Finally tested the swif2 fan on the middle caddy, drives circled in the picture, temps are 2c or 3c up compared to stock fans. Test was parity calculated for two hours. I shall treat the Noctua next and see if I can get even better cooling.

 

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Finally tested the swif2 fan on the middle caddy, drives circled in the picture, temps are 2c or 3c up compared to stock fans. Test was parity calculated for two hours. I shall treat the Noctua next and see if I can get even better cooling.

 

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could just buy a 2x2tb or a 3tb drive and get rid of most of those drives and reduce the heat+power...  but anyways which Noctua you going to try now? The NF-R8?

 

Absolutely !!    With 9 500GB and a 320GB drive you could buy a pair of 4TB drives and go from 14 drives down to 6 drives in your array while ADDING over 3TB of additional storage.

 

That would free up 8 drive slots;  significantly reduce the power draw (by about 50 watts !!); and your system would run MUCH cooler.

 

... you could do the same thing with a pair of 3TB drives at a lower cost and still add over 1TB of space.

I can see you are running in your system the following drives

3 Samsung HD204UI @ 5400 RPM

2 Samsung HD154UI @ 5400 RPM

6 Samsubg HD103UJ @ 7200 RPM

 

How hot do your 7200RPM after 2Hrs parity calculation?

I have only part of my drives in the 5-in-3 cages. Unfortunately none of the HD103UJ @7200RPM are in the cages. However I have recently added some smaller disks scrapped from external USB-cases to give some further insight. There is 8 drive s Below are the temps 3 hours into parity sync.

 

Top cage:

Parity Samsung HD_204UI 42C

Disk9 Samsung HD_204UI 42C

Disk10 Samsung HD204UI 40C

Disk11 WD20EARX 41C

 

Bottom cage:

Disk12 WD5000AAKS 41C

Disk13 WD5000AAKS 42C

 

Internal HD rack (3 x 92mm fans, 10mm spacing)

Disk1 Samsung HD103UJ 29C

Disk2 Samsung HD103UJ 30C

Disk3 WD20EZRX 33C

Disk4 Samsung HD103UJ 30C

Disk5 Samsung HD103UJ 30C

Disk6 Samsung HD103UJ 29C

Disk7 Samsung HD103UJ 29C

Disk8 Samsung HD103UJ 30C

 

So the temps are ~10C higher in the cages. With the stock cage fans, the cage temps were ~5C lower.

Absolutely !!    With 9 500GB and a 320GB drive you could buy a pair of 4TB drives and go from 14 drives down to 6 drives in your array while ADDING over 3TB of additional storage.

 

That would free up 8 drive slots;  significantly reduce the power draw (by about 50 watts !!); and your system would run MUCH cooler.

 

... you could do the same thing with a pair of 3TB drives at a lower cost and still add over 1TB of space.

 

I am not going to replace any hard disks unless they fail, or I run out of space. Right now I have 1.75 TB free in my setup, which will last me for yonks.

I am simply trying to get the best airflow possible. My hard disks spin down, and I never really run parity calculations, unless I am replacing the parity drive, so heat is not really a problem in my setup, I am trying to reduce noise and keep noise down as much as possible.

Finally tested the swif2 fan on the middle caddy, drives circled in the picture, temps are 2c or 3c up compared to stock fans. Test was parity calculated for two hours. I shall treat the Noctua next and see if I can get even better cooling.

 

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could just buy a 2x2tb or a 3tb drive and get rid of most of those drives and reduce the heat+power...  but anyways which Noctua you going to try now? The NF-R8?

 

I have just bought this

http://www.quietpc.com/nf-r8

 

Will keep the Coolink SWiF2-801 for the cooler drives, swap things around once I carried out more testing with the NF-R8

A quick pic showing hard disk temps in my current setup during parity calculation. I will switch around the drives so all the yellows (less than 32C) are together in the same enclosure, and focus on reducing the temperatures or the reds (40+) with the NF-R8.

So installed the NF-R8 in the same setup, in the same middle caddy where I previously installed the SWiF2 (black square in the temps pic).

I moved the SWIf2 in the top caddy (red squares around the drives in the temp pic).

I am getting a couple of degrees hotter drives with the NF-R8 in comparison to the SWIf2 when calculating parity.

So far the winners are the SWiF2 for hot drives cooling it seems.

