We have just had a period of three weeks when daytime ambient temperatures reached 34C.  The weather seems to have cooled again now - only reaching 32C today, so I thought that it would be worth grepping my logfiles to see what temperatures fanspeed has been reporting.

 

On five occasions (three on the same day) a maximum drive temperature of 42C has been recorded, and it's never gone higher.  I haven't run a parity check, so this is just 'normal' running conditions.  However, I am very pleased that the drives have never been more than 8C over ambient.  I feel that this shows that my method of 'designed' airflow really does work - all apertures in my Thermaltake case are sealed, except for two 120cm fan apertures, with Excalibur fans arranged to extract air from the case.  The only airflow into the case is through the front doors on my three iStarUSA 5in3 cages (which all have their fans removed).

 

I have no means of telling whether the fan on my Seasonic X650 ever ran, but I suspect not and, in any case, it wouldn't have had any effect on the drive cooling.

 

I have been considering fitting a third excalibur, but it seems that this really isn't necessary - but it might help to reduce maximum fan speeds and, therefore, noise levels.

That's pretty good performance, given how warm the ambient was.    I prefer temps under 40 ... but with a 34C ambient 42 wasn't bad.    It's interesting you get performance this good without the fans on the cages -- although I have found that the 5-in-3 cage fans don't work all that well anyway, so with everything sealed and good exhaust, I suspect there's as much air coming through the cages as there would have been with the small fans they use anyway.

 

That's pretty good performance, given how warm the ambient was.    I prefer temps under 40 ... but with a 34C ambient 42 wasn't bad.

 

Indeed, below 40 would be good, and is what my system achieves during 'normal' weather conditions.

 

It's interesting you get performance this good without the fans on the cages -- although I have found that the 5-in-3 cage fans don't work all that well anyway, so with everything sealed and good exhaust, I suspect there's as much air coming through the cages as there would have been with the small fans they use anyway.

 

Indeed - I performed experiments when I first installed the cages, and found that I could achieve the same, or lower, temperatures with my modifications.  Of course, there is a significant noise benefit too!

 

Working with military electronics in my younger days, I learned that good cooling is achieved by design, not simply punching as many holes as possible into a case.