*Temps are taken during 5 hours into a parity check*

 

I've heard you don't want to go over 40C for extended periods for long term reliablity. During a parity sync my drives start to get pretty warm. The 47C is pretty alarming, but that drive has always been warmer. I'm not sure what else I can do, when you have 21 drives in a case at full load.. it gets pretty warm. My SAT2-MV8 controllers are hot to the touch during things like this. I have 3 of them in there.

 

Would you consider these temps acceptable? They just seem rather higher for all green drives, in a case that was designed for this. If these temps are fine.. whats the max you would recommend?

 

Thanks again.

 

Notes:

Ambient Temp is about 75F in that room.

Using a Norco 4224 case.

Using 120mm fan bay - Fans are 3x Noctua NF-P12 and 2x Noctua NF-R8

Anything over 42 degrees and I'd start to look at better cooling solutions.

Anything over 42 degrees and I'd start to look at better cooling solutions.

 

Thats the thing, I really don't understand what else I can do.. with this many drives at full load it seems impossible to stay under 42C during parity syncs/data rebuilds. Normally I only have at most 5 drives spun up, so they stay <40C. Even putting a giant fan right in front of the hot swap bays got me a whole 1C drop. Tons of airflow in that condition.

 

Do you consider these temps acceptable considering they'd only be this high during parity syncs? (~8-12 hours/month). I've seen people run hard drives at at 50C idle for years before, however I just tend to worry.

Everything but that 47 degrees is acceptable in my opinion. Especially when it's checking parity.

 

Keep an eye on the 47 degree drive, or see if anything is blocking airflow over a bunch of drives.

Everything but that 47 degrees is acceptable in my opinion. Especially when it's checking parity.

 

Keep an eye on the 47 degree drive, or see if anything is blocking airflow over a bunch of drives.

 

It's smack in the middle of all the other drives, the two next to it are also a little bit warmer than the rest (44C). My airflow is about as good as it in the Norco 4224 case. Molex PSU, SAS connectors (hotswap bays) to SATA connector (SATA cards). All drives have pretty much the same amount of airflow. That drive will probably be the first 2TB I replace (after the 1.5TBs) as I slowly upgrade to 3TBs.

 

http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/2968/sasends.jpg

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/3535/120mmnoctuas.jpg

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/6123/sataends.jpg

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/8162/80mmnoctuas.jpg

 

I think I may just put a fan in front of the hotswap bays whenever I run parity/data rebuild. The drive is 44C with a fan in front of the server case. The other drives however, only drop 1C.

I would suggest that, with an ambient of 24C (75F), your drives shouldn't be getting that hot, if you have decent airflow. Admittedly I don't have that many drives (yet), but with an ambient of 30C, my drives don't get much over 40C during parity check (I have three drives that are simply resting one on top of the other, with nothing but nylon tie-wraps to keep them apart, while I await delivery of my hot-swap cages).

 

You say that your ambient is 75F - is the air entering/passing through the drive bays at that temperature, or is the exhausted (hot) air getting drawn back in??

 

Is all the air which passes through the fans also passing through the drive bays, or is any of the air able to 'leak' by other routes?  I would think that 15C over ambient should be a realistic aim.

I would try sealing case openings to force more air through the drives to see if it improves drive temps.  The back of the case seems to have a lot of vented spaces.  It may also be that you just need more umph from your fans.  Sometimes you have to sacrifice some on quiet to get cooler temps.

I would try sealing case openings to force more air through the drives to see if it improves drive temps.  The back of the case seems to have a lot of vented spaces.  

 

Not a bad idea, this case as a lot of screw holes. The vents in the PCI slots are going to have to stay tho.. those SATA cards get hot and I think they'd get hotter without them.

 

I would suggest that, with an ambient of 24C (75F), your drives shouldn't be getting that hot, if you have decent airflow. Admittedly I don't have that many drives (yet), but with an ambient of 30C, my drives don't get much over 40C during parity check (I have three drives that are simply resting one on top of the other, with nothing but nylon tie-wraps to keep them apart, while I await delivery of my hot-swap cages).

 

You say that your ambient is 75F - is the air entering/passing through the drive bays at that temperature, or is the exhausted (hot) air getting drawn back in??

 

Is all the air which passes through the fans also passing through the drive bays, or is any of the air able to 'leak' by other routes?  I would think that 15C over ambient should be a realistic aim.

