Drive Vibration on Lian-Li PC-Q25


ldrax

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This is rather general thoughts for anyone who use the Lian-Li PC-Q25 casing.

 

1. The case includes a bottom aluminum plate, able to hold 2x3.5 (etc etc). What I found is that because the drive is secured via its bottom mounting holes with 4x rubber-padded screws which are spaced rather close towards the center, the drive tends to vibrate stronger than the hotswap-mounted drives, which are held on their sides. Up to the point that if I hold the SATA data cable connecting the drive, I can really feel the vibration strongly, significantly stronger compared to if I hold the other SATA data cable from the aforementioned hotswap bays.
Not to mention that if I let this SATA cable touch the sidepanel, the vibration immediately translates to annoying noise.
Handpressing the drive while its running significantly calm it down. Any idea how to calm these bottom mounted drives?


2. Due to molex technicality (my PSU doesn't have enough MOLEX connector, and the PC-Q25 model that I have doesn't have SATA power terminals on the backplane), I decided to remove the backplane altogether, and connect the SATA power and SATA data cables directly to the drives in the now not-so-hot-swappable-bays anymore. I immediately notice that this kind of remove a certain degree of stability of the drive. With back plane installed, at least the sata connection at the back help making snug fit mounting of the drives.
Any idea how to 'tighten' these drives without backplane installed?
Other than that, I imagine my options to be:
a) Buy aftermarket backplanes with SATA power terminals
b) Buy MOLEX daisychaining adapter (I would need two, because the backplanes requires 3)
c) Buy SATA to MOLEX (which seems to be less common than MOLEX to SATA, so I'm not sure if it's safe)

 

Edited by ldrax
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6 minutes ago, ldrax said:

The case includes a bottom aluminum plate, able to hold 2x3.5 (etc etc). What I found is that because the drive is secured via its bottom mounting holes with 4x rubber-padded screws which are spaced rather close towards the center, the drive tends to vibrate stronger than the hotswap-mounted drives, which are held on their sides.

 

I must say, I have never noticed this.  I have the same case with one 3.5 HDD and two SSDs on the bottom tray.  Is the bottom,-mounted HDD a different model than the ones in the "hot-swap" bay?  Is it a 7200 RPM drive?  The HDD on the bottom tray in my server is a 5400 RPM WD Red Helium-filled drive, so, perhaps that makes a difference?

 

One advantage I found to having the hot-swap bay powered by three Molex connectors instead of direct SATA connection to each drive is that I never have to worry about the 3.3v reset issue with recent SATA drives.  I can install a new drive in the hot-swap bay and the Molex power completely bypasses the SATA power pin 3 issue.  It might be better overall in your case to solve the Molex cable issue.  It sounds like you have merely swapped one issue for a couple of others.

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10 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

 

Is the bottom,-mounted HDD a different model than the ones in the "hot-swap" bay?  Is it a 7200 RPM drive?  The HDD on the bottom tray in my server is a 5400 RPM WD Red Helium-filled drive, so, perhaps that makes a difference?

 

They are all 7200, but the strongest vibration comes from the bottom-mounted WD Red Pro 6TB. A seagate 3TB next to it is a little calmer, but not as calm as the ones in the hotswap bays.

 

 

10 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

 

One advantage I found to having the hot-swap bay powered by three Molex connectors instead of direct SATA connection to each drive is that I never have to worry about the 3.3v reset issue with recent SATA drives.  I can install a new drive in the hot-swap bay and the Molex power completely bypasses the SATA power pin 3 issue.  It might be better overall in your case to solve the Molex cable issue.  It sounds like you have merely swapped one issue for a couple of others. 

Thanks for the insight! Looks like I lose more than just the back plane. Been reading a lot about MOLEX 11A max capacity, so seems I can't branch-out the single MOLEX into 3 required by the back plane, so maybe only 2 from this?
Might need to use adapter to get 1 MOLEX out of 1 SATA, but google search scares me on this.

Edited by ldrax
typho
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Another note related to this casing, I have a Seagate NAS drive with only 2 pairs of mounting holes on the side that rules out attaching the hotswap bracket which requires 3 pairs.

and only 2 pairs on the bottom, the arrangement of which rules out bottom-mounting this drive, which requires 2 pairs close to the center.