Interestingly the cooler drives are getting 5 degrees hotter during parity with the SWIf2, whilst the hotter drives were only getting 2-3C hotter (might also have to do with airflow for the upper caddy).

I am going to buy another one and then I am going to put it back on the hotter drives.

In the new setup temps will stay below 45C, which I am happy with, when calculating parity (once in a blue moon), and below 35C when watching movies.

Well what adapter/speed are you using the NF-R8 with?

 

Personally I find the LNA working well for me, gets a little warm during parity (40-42) but I can deal with that once a month.

 

Ultra-Low-Noise Adaptor (U.L.N.A.)

Low-Noise Adaptor (L.N.A.)

 

Rotational Speed (+/- 10%)		1800 RPM
Rotational Speed with L.N.A. (+/- 10%)		1300 RPM
Rotational Speed with U.L.N.A. (+/- 10%)		800 RPM
Airflow		53 m³/h
Airflow with L.N.A.		39 m³/h
Airflow with U.L.N.A.		26 m³/h

I didn't use either adaptors, just plugged the fan in with its stock cable.

 

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I didn't use either adaptors, just plugged the fan in with its stock cable.

 

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Thats a bit odd.. I've had excellent results with the NF-R8 with the LNA which only spinning at 1300 RPM instead of stock 1800.

Granted I only have 11 out of the 15 drives populated...

 

I didn't use either adaptors, just plugged the fan in with its stock cable.

 

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Thats a bit odd.. I've had excellent results with the NF-R8 with the LNA which only spinning at 1300 RPM instead of stock 1800.

Granted I only have 11 out of the 15 drives populated...

 

What drives are you using? 5900 rpm ones?

mixture of green and red drives and ssd for cache. here is what I'm currently idling with:

Based on the specs of Noctua NF-R8 and SwiF2-801 you should get better cooling from Noctua when using it without any adapters. With the low-noise-adapter it should move about the same amount of air as the Swif2. But airflow isn't the only parameter, generated air pressure could play a crucial part in this. I really don't know since there isn't too much concrete test results available for hd-cage cooling which isn't comparable to the normal case or CPU cooling.

Noctua NF-R8 53 m³/h (17dBA)
Noctua NF-R8 with L.N.A. 39 m³/h (10dBA)
Noctua NF-R8 with U.L.N.A. 26 m³/h (7dBA)
Swif2-801 40m³/h (11dBA)

 

So if you are getting better real-life performance with the Swif2-801 you should definitely use that since it's only 11dBA compared to Noctua NF-R8 17dBA.

I'v bought 3 of the iStarUSA BPN-DE350SS and all i can say now is it wonderfull ! , it look beautifull, full aluminum and very well build. The hdd temp was great, alway arround 36-38 celsius degree. The only thing i am not feeling good is the fan, it quite loud even i set it to low fan setting.

 

 

 

I received the last swif2 fan installed it in the remaining caddies.

I also swapped hard disk around between top and bottom caddies to place all the cooler drives together in the top caddie (circled in green). I used the NFr8 fan for the top caddie, and slowed it down to 1300 rpms.

For the other drives circled in black (the hottest ones), I used the swif2 fan I used previously, in the same caddie, with the same drives. Interestingly temps with the same setup in that caddie are higher after two hours parity calc.

The other drives not circled are in the bottom caddie with the new swif2 fan.

I must say it's real quiet now and I can live with this extreme temps for parity calculation which will only happen when I replace the parity drive next.

 

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i dont know if this has been mentioned before but Xcase released a 5x3 Cage (rev 2)

http://www.xcase.co.uk/component-parts/storage-caddy/x-case-5-in-3-hotswap-caddy-v2-fits-in-3-x-5-25-bays-sata-iii-3-5-and-2-5.html

 

 

My pair arrived a couple of days ago and I'm really impressed. Apart from having to flatten the tabs on my 5.25" bays which was a pain everything went smoothly.

 

I've done a small write up, nothing too serious, on my blog.

 

http://blog.ktz.me/?p=145

 

i dont know if this has been mentioned before but Xcase released a 5x3 Cage (rev 2)

http://www.xcase.co.uk/component-parts/storage-caddy/x-case-5-in-3-hotswap-caddy-v2-fits-in-3-x-5-25-bays-sata-iii-3-5-and-2-5.html

 

 

 

Possible been mentioned in this thread before

More feedback regarding those X-Case 5 in 3 Hotswap Caddy V2? I actually don't need them right now coz I just started building my server and don't have/need that many drives yet. But I just found some used ones on eBay for a fair price (judging the other components that guy is selling it seems like he was building an unRAID box too lol) and I actually can't get them here where I live in normal (online) shops, so I'm thinking if I should just hit the buy-button now.

