Silverstone DS380 thread?


tucansam

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I also like to see my drives in the 30's, but the reality is that the low 40's are not "bad" in any way ... especially on drives that have been active for many hours.  These drives are rated to operate up to 60 C, so you're still WAY below the threshold.

 

In short:  I wouldn't be at all concerned with the temps you're seeing.    I suspect they'll all operate in the 30's in normal operation (when all of the drives aren't spinning at once).

 

If you want to drop the temps a bit, use fans with higher airflow ratings.  ... but that's really not needed with the temps you're seeing.

 

I think you are right. They are all sat at 99% now for Cycle 1 of 3 pre read and they are at:

 

Disk 1 (Top Bay) is reporting - 38 C - Preclear Running Time: 19hrs 41 mins

Disk 2 (Second Bay) is reporting - 40 C - Preclear Running Time: 18 hrs 32 mins

Disk 3 (Third Bay) is reporting 35 C - Preclear Running Time: 18 hrs 27 mins

 

I think they are working out MAX now and I doubt the rest of the preclear script is going to increase the workload considerably. Time will tell over the next 3 days  ::) and I will post updates BUT I think the fan config is more than fine and I don't intend to tweak.

 

Interesting that the middle bay of the top 3 bays has a higher temp than the others. I don't know what is causing that - maybe the drive itself - maybe the case design - maybe combination of all that plus components - who knows. As you mentioned in your earlier post I half expected the top one to be the hottest. Whatever way I think I am happy. This is a great case.

 

P.S. I feel I am going to have to just keep an eye on things as I add more drives though - but thats nothing new.

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yep.  try six or eight drives and a parity check and let us know your temps.  they're gonna be uncomfortably high.

 

Perhaps. Remember to post your mods when you are done. Just in Case!  ;):)

 

Anything's possible, but I really doubt that you'll have any significant problem with temps.  The Lian-Li PC-Q25B has similar airflow, and the temps with 3 drives vs. the temps with 7 drives when I fully populated the case were not appreciably different (perhaps 1 degree higher on the upper drives).

 

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yep.  try six or eight drives and a parity check and let us know your temps.  they're gonna be uncomfortably high.

 

Perhaps. Remember to post your mods when you are done. Just in Case!  ;):)

 

Anything's possible, but I really doubt that you'll have any significant problem with temps.  The Lian-Li PC-Q25B has similar airflow, and the temps with 3 drives vs. the temps with 7 drives when I fully populated the case were not appreciably different (perhaps 1 degree higher on the upper drives).

 

I think you are right. As I noted in the other thread about the Seagates - I am also thinking that the high temp experienced on the 2nd drive is due to it being a bad drive. It is now running at 42C and the others 39 and under after a whole day of operation - BUT what makes me think it is bad is that it has dropped behind disk 3 in the % complete even though it was started a few mins earlier. I don't think it should have. Time will tell.

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UPDATE!: As some of you may know following my other thread about the Seagate 8TB HDD's I have recently purchased (and as I mention in this thread earlier) I have been pre clearing like a maniac for the last 5 days with three disks in in the DS380 and as such testing the cooling capabilities of the case.

 

I reported above that I was experiencing temps for disk1, disk2, disk3 of: 37C, 40C, 35C. After about 50 Hours of continued use in a pre clear those temperatures rose by a degree or s (worst case) and were sustained.

 

While I agree with Garaycase that if I can sustain those temperatures I am well within Manufacturers Operating Temperature Spec's I thought - can I improve them - at very least give me headroom for increased temperatures due to additional disks in the future.

 

For the purpose of this thread (ONLY) I was fortunate enough to have a Power Cut mid pre clear cycle 2 so I had to restart. So for redoing cycle 2 I only run 1 cycle so I could have a look at the reports and not wait for 3 cycles to finish. Anyway .... last night when cycle 2 finished I decided to explore a mod to the case (sort of) that came to me. I was thinking at work - how do I ensure the air from those fans goes over the drives???

 

STEP 1: I am looking at putting an aluminium plate between the fans and the motherboard and STEP 2: drilling holes in the drive cage on either side.

 

The idea is to restrict air going into the main part of the case and just being evacuated and "forcing" it over the drives as well as increasing the exposure of the drive to the air by creating a little compartment of sorts where the fans are installed so the air can ONLY go over the drives.

