Norco 4220 Fan/Fan Controller Recommendations

[actionfreak]

I have a Norco 4220 with Scythe SY1225SL12H 120mm fans. I put the fans in last fall and all was well until the past few weeks when the weather started heating up. The room that the server is in gets kind of hot. I now have some drives that are heating up to the mid 40s.

 

Can someone recommend 120mm fans and a fan controller that has worked well?

[PeterB]

I have a Norco 4220 with Scythe SY1225SL12H 120mm fans. I put the fans in last fall and all was well until the past few weeks when the weather started heating up. The room that the server is in gets kind of hot. I now have some drives that are heating up to the mid 40s.

 

Can someone recommend 120mm fans and a fan controller that has worked well?

 

Can you define 'kind of hot'.  If it means mid 30s, then achieving drive temperatures in mid 40s is fairly good.  With ordinary fan-assisted air cooling, you will struggle to achieve drive temperatures much better than 8 - 10C above ambient.

 

My ambient temperatures tend to be around 30 - 32 and my drives stay below 40 much of the time.  I use Coolermaster Excalibur fans with the fan control plugin, but this is in an ordinary tower case - I'm not familiar with the Norco.

 

What I do advise is that you arrange all your fans to either input to the case, or exhaust from the case and block all holes in the case such that all the air coming in has to flow through the drive bays first.

 

I've said before, good cooling is achieved by careful design, not just by having lots of 'ventilation' holes in the case.

[actionfreak]

The room probably gets to the upper 20s at the most. I will have to verify that. One of the 120mm fans wasn't turning on for some reason when I looked at it last night. That probably accounts for the drive temperatures in the mid 40s. I do still have one WD20EADS drive that got to 42 last night when the other drives were at a maximum of 38. This particular drive has always ran hotter than the rest.