 

If I don't get them now, I'd still have 8x 3,5" internal drive bays left in my case until I'd have to get e. g. the IcyDock cage which would be three times what I'd pay for the used X-Case.

 

The seller writes the X-Case cages come with a beQuit fan. Not sure if that's the built-in fan or if he changed them. But I thought beQuit is known to make good fans.

I bought 3 5x3 caddies from xcase a few months ago and the stock fans were a touch too loud so swapped them out for silent fans (Coolink SWiF2-801 's ) and must say i'm impressed with how silent they are (quieter than my htpc built a couple of years ago LOL).

On a side note the caddies only come with enough screws to mount the drives in the caddies and NOT to mount the actual cases themselves (even though you can use the same screws) - I e-mailed customer services as the screws are a specific type - too deep and you risk damaging the drives in the caddies to small and, well you get the idea - They sent me all the screws I needed FREE (this doesn't happen often LOL) - I can only say from my experience xcase have come up trumps and (touch wood) have had no problems with them.

I'v bought 3 of the iStarUSA BPN-DE350SS and all i can say now is it wonderfull ! , it look beautifull, full aluminum and very well build. The hdd temp was great, alway arround 36-38 celsius degree. The only thing i am not feeling good is the fan, it quite loud even i set it to low fan setting.

 

 

 

 

Nice!! What Lian-Li it is ?

 

I just ordered 4 of those iStarUSA in Red for a new Lian-Li PC-A77F   Should look pretty similar to yours, but with a 4th 5in3.

I have been using one iStarUSA 5-in-3 for about two years in a Coolermaster Centurion 590.  I removed the fan and back plastic trim before I even mounted it in the case. 

 

I have five 120mm fans (SilenX yellows and reds with the little temperature probe) and a Silverstone 120mm on the CPU heatsink (super low power Athlon X2).  The system is virtually silent from a foot away, and all of the fans are drawing air out of the case.  I sealed up every mfg hole, screw hole, fancy vent, etc., in the case except where the fans are mounted.  100% of air being drawn out by the fans is coming in from the front of the 5-in-3 enclosure, and I've never had a disk go above 34C, on a warm summer day, during a parity check.  Most of my disks run between 28-30C when they are in use.  There is enough suction to easily hold a 8.5x11 sheet of paper flush against the front of the drive enclosure.

 

I am using 5900rpm disks and a 3.5" 7200rpm cache disk mounted on a PCI-slot drive adapter, directly above the power supply fan, which is of course also drawing air out (still can't understand why anyone would mount a power supply so the fan is not drawing out internal case air).

 

I will be adding a second iStar 5-in-3 shortly, and will remove the fan from the rear also. 

 

All of the case fans are running at their lowest RPM setting.  If I ever run into temp problems with a second (and eventually third) 5-in-3, I will either up the RPMs or switch to higher output fans.

 

Dust does collect.  The front of the drive bay enclosure gets vacuumed every time the floors do (weekly), and once a year the case side panel gets popped off and the internals get blasted with air and vacuumed. 

 

This setup has been 100% stable and 100% cool (literally speaking).  I am curious to see what happens with a second 5-in-3 installed.

 

Anyone used the other 5x3's sold by xcase?

 

AN-D35:

 

I dont know if they're a brand new product, but they're out of stock until July, and am just considering them vs the normal V2

 

I like the idea of a trayless setup - as I imagine that would allow for more airflow. It also markets it fan as being ultra-quiet, which would be a factor for me

 

From a quick google, it looks like it might be a brand new product, but I cant be sure

Anyone used the other 5x3's sold by xcase?

 

AN-D35:

 

I dont know if they're a brand new product, but they're out of stock until July, and am just considering them vs the normal V2

 

I like the idea of a trayless setup - as I imagine that would allow for more airflow. It also markets it fan as being ultra-quiet, which would be a factor for me

 

From a quick google, it looks like it might be a brand new product, but I cant be sure

It is an iStar knockoff

 

Monoprice in the US also sells these in black.

ah ok thanks

 

I think its hard to get istar stuff here in europe (happily corrected!)