 

I completed a prototype of STEP 1 last night using cardboard from the side flap of the cases' box cut exactly the size of the gap between the cage and the edge of the fans sitting just on top of the small gap between the motherboard and the drive cage. If you can picture it the drive cage itself sits on the cut out thus applying a bit of pressure between the cage and the side of the case and thus keeping it in place (for now as its just a prototype).

 

 

Tools for this little Prototype:

tools.jpg

From the Top of the fans:

top.jpg

From the Middle of the fans

middle.jpg

From the bottom of the fans:

bottom.jpg

 

 

*Sorry the pictures are so poor - due to case design this is the best I could get from in or out - but as you can see the cut out goes from the top to the bottom of the case creating a sealed compartment where the fans are from the rest of the case pushing air over the drives and then over the board and CPU and then out the back*

 

 

The ambient temperature with all disks spinning after half an hour was 27C which I am happy with. To give me a real world example I cranked the heating in the house to 27C to make it as warm outside as inside the case and I started a third pre clear. I checked for 10 mins that things weren't going to increase to an ridiculous temperature and when satisfied that my concept was at least not going to do a destructive job on the drives, I went to bed.

 

This morning, I am pleasantly surprised:

 

Preclear is reporting (after 7 hours of continuous use) disk1, disk2, disk3 of 37C, 36C, 34C (Also noteworthy IPMI reports that the Motherboard and CPU temperatures are 39C, 38C).

 

At very least I seem to have been able to "improve" the airflow and not make it worse. In addition keeping the temperatures under 40 is nice! :-). I don't know if things will improve if I switch from cardboard to Aluminium? I am also wondering if I need to bother with drilling the holes.

 

Anyway, lets see how they stand after the full 50 hour cycle 3 pre clear is done. Will update.

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Nicely done.  Anything that forces the airflow to be directly through the drive cage and eliminates "leakage" is going to help ... as you've found out.

 

Doing this with aluminum instead of cardboard wouldn't make any difference => you're not conducting heat (where aluminum WOULD help) ... you're just blocking air leakage.

 

Basically, given the fixed factors of the ambient temperature and the conductivity of the drive mounts, there is ONE remaining factor that determines how well your drives are cooled -- AIRFLOW.  Anything you do to improve the amount of air flowing over the drives will help keep them cooler.

 

There are two fundamental ways to increase the airflow:

(1)  Use higher CFM fans

(2)  Control the path of the air (as you've just done)

 

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Danioj, I like that idea. I think I will build a skirt for my drive cage too. While I have it out I'll drill more holes in it. Without the drives in it if course.  If you drill yours too, it's a fairly beefy metal. It reminds me off what cases used to be made of, not super thin aluminum like now.

 

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Looking at the detailed pictures of the drive cages on Newegg's site, I don't think you need more holes in the sides.    If you've got the cage skirted so the only path for airflow from the fans is through the existing holes in the cages, you should be just fine.

 

If you want to improve even more on the cooling capacity, replace the fans with higher rpm units.  A 1500rpm unit would provide about 25% more airflow than the stock fans => and a high quality unit like the Noctua NF-F12 will run at 1500rpm with the same 22dba noise level the stock fans have at 1200rpm.

 

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Danioj, I like that idea. I think I will build a skirt for my drive cage too. While I have it out I'll drill more holes in it. Without the drives in it if course.  If you drill yours too, it's a fairly beefy metal. It reminds me off what cases used to be made of, not super thin aluminum like now.

 

If you need anything from me - eg measurements etc just let me know and I'll provide.

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Those Noctuas are what I have on the side fans and something else on the rear silentx maybe?  I have to disagree on the drive cage vents being adequate though.  Those pictures on Newegg don't show the fan side of the cage.  The top and bottom drives vents aren't good.  Also there is a removable plastic piece for oversized graphics cards (you would lose that drive slot if removed) which almost completely blocks flow to the center drive. The plastic piece is easy to turn into Swiss cheese. Anyway I'm gonna try funneling the air through the cage and see if I can keep temps under 40. I already skewed the smart fan curve a little towards higher rpms for lower temps.

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The pictures of the side of the drive cage on Newegg certainly look like there's ample airflow -- the unvented areas seem to be where the drives are mounted (thus holes wouldn't be useful ... and in fact the solid contact is better for thermal dissipation.