 

Actually i'm going to re-guess and say its about ~77-80F in that room. The house is at 75F, but that room is slightly warmer.

 

I have noticed if I run parity sync with the top door off my drives are a good 10C hotter, that REALLY amazed me. I will patch up all the screw holes on the case with some tape (just to test) and see what happens.

I am running the same setup and my drives are about 6 deg cooler. you do however have more drives then me and I'll have to keep this in mind. I never had more then 15 drives at once.

 

2 tricks i did.

I took some weather sealing foam strip, the stuff you use to seal around the top of a window when you put a window A/C into it. I cut a bit off and shoved it into the all the opening in the fan wall to force it to suck air from the front of the case (through the drive bays). Otherwise it tends to recirculate air from the motherboard compartment through the cable holes.

 

For the MV8's, I put a generic silent fan just resting on top of them to circulate air around them.

 

I would also pull that 47deg drive. something is wrong there.

check that the air slide on that tray is in the open position.

If it is closed, open it.

If it is open, I would swap it with another drive and watch your temps and see if the heat travels with that 1 drive or stays in that one bay.

 

I'll go take a photo of my setup.

I have noticed if I run parity sync with the top door off my drives are a good 10C hotter, that REALLY amazed me.

 

That doesn't surprise me in the least.  The route to efficient cooling is to force the air to go where it's needed - take the cover off and you lose all control.  That's why I asked about a 'leak'.  Of course, one way to tackle this would be to do as bjp999 suggests (which is what I was hinting at).

 

I have my case set up so that all incoming air flows through the drive bays and all other openings have fans extracting air.

I am running the same setup and my drives are about 6 deg cooler. you do however have more drives then me and I'll have to keep this in mind. I never had more then 15 drives at once.

 

2 tricks i did.

I took some weather sealing foam strip, the stuff you use to seal around the top of a window when you put a window A/C into it. I cut a bit off and shoved it into the all the opening in the fan wall to force it to suck air from the front of the case (through the drive bays). Otherwise it tends to recirculate air from the motherboard compartment through the cable holes.

 

For the MV8's, I put a generic silent fan just resting on top of them to circulate air around them.

 

I would also pull that 47deg drive. something is wrong there.

check that the air slide on that tray is in the open position.

If it is closed, open it.

If it is open, I would swap it with another drive and watch your temps and see if the heat travels with that 1 drive or stays in that one bay.

 

I'll go take a photo of my setup.

 

If I get more money I may upgrade to some SAS cards. Your setup has a lot less wires than mine (I posted my pics earlier) however my setup is still more organized than most servers I see. My main problem with the SASLP is that it's PCI-E, my motherboard doesn't have 3 of those and theres no motherboard exists that has 3 with my CPU socket type. I'd need to upgrade my CPU and motherboard, and if I was going to do that i'd just go with DDR3, since it's the same price. My current motherboard has 4x PCI-X, so it's able to easily support 32 drives with 4x SAT2-MV8s. hmmm.

 

Would be a pretty costly upgrade just to reduce some cables.

 

Also what do you mean by "Pressure-optimized" Noctua fans in your other post? You installed the same model as me, did you mod them in someway? I checked your thread, but don't see any updated pictures of the 120mm bay with noctua fans. I had to put the Noctuas on the other side of the fan mount or cables would hit the blades. They still blow the correct way, wondering if you also had to do this.

 

If it's not to much trouble a picture of the "updated" set would be appreciated.

If I get more money I may upgrade to some SAS cards. Your setup has a lot less wires than mine

Zip Ties or cable wrap.. that would do almost the same thing for you.

You wont gain a speed boost if you are using PCI-x slots. I would not throw money at a non-existent problem. If it ain't broke, dont fix it.

 

Also what do you mean by "Pressure-optimized" Noctua fans in your other post?

That is how Noctua describes them on their product page. they also have a "normal" model that is quieter but would have a hard time in this application. See: http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=12&lng=en

 

 

Did you check to see if the cage's air vent is closed?

 

 

Yuk!

I should have taken the pictures AFTER I blew the case out with compressed air.. not Before... i definitely am pulling gunk into the server through the drive bays.

 

The fan just sitting on my MV8's.

It has not moved yet. it has dropped the temps way down.

If yours vibrates or moves, you could zip tie it to the cards.

 

My foam insulation.

Warning: This kind of foam will deteriorate in a few years turning into a craptastic mess.

I am looking for a better solution. it is so cheap i can replace it every few years but that is a pain.

