Hello,

 

Just build my first UNRAID system using a NORCO RPC-4020 inconjunctions with six Seagate 1.5GB (ST31500341AS) drives.  I'm curently running the initial Parity-sync and I noticed there is quite a variation of temperature across each drive, ranging from 38C to 47C.  Right now the parity and disk1 are hovering between 45C-47C.  From what I've read you want the temperatures to be in the low 30s. 

 

The NORCO RPC-4020 comes with a nice fan configuration.  There are four fans right behind the HD trays.  And then there are two more fan in the back.  They aren't fancy fan that come stock with the case.  On my old storage rig I replaced all the stock fans with nicer ones and saw a noticable difference. 

 

I guess the question I'm asking is should I be concerned with these temperatures?  Should I replace the stock fans and if so what does everyone recommend?  Or is there something I should do in addition to replacing the stock fans? 

 

Your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

Regards,

Scott

These are hot cases. To get better temps you need to leave a slot free between each drive and block up all the holes that you dont ant air going through. Then change at least the back two 80mm fans for 34 cfm ones.

 

As for temps of drives the general rule of thumb is

 

60s drives will fail

50s turn box of

40s is too hot but acceptable at a push

30s is fine

20 is better

 

however if you look at google results 20s may actually be worse than 50s. This is almost a religious debate so aim for 30s with this case if you can.

 

Also dont get too caught up in it. Make best effort then accept of a drive fails you replace it. Thats what parity is for.

 

hovering between 45C-47C

 

Too High, mid 40's is the highest they should get. Even in the middle of summer my drives have not reached 45C.

 

Re-arrange position or change fans to higher CFM fans. I read somewhere someone changed the back two fans to higher CFM fans and used duct tape to cover the holes on the side of the chassis so that the only path for air was from the front of the case.

 

Blocking certain vents is how I streamlined the CM-590 to control airflow and keep my drives cooled with minimal effort.

It was likely me you read doing it since... well thats what i done.

 

Also organise your data so that less drives spin up.

 

But, and this is a big but... unless you put in some serious effort your not going to get artic temps with this case its just not designed in a way to do so.

I don't want to move around my hard drives because I plan on filing this puppy up and it will just make things more difficult to configure down the road.  So I've decided to replace the stock fans for better air flow and use aluminum tape to cover up the holes accept for in the back.  I'm going to go with a pair of the Vantec Tornado 80mm (84CFM) for the back and five new Thermaltake 80mm (37CFM) for the front.

 

I'll post my results sometime next week when the parts come in.

Thats some significant effort. Please post your results I am sure many will be interested.

 

I really hope you have a server room as those Vantec Tornado fans are MASSIVELY loud (Sound level:  55.2 dB ... like 250 times louder than Antec TriCools of the same size)

Thats some significant effort. Please post your results I am sure many will be interested.

 

I really hope you have a server room as those Vantec Tornado fans are MASSIVELY loud (Sound level:  55.2 dB ... like 250 times louder than Antec TriCools of the same size)

 

Funny, you mention that I already have two Ventec Tornado in my existing RAID enclosure and yes they are very loud (sound like jet engines).  But, all my servers are contained within a full size MidAtlantic server rack in my basement which I don't hear from my office up stairs. ;-)

perfect

 

Any chance you could test with just the 5 front fans first to see if they make any marked improvement?.... I really dont see many people wanting to run the Tornados whereas the 34cfm ones are very viable for typical home use.

perfect

 

Any chance you could test with just the 5 front fans first to see if they make any marked improvement?.... I really dont see many people wanting to run the Tornados whereas the 34cfm ones are very viable for typical home use.

 

So you want me to tape everything off and test with just the front 5 replaced?  Should I rerun the parity sync for this test or is there another load generation that you think makes more sense?

I wouldn't go to any real effort to generate load. In fact a subjective test would be more than fine. Essentially I know already that taping the holes (and most importantly the unused slots) and changing the rear fans to 34cfms bought my drives down from the 40s to the 30s. I would say it made about 5 deg of difference.

 

What i haven't done is change the front five fans as it is as you know alot more effort. So a gut feeling if changing those fans made any real difference would be useful.

 

I have to say though the single biggest temp drop I received was by recovering from Highwaters annoying multidrive splits. So i simply merged similar types of data onto the same drives which resulted in only a couple of drives being up at one time. I done this before i changed the fans and it really helped.

know already that taping the holes (and most importantly the unused slots)

 

I would suggest taping all extraneous vents, and if there are open slots for unused drives, block them off somehow.

Then changing the back two fans will bring you the next level of cooling.

 

Point is, air is going to follow the least point of resistance. So if you have unused drive slots without a filler, air is going to seep through that more readily, then over a slot filled with a drive.

Some people use cardboard taped somewhere, I used clear packing tape.

 

I wouldn't go to any real effort to generate load. In fact a subjective test would be more than fine. Essentially I know already that taping the holes (and most importantly the unused slots) and changing the rear fans to 34cfms bought my drives down from the 40s to the 30s. I would say it made about 5 deg of difference.

 

What i haven't done is change the front five fans as it is as you know alot more effort. So a gut feeling if changing those fans made any real difference would be useful.

 

I have to say though the single biggest temp drop I received was by recovering from Highwaters annoying multidrive splits. So i simply merged similar types of data onto the same drives which resulted in only a couple of drives being up at one time. I done this before i changed the fans and it really helped.

 

So far what I've done is replace all the stock five 80mm fans in the front with five new Thermaltake (TT8025A-2B)  37CFM and I covered all the holes, include the empty hd tray using aluminum tape (AF100).  With no activity on the unRAID system I'm getting temp of 22C for all of my 1.5TB hard drives.  After 30 minutes of running the parity sync all drives remain in the low 30s (32-35C).  So basically what these modifications did was lower my temp 12-13 degrees during heavy activity, which isn't bad. 