 

But clearly actually having the case in hand makes it easier to see exactly where any additional airflow vents would be handy  :)    [e.g. didn't realize there were blocks in sections you can't see => e.g. the removable section for a graphics card.]

 

 

 

 

 

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Here's a good picture of both sides.  I'll number them #1 through #8 from the bottom. Notice the 2 tiny slits for the top drive #8 which is where heat rises too.    How drive #6 is completely blocked on the fan side. Drive #3 and #5  have only 2 air slots instead of one long like the others. Granted I believe there's a brace there. But I believe there was plenty of room to make the air vents as big as #6 non fan side. The cage is really solid and could have traded some of the structural stability for more air flow.

 

I'm not gonna buy a different case but I just feel they missed some things.

2e5e8899e5691893ffa6735e1f8990f6.jpg

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Good picture of exactly how the cage is configured.  The biggest flaw is the complete blockage of slot #6 on the fan side => is that the plastic piece that you said could easily be turned into "swiss cheese" ??

 

... if so, that's probably a good idea -- I'd remove it to do the drilling, however  :)

 

Other than that, I don't see anywhere else that you need to modify the cage - skirting the cage to avoid any alternative paths for the airflow will provide FAR more airflow over the drives than any mods you might do to the cage.    If you want more, I'd do as I suggested earlier -- get a fan with a higher airflow rating -- rather than modifying the cage itself.

 

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Well, I have just finished a preclear of my 8TB drives with the Custom Skirt in place. As a means of bringing my test together I have summarised.

 

ASRock C2550D4I Mini ITX Motherboard

Kingston 4GB (1x4GB), PC-12800 (1600MHz) ECC Unbuffered DDR3L, ValueRAM, CL11, 1.35V, Single Stick

Silverstone ST45SF-G 450W SFX Form Factor Power Supply - ST45SF-G

3 x Seagate 8TB Archive HDD, SATA III, 5900RPM, 128MB (in top 3 bays).

 

Configuration: There is nothing but trays in the remaining bays and case is running stock fans in default configuration (as attached) with all filters attached as designed.

 

Location: My desktop next to a window which gets some sun throughout the day so some UV exposure BUT the ambient temperature outside over the test has not exceeded 29C. For 8 hours per day (night time) I have had the heating in the house set to 27C.

 

2 Preclear runs with a time of: ~58 Hours (give or take 40 minutes over the 3 drives)

 

Run 1: Without Custom Skirt:

Disk 1: Start Temperature: 42C, Finish Temperature: 41C, Peak Temperature*: 44C

Disk 2: Start Temperature: 39C, Finish Temperature: 39C, Peak Temperature*: 41C

Disk 3: Start Temperature: 37C, Finish Temperature: 36C, Peak Temperature*: 40C

Motherboard Temperature: 35C

CPU Temperature: 35C

 

*Note: Peak temperature for Run 1 was captured from S.M.A.R.T reports at end of the run as I knew these were the highest temperatures these new disks had experienced.

 

Run 2: With Custom Skirt:

Disk 1: Start Temperature: 31C, Finish Temperature: 35C, Peak Temperature**: 36C

Disk 2: Start Temperature: 30C, Finish Temperature: 33C, Peak Temperature**: 34C

Disk 3: Start Temperature: 29C, Finish Temperature: 32C, Peak Temperature**: 33C

Motherboard Temperature: 39C

CPU Temperature: 38C

 

**Note: Peak temperature for Run 2 was captured through observations recorded at 6 Hour Intervals as I knew I wouldn't be able to rely on S.M.A.R.T reports.

 

I am still going to put the Noctua NF-F12 fans in there. As Gary mentioned before: a 1500rpm unit like this would "likely" provide about 25% more airflow than the stock fans => and a high quality unit like the Noctua NF-F12 will run at 1500rpm with the same 22dba noise level the stock fans have at 1200rpm. And I am more than happy with the noise level of the case which is pretty much silent to my ears (and that is with it sat next to me on my desktop - not lower down on a shelf near the floor where it will be when I'm done).

 

To conclude, I love this case. If I had to go back and make the decision to buy it again I would without hesitation. I would have lived with the temperatures noted in Run 1 but the addition of the custom skirt has made them much more acceptable. I feel the addition of more drives (though to capacity) will not materially impact the overall temperature of the case and that (barring the 1 or 2 drives) won't impact temperatures more than 1C or 2C more. With the addition of the Noctua fans mentioned above I think Ill shave another 2C off the temperatures reported in Run 2.

