless fan in its case door, and one in front of the drive bay. The one in front you cannot replace. There are no screw holes to put in smaller higher airflow fans. And there would not be much room to blow that air anyways due to the design and placement of the drive bay.

 

But the fan in the case door can be replaced with 4 120mm fans. The case door has both holes and grommets for that. I took out the existing large useless fan from the case door, and put in 4 existing 120mm fans from my closet. But the fans would blow to ... the graphic card area. So .... I turned the door 90 degrees counterclockwise. That aligned the 2 bottom fans with the hard drive bay. This is the key to good temps. Without the turn the drives will get cooked in that drive bay.

 

Now the door of course no longer can be screwed on the case. To mitigate that I added Velcro pads. Enough in key locations to secure the door.

 

This modification will work for me until my finances allow to buy a Fractal Design Define 7 XL case with the additional hard drive holders and fans for more disks.

 

I don't recommend buying the Rosewill Thor case as server case, but folks who have one can use it with this method. The bottom drive bay fits 6 drives, plus the case has 2 5.25" front accessible slots for additional drive cages.

 

Stats of my Server now:

 

Rosewill Thor V2, large fan on door replaced with 4 120mm fans, plus 2 5.25" drive cages (from my old Antec 900)

ASUS P8Z68 Deluxe board with Intel I7-2600 CPU, 8 GB RAM, and MSI Graphic Card
PSU:  Rosewill RBR1000M, 80Plus Bronze (offers 4 12V connectors, 2 with 20A, 2 with 30A)

 

Array:  Unraid 6.9.2
Parity: 1 Seagate Ironwolf 10 TB (applied changes to run on 6.9.2)
Data:  5 8 TB drives, Seagate Barracuda and Exos
Flash: SanDisk Cruzer Glide 16GB

 

Pics:  temps, fans, 12 drives location and cabling front and back (not meant to be pretty, but cables free hanging ;-)), and pics how the door is put back on with velcros

 

the SMART errors in the temp pic are just CRC errors. The drives are all fine. I ran both SMART tests Unraid 6.9.2 offers on each drive during the test install.

 

Edited November 17, 2021 by Juniper