 

Next test, I will remove the two stock 80mm fans in the rear with Tornado 81.5CFM fans and see how the temp look then.

 

 

Next test, I will remove the two stock 80mm fans in the rear with Tornado 81.5CFM fans and see how the temp look then.

 

 

Amazing enough the two Tornado fans installed don't appear to have made any improvement over what I already have gotten by sealing the holes and adding the 37CFM front fans.  That actually really suprises me quite a bit I was expecting to see the temp drop a few more degrees over what I was getting previously.  I'll let it front for a bit longer but it looks like the range is 32-36C with my new setup.

Whenever reporting absolute temperatures, it's quite helpful to the reader trying to makes sense of his situation if you would also report the current room temperature.... a computer room in Sweden in February might be quite different from my computer closet in Florida in May when the air-conditioner is still off...

 

Whenever reporting absolute temperatures, it's quite helpful to the reader trying to makes sense of his situation if you would also report the current room temperature.... a computer room in Sweden in February might be quite different from my computer closet in Florida in May when the air-conditioner is still off...

 

 

I'm in Denver, CO no A/C currently on room temp is 70C

room temp is 70C

 

Heat Wave !!!!  OKay...  I guess you meant 70°F 

 

Whenever reporting absolute temperatures, it's quite helpful to the reader trying to makes sense of his situation if you would also report the current room temperature.... a computer room in Sweden in February might be quite different from my computer closet in Florida in May when the air-conditioner is still off...

 

 

I'm in Denver, CO no A/C currently on room temp is 70C

 

Excuse me, but 70C is 158 Fahrenheit...    I would be very happy if your disks were in the mid 30's Centigrade.  In fact, I would have expected them to be much hotter with a room temperature like that  ;)

Whenever reporting absolute temperatures, it's quite helpful to the reader trying to makes sense of his situation if you would also report the current room temperature.... a computer room in Sweden in February might be quite different from my computer closet in Florida in May when the air-conditioner is still off...

 

 

I'm in Denver, CO no A/C currently on room temp is 70C

 

Excuse me, but 70C is 158 Fahrenheit...    I would be very happy if your disks were in the mid 30's Centigrade.  In fact, I would have expected them to be much hotter with a room temperature like that  ;)

 

My bad, yes its 70F not 70C in my room right now. 

I moved my storage case down into my basement and the temps dropped even more the range with activity is now 28-34C.

We just got hit with a heavy snow storm and the temp is below zero.  I've been copying all my files from my old raid system to the new system within my server rack in the basement.  I only have 2 drives spinned up currently and the temp of both drives is 24C so this is great news.

I now have my case mounted in my server rack in the basement and I get around 26-30C for all the drives while I'm running Parity sync.  This is pretty outstanding considering I was in the high 40C from the start.

Sorry to butt in, but I thought I'd share my recent experience of gaining 3-4 degrees by taking the air filters off of the fans that were directly blowing air from outside the case on my hard drives.  Adding the fans helped a lot, but while running a parity check I saw that one drive was still at about 46-47 degrees.  Since I could remove the filter without opening the case, I did so, and in about 15 minutes the temperature went down to 43.  That is pretty direct evidence that you can gain a few degrees back by removing the filter.  I suppose that means I have to take the box outside and blow all the dust out at some point, but that is preferable to drive failure...

 

Edit:  the total gain was 5-6 degrees by the time the drives had the chance to fully benefit from the reduced filter.  I am sure this varies dramatically based on the case layout, fans and filters.  But it's something to consider if you need an immediate improvement. 

Sorry to butt in, but I thought I'd share my recent experience of gaining 3-4 degrees by taking the air filters off of the fans that were directly blowing air from outside the case on my hard drives.  Adding the fans helped a lot, but while running a parity check I saw that one drive was still at about 46-47 degrees.  Since I could remove the filter without opening the case, I did so, and in about 15 minutes the temperature went down to 43.  That is pretty direct evidence that you can gain a few degrees back by removing the filter.  I suppose that means I have to take the box outside and blow all the dust out at some point, but that is preferable to drive failure...

 

You've still got a ways to go on your drive temps. 43 is still pretty warm.  And during the winter temps tend to be 5-7C COOLER than during the summer.  You need to get air moving between your drives to get the temps down.

I didn't mean to hijack this thread. 

 

I've got direct fans on all the drives.  The main problem is that all of these 4x3 adapters for the drive bays crowd the drives quite close together and there isn't that much airflow between them even though there is a fan on one end blowing through.  42 degrees is the temp of the hottest drive right now during a parity check when they are all spinning.  While I might add another fan in the back of the case to pull some air out, the case is rather maxed out at the moment. 

This is from the Seagate spec sheet for the 1.5TB drives:

Ambient temperature is defined as the temperature of the environment immediately surrounding the drive.

Actual drive case temperature should not exceed 69°C (156°F) within the operating ambient conditions.

Above 1,000 feet (305 meters), the maximum temperature is derated linearly to 112°F (44°C) at 10,000 feet

(3,048 meters).

 

Operating Temperature: 0° to 60°C (32° to 140°F)

Nonoperating: –40° to 70°C (–40° to 158°F)

 

Operating Temperature Gradient:

20°C per hour (68°F per hour max), without condensation

Nonoperating:

30°C per hour (86°F per hour max)

 

Apparently, the drives can run a lot hotter than I expected, and still be within their "operating temperature" range.  Personally, I like to see them below 40°C.  They do derate the temp ratings when above 1000 feet altitude.

 

Joe L.