<SOLVED> Need Suggestions on how to keep hard drives cooler?

[GFOviedo]

I just installed a ICY DOCK MB455 SPF 3X5 in my unRaid server.  I decided to do a parity check, and about 10 min ago, I wanted to see the status.  I noticed my drives temp. where higher than when I didn't used the ICY BOX.  Currently my drives temps are as follows:

 

Parity:41 C

D1:43 C

D2: 37 C

 

My case is a Azza Helios CSAZ-910 with the following fans:

 

rear: 120x120x25 mm (exhaust)

top: 140 x 140 x 25 mm (exhaust)

side: 230 x 230 x 25 mm (intake)

 

No front fan since the ICY BOX has all my drives (3 total) and the back plane has a 60 mm fan I believe.  I will be adding a 4th one this week.  The case came with a HDD Cage that can hold 4 drive, and it had a front fan (intake) 140 x 140 x 25 mm.

 

I am going to re-install the HDD Cage, and see if the cage fan makes any difference, which I doubt.  So, I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to be more effective at cooling down the drives.

 

Thanks for your help.

[Queball]

I have the same case. When I had only one 5in3 (Norco SS-500) I noticed slightly better HD temps when I disabled the large side fan and covered the opening and sealed off some/all of the unused 5.25 bay screens. This seemed to change the airflow so that more air was flowing over the HDs.

[GFOviedo]

I have the same case. When I had only one 5in3 (Norco SS-500) I noticed slightly better HD temps when I disabled the large side fan and covered the opening and sealed off some/all of the unused 5.25 bay screens. This seemed to change the airflow so that more air was flowing over the HDs.

 

I was thinking of moving the 3x5 cage to the middle, so it will have air flow top and bottom.  Probably re-install the stock 3x4 cage that has a front 140 mm fan to help with air flow.  If that doesn't work, I will try your method.

 

Do you have any pics of what you've done?

[GFOviedo]

At the end of the parity check the drive temps were:

 

Parity: 43 C

D1: 45 C

D2: 40 C

 

D1 never went high than 45 C.  Now, that I've been streaming 2 blu-ray movies from it the temps were: Parity 34C, D1 35C and D2 31C, and they stayed pretty constant.  I am going to move the ICY Dock to the middle deck, and re-install the 3x4 HDD cage with 140 mm intake fan to see if that helps to reduce the temperatures.

 

I'm wondering if I can replace the ICY Dock's fan for a better? Or even if that would help?

[daniel.boone]

Sounds like you'll want to increase air flow over the drives. When I ran in a Azza case I disabled and covered the side fan as well as any other openings. Idea is to keep air coming in where you need it. I also ran 4in3 but those have fans in front so it forced more air over the drives. The icydocks are a different.

 

Now 45 isn't terrible but 40 would be better. Things will get hotter once you add more drives. It's good your addressing this upfront.

[Frank1940]

 

My case is a Azza Helios CSAZ-910 with the following fans:

 

rear: 120x120x25 mm (exhaust)

top: 140 x 140 x 25 mm (exhaust)

side: 230 x 230 x 25 mm (intake)

 

Thanks for your help.

 

The side fan blowing inward is intended to be an attempt to cool hot running video cards.  Since unRAID has little to no video output, that flow is unneeded.  Blowing air in at the side provides little or no additional air flow over your drives.  In fact, it probably decreases that needed air flow.  I would try reversing that side fan to exhaust air from the case and see if it forces more air flow over your drives to reduce their temperature. 

[lionelhutz]

You need the air either coming in over your drives and then exiting everywhere else or entering everywhere else and then exiting over your HDD's. So, reverse the side fan to make it an exhaust.

 

I reversed the fans on my cages to blow out and then ran the case fans blowing in and covered all other openings. I have the CM590 case which still has 3 x grilled 5.25" covers below the drive cages and any extra air exits there.

 

It's also possible that the cage is drawing air through the empty drive bays and you're not getting enough airflow over the drives. Blocking the empty bays or filling them might help with the cooling.