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20 minutes ago, ldrax said:

Been reading a lot about MOLEX 11A max capacity, so seems I can't branch-out the single MOLEX into 3 required by the back plane, so maybe only 2 from this?

The Corsair SF450 SFX PSU in my case has 4 Molex connectors.  Of course, I only needed three and I had to use an extender on one because the cable was too short.  I have had the hot-swap bay filled with five drives (only have four now) and never had a power/melting issue with three Molex connectors on a single cable powering the bay.

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The drives that I use specify its max current draw during startup is 2.6A,  x5 = 13A. But come to think of it, I did have 5 of these installed all in the hotbay slots at some point (doing preclear), while being powered from 3 molex connectors from a single cable from the PSU. Hope it wasn't just luck and each of those 5 drives never really draws 2.6A during startup.

I was using Seasonic M2II 520W at that point. Now I'm changing to smaller Seasonic SFX 300W.

Edited by ldrax
added psu models
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6 minutes ago, ldrax said:

The drives that I use specify its max current draw during startup is 2.6A,  x5 = 13A. But come to think of it, I did have 5 of these installed all in the hotbay slots at some point (doing preclear), while being powered from 3 molex connectors from a single cable from the PSU. Hope it wasn't just luck and each of those 5 drives never really draws 2.6A during startup.

The max current draw will usually be on startup.  The cable can likely handle a short-term draw of greater than 11A.  If the current draw were a sustained 13A+ over a long period of time, perhaps that would be a concern; however, other than at startup, it is not likely that all 5 drives are going to be drawing max. current for any length of time.

Edited by Hoopster
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11 hours ago, ldrax said:

Another note related to this casing, I have a Seagate NAS drive with only 2 pairs of mounting holes on the side that rules out attaching the hotswap bracket which requires 3 pairs.

Just use an x-acto knife to cut the extra tab off the hotswap bracket. I am doing that on multiple 8TB Seagate drives.

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14 hours ago, ljm42 said:

Just use an x-acto knife to cut the extra tab off the hotswap bracket. I am doing that on multiple 8TB Seagate drives.

That's a good idea! Right now I'm just attaching rubber-padded screws on it and slot it to the bay, with a little more force. Hope the sharp edge of the slot doesn't tear the rubber's groove.
Thinking of cutting the tab as you suggested, but I'd like to think that I should save original bracket with the tab for my future drives that have the middle mounting holes pair.
 

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Thinking to give up on using all-7200rpm drives on these casing, they just get too hot, 39 - 44C in 26C air con-ed room during parity check. Without aircon, 43 - 47C while just idling (not spun-down).Thought the new SFX PSU that has freed up quite a lot of room inside would help with the temperatures.

My other build with a gigantic casing keeps the drives at 32-34 in idle state.
 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 9/28/2018 at 11:32 AM, Hoopster said:

The max current draw will usually be on startup.  The cable can likely handle a short-term draw of greater than 11A.  If the current draw were a sustained 13A+ over a long period of time, perhaps that would be a concern; however, other than at startup, it is not likely that all 5 drives are going to be drawing max. current for any length of time.

Just an update for my case, it turned out that the 300W SFX (SSP-300SFB Active PFC F3, http://www2.seasonic.com/product/ssp-300sfb/) that I got wasn't enough to power 7 drives (5x 7200rpm, 2x5400rpm).
The PSU has 1 cable with 1 Molex connector, and 1 cable with 3 SATA connectors.

Trial 1: The 1 Molex was splitted into 3 Molex and connected to the hotswap backplane. While 2 SATA connectors were powering the 2 bottom drives.

Trial 2: The 1 Molex was used to power 4 drives, while the other 3 drives were powered by SATA connectors.

In both trials, I experienced 'power reset' on random drives, usually not long after I press the parity check or sync/rebuild button.

I changed the PSU to Seasonic 500W (ATX) and then to Corsair SFX 600W, the problem didn't appear on either of these PSUs, fingers crossed.

 

Edited by ldrax
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