My other norco has bits of an old T-shirt and some girls ankel sport socks for testing.

 

 

If I get more money I may upgrade to some SAS cards. Your setup has a lot less wires than mine

Zip Ties or cable wrap.. that would do almost the same thing for you.

You wont gain a speed boost if you are using PCI-x slots. I would not throw money at a non-existent problem. If it ain't broke, dont fix it.

 

Also what do you mean by "Pressure-optimized" Noctua fans in your other post?

That is how Noctua describes them on their product page. they also have a "normal" model that is quieter but would have a hard time in this application. See: http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=12&lng=en

 

 

Did you check to see if the cage's air vent is closed?

 

 

Yuk!

I should have taken the pictures AFTER I blew the case out with compressed air.. not Before... i definitely am pulling gunk into the server through the drive bays.

 

The fan just sitting on my MV8's.

It has not moved yet. it has dropped the temps way down.

If yours vibrates or moves, you could zip tie it to the cards.

 

My foam insulation.

Warning: This kind of foam will deteriorate in a few years turning into a craptastic mess.

I am looking for a better solution. it is so cheap i can replace it every few years but that is a pain.

My other norco has bits of an old T-shirt and some girls ankel sport socks for testing.

 

Thanks, I will look around. The fans we have are the exact same, I think thats just their advertisement.

 

I'll also check the air vents.

I covered all the screw holes that are on the case, and some of the other holes (I didn't cover the vents in the back of the case). All drives are now 35-37C with the exception of Disk6 is 38C, Disk10 is 42C with the disks to the left and right of it at 39C. Seems to have dropped temps slightly, those 3 discs in a row.. I don't get whats up there. I double checked all hotswap bay vents, all were open.

 

Disk10 does have a slightly different model number (WD20EADS-00S2B0), it may just be a hotter revision and it may just be heating up the drives to the right and left of it.

 

I will buy a 120mm fan to put ontop of my 3 SATA cards, I believe thats where most of the heat is coming from.

if i am not mistaken, that is the newest version of the eads?

 

I would assume it was cooler.

 

You might want to take a look at that drive in more detail. do some smart tests, check the firmware. maybe a little google searching for known issues.

 

i would also try it on the outer edge of the case so it cant heat up as many drives. that would also verify if the problem is in fact the drive and not the bay.

I will buy a 120mm fan to put ontop of my 3 SATA cards, I believe thats where most of the heat is coming from.

 

.... but if the cooling is set up properly, the heat generated by the cards should not reach the drives.

I will buy a 120mm fan to put ontop of my 3 SATA cards, I believe thats where most of the heat is coming from.

 

.... but if the cooling is set up properly, the heat generated by the cards should not reach the drives.

 

True. But those cards get blazing hot. especially if you have several bunched up with no airflow at all.

the norco's sort of have a dead air pocket in that area of the chassis.

 

IMO, keeping them cool lengthens their lifespan.

True of most electronics.

 

 

who knows, maybe you might start getting compromising data integrity if they overheat?

This kind of foam will deteriorate in a few years turning into a craptastic mess.

I am looking for a better solution. it is so cheap i can replace it every few years but that is a pain.

 

Rather than that grey foam, can you find any of the white cellular (polyethylene?) foam sheets, often used for wrapping delicate equipment such as audio gear?

True. But those cards get blazing hot. especially if you have several bunched up with no airflow at all.

the norco's sort of have a dead air pocket in that area of the chassis.

 

Sure, it's good to keep them cool, but they shouldn't be contributing to the drive temperatures.

I posted my pics earlier

 

I've just had a look at your pics - from what I can see, the case design is poor, from a thermal aspect - that's why they've had to put so many fans in it.  Even then, the fan layout is counter-productive.  I presume that the fans on the bulkhead between disk bays and mobo are sucking from the disk bays - hence pressurising the main electronics compartment.  The fans on the rear of the case are, I presume, exhausting, hence reducing pressure.  What then, is the net flow through the myriad of holes around the expansion card slots?  I suspect that it is minimal, explaining why your expansion cards get so hot.

 

The case layout smacks of fitting the components in without considering cooling, then adding the fans as an afterthought in an attempt to reduce temperatures.

As I don't have OCD with drive temps I've always just made sure they ranged from the manufacture's operating range. All my drives are within this range as all my previous drives from years and years ago and never had any abnormal issues. I do run an Asus SATA controller card, but I do not know how hot that gets.