 

Peter

[wsume99]

All the comments above are in agreement with my personal experience. You want the opening in front of your drives to be either the only inlet or only outlet for the entire case. This will ensure that all the air flow passes across your drives. Also, that opening should be no larger than the footprint of your installed drives otherwise a large proportion of the the airflow will just bypass your drives.

 

Another suggestion I would offer is to explore pwm controlled fans and temperature based fan speed control. I use it and it works wonderfully in my case (Antec 300). This allows you to adjust the air flow across your drives based upon their temps. Here are a few threads to read if you are interested.

 

Temperature based fan speed control?

 

X7SPA-HF based small (perfect) server build

 

[walnuthead]

I have the same case but I'm using the KingWin KF-4001 4x3 drive cages which have 120mm fans.

My highest drive temp was 38c before removing the side fan and closing up as much of the case as I could to optimize the airflow.

 

My system is currently running a parity sync and these are my temps:

 

Ambient - 25c

 

Parity - 30c - 2TB EARX

Disk1 - 31c - 2TB 5K3000

Disk2 - 30c - 2TB ST32000542AS

Disk3 - 30c - 2TB EARX

 

 

I was thinking of moving the 3x5 cage to the middle, so it will have air flow top and bottom.  Probably re-install the stock 3x4 cage that has a front 140 mm fan to help with air flow.  If that doesn't work, I will try your method.

 

Moving the cage to allow airflow above and below the cage will not help as it won't increase the airflow through the cage and over the actual drives.  You need to force the air to flow through the cage, so you need to close off other intake openings so the fans are forced to pull the air through the cage.  If the exhaust fan is pulling air through the case the airflow will take the path of least resistance.  If you have a 3 bay cage with 5 drives tightly crammed into it and right below that there are 6 wide open drive bays, the air will flow through those open bays, not through your drive cage.  If you also have that huge side fan running, it just makes the problem worse by providing more free airflow into the case which bypasses the drives completely.

 

Here are photos of what I did to close up the case, the side fan cover is not real pretty but I have not had time to put together anything else yet.

 

To cover the side opening I removed the fan and screwed a piece of cardboard over the opening

 

To cover the unused drive bays I cut a piece of paper to fit in the grill and put it on top of the filter

 

To cover the bottom opening, I just used another piece of paper

 

I covered the rear openings using electrical tape

 

Try to close up the case and see if it improves the temps, if that alone is not enough you should look into a better fan for the drive cage or some other way to force more airflow through the cage and over the drives.

 

Greg

 

[GFOviedo]

Thanks for everyone's suggestions.  I will try to reverse the side fan first and see if that helps.  After re-installing the front 3x4 stock cage with fan the temps have been stay at 35 C or lower.

 

If reversing the side fan doesn't help, I will remove it and cover the opening, and cover the back grill are well.  I will post back with the results.

 

If worse comes to worse I will have to sell the ICY Dock and get something different.  Thank you.

[GFOviedo]

Ok, I have done the following:

1) Reversed side fan so it is an exhaust fan now.

2) Covered front and back openings with card board and tape.

3) Re-installed the 3x4 cage with front fan.  So, the only intake fan is at the front, exhaust fan at the back, top and side now.

 

Now, it is just a matter of waiting and seeing what temps. I get.  Thanks everyone for their contributions .

[GFOviedo]

Well, after modifying the air flow in my case the temps have drop approximately 2C.  So, if I am using only one drive the temp is usually around 38C.  If I am using two drives, the temp. is about 40, and with 3 drive it starts getting in the low 40's...around 44C was the highest I saw.

 

I was trying to run preclear on two other drives, and the temp went to 48C and later 55C.  Is this normal?

[S80_UK]

55 degrees is too high and would not be good for the long term health of a drive.  Even 48 degrees is uncomfortably hot in my opinion.  From the temperature rises that you are seeing it sounds like you still have very little air moving from outside the system to inside, past the drives and then out again.  One piece of info I don't think you told us - what is the temperature of the air in the room outside the server case?  With effective cooling, green drives should not get much above 10 or 15 degree Celcius above the ambient temperature in the room even with all drives busy.

