opentoe Posted January 12, 2011 Share Posted January 12, 2011 I see some cage designs with the fan that blow OUT of the chassis. Then I see some that have a fan in the front of them blowing IN the chassis. Why would anyone want to blow air across hot drives then have that air inside your case? For example I have the Cooler Master 590 case. I see I can install fans on the front, but wouldn't want air blowing across hot hard drives then into the chassis to warm things up even more? Is there a "right" way to do this? I suspect 5 in 3 cages that have powerful fans on them that blow OUT of the case are good and not the other way around? Link to comment
lionelhutz Posted January 12, 2011 Share Posted January 12, 2011 I reversed the fans on my hot-swap bays so they blow out instead of sucking air in through the front. My case fans blow in. The drive bays seem to keep cleaner this way. Drive temps really didn't change and that case is so large with the low power CPU/motherboard it would never overheat as long as there is air flow. Peter Link to comment
SSD Posted January 12, 2011 Share Posted January 12, 