 

Based on this test I will not be "Modding" the drive cage or the case further with additional holes. I feel that adding additional holes does not guarantee better results and it has even been mentioned to me that this "could" have a negative impact on the temperatures (although this is so far unsubstantiated at the time of this post).

 

Im also not going to replace the Cardboard skirt with an Aluminium one because I don't feel there is a need. I feel Silverstone have done a good job with this case and with a little airflow control the temperatures are great for such a nice SFF case.

 

I hope this is helpful. If anyone wants any more details or information that I have not recorded please let me know.

DS380_Airflow.JPG.bb9c3a532f2e6103459d8d31ba3ad537.JPG

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... by the way, when you get the Noctua fans installed, it'd be interesting to see what happens to the temps.

 

You wouldn't want to wipe out your array with yet-another pre-clear run; but running a parity check would be essentially the same test ... runs all the drives at once for many hours.

 

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... by the way, when you get the Noctua fans installed, it'd be interesting to see what happens to the temps.

 

You wouldn't want to wipe out your array with yet-another pre-clear run; but running a parity check would be essentially the same test ... runs all the drives at once for many hours.

 

Will do. The Fans are arriving tomorrow. Given I am running a long S.M.A.R.T test as Weebo advised when thats done Ill install the fans so when I run a Parity check Ill have them in the case and then Ill post the results.

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Hi Guys,

 

To close off my part of this testing story, the other day I completed a Parity Sync with the new Noctua Fans installed as well as the custom skirt. Here are the results.

 

Disk 1: Start Temperature: 26C, Finish Temperature: 34C, Peak Temperature**: 34C

Disk 2: Start Temperature: 27C, Finish Temperature: 31C, Peak Temperature**: 33C

Disk 3: Start Temperature: 25C, Finish Temperature: 30C, Peak Temperature**: 32C

Motherboard Temperature: 37C

CPU Temperature: 36C

 

** Note that for the peak temperature for this run I checked the temperature exactly half way through (so it might not be the true peak) - best I could do without watching it for hours and hours.

 

To add to the conclusion I stated above - air flow is still the key here. The stock fans did a great job and as I mentioned I was happy and the temperatures were excellent. The Noctua NF-F12's have shaved ~2 degrees off what I recorded before with the stock fans which is always nice. However in my opinion I don't feel ~2 degrees is worth AUD $30 each I paid for them - AUD $90 for 2 degrees, if I hadn't already bought them before I had done the earlier test I wouldn't have done so again!

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Hi Guys,

 

To close off my part of this testing story, the other day I completed a Parity Sync with the new Noctua Fans installed as well as the custom skirt. Here are the results.

 

Disk 1: Start Temperature: 26C, Finish Temperature: 34C, Peak Temperature**: 34C

Disk 2: Start Temperature: 27C, Finish Temperature: 31C, Peak Temperature**: 33C

Disk 3: Start Temperature: 25C, Finish Temperature: 30C, Peak Temperature**: 32C

Motherboard Temperature: 37C

CPU Temperature: 36C

 

** Note that for the peak temperature for this run I checked the temperature exactly half way through (so it might not be the true peak) - best I could do without watching it for hours and hours.

 

To add to the conclusion I stated above - air flow is still the key here. The stock fans did a great job and as I mentioned I was happy and the temperatures were excellent. The Noctua NF-F12's have shaved ~2 degrees off what I recorded before with the stock fans which is always nice. However in my opinion I don't feel ~2 degrees is worth AUD $30 each I paid for them - AUD $90 for 2 degrees, if I hadn't already bought them before I had done the earlier test I wouldn't have done so again!

 

I'll have to give this a try when I get a chance. I had a couple questions though. Were you still using the magnetic side dust filter during these tests and if you happened to sample your fan speeds that corresponded to the temps? Oh and also which drive was at the very top of the case?

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Don't know if Daniel is using the filters (I'd think so, but don't know for sure) ... but he noted earlier that he's numbered his disks starting at the top => so disk1 is on top; disk2 next; disk3 next; etc.  (only 3 disks currently installed).

 

As expected, the uppermost disk (disk1) is the warmest.

 

 

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