[GFOviedo]

55 degrees is too high and would not be good for the long term health of a drive.  Even 48 degrees is uncomfortably hot in my opinion.  From the temperature rises that you are seeing it sounds like you still have very little air moving from outside the system to inside, past the drives and then out again.  One piece of info I don't think you told us - what is the temperature of the air in the room outside the server case?  With effective cooling, green drives should not get much above 10 or 15 degree Celcius above the ambient temperature in the room even with all drives busy.

 

The ambient temperature was 68 F deg. or 20C on the first and second time I noticed the temps.  On the last temperature recording the ambien temperature was 72 F degrees or 22.2C .  The server is in the living corner next to the sliding door leading to the back year.  That corner is colder than the rest of the living room.

 

The room heater is set to 70 F degrees or 21.1C, and it only turns on around 2100 hours prior to going to bed.  Thereafter, it turns on only once during the night.  I think I am going to have to change the Icy Dock for something else.  I don't want to run the chance of damaging the hard drives.  I don't have the $$$ to spend on replacements.

 

It sucks because I really liked this Icy Dock.  I am probably going to go with the cheaper Themaltake cases.  They have a front intake fan and have more spacing between the hard drives.

 

C = ( F - 32 )  / 1.8

[S80_UK]

I think you are now mixing temps in Farenheit (your room temperatures) and Celcius (your internal temperatures).  Those room temperatures cannot be in degrees Celcius.

 

C = ( F - 32 )  / 1.8  or  F = ( C x 1.8 ) + 32

 

I'm guessing that all the internal temp measurements are Celcius, so a drive at 55 degrees is very hot to the touch rather than very cool?

[GFOviedo]

I think you are now mixing temps in Farenheit (your room temperatures) and Celcius (your internal temperatures).  Those room temperatures cannot be in degrees Celcius.

 

C = ( F - 32 )  / 1.8  or  F = ( C x 1.8 ) + 32

 

I'm guessing that all the internal temp measurements are Celcius, so a drive at 55 degrees is very hot to the touch rather than very cool?

 

Sorry, I fixed the temps on my prior post.  Thanks.

[lionelhutz]

I don't understand your comment about putting in that other 4in3 cage. You should have all the openings blocked except for the hard drive cage where your drives are. Then, put all the other fans as exhaust fans. Force all the cooling air to flow over your hard drives.

[GFOviedo]

I have an intake fan under the icy dock.  I will take this one out and block the openings so the only intake would be the icy box fan.

[Johnm]

you still need exhaust equal to or grater then your intake or you will be trying to pressurize your case with all the exits blocked.

[GFOviedo]

you still need exhaust equal to or grater then your intake or you will be trying to pressurize your case with all the exits blocked.

 

Well, I guess the only way to have equal intake to exhaust fans would be to take the side 220mm out, and cover that space.  So, I'd have the ice box and 140mm front fans as intake, and back and top 140 mm fans as exhaust?

[walnuthead]

You don't need them to be equal, more exhaust fans are ok; just make sure the only intake is through the drive cage

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[PeterB]

There is really no need for both intake and exhaust fans.  What goes in has to come out.  The trick is to control where the air comes in, where it passes within the case, and where it goes out.

 

I have three exhaust fans on my case, with all other openings sealed such that all incoming air flows through the drive cages.

 

My system is running without any problems, in ambient temperatures which frequently exceed 30C.

[Johnm]

I just not see an exit in your build..

it you're dealing with a weak intake fan in the icydock you just want to offer it less resistance.

 

[GFOviedo]

I just not see an exit in your build..

it you're dealing with a weak intake fan in the icydock you just want to offer it less resistance.

 

I agree with you on this.  I was wondering if there is a different fan I can install on it?  same size or bigger than would work better?

[bubbaQ]

There is really no need for both intake and exhaust fans.

 

That is one of the most absurd things I have read recently.  Typical case fans have very poor performance against static head.  You need exhaust to maintain a negative case pressure.  If you don't maintain a negative case pressure, you are raping the performance of your air intake.

 

Sure you can oversize one or the other, and obviate the necessity of the other, particularly with challenging environments and hardware .... but that is at a loss of efficiency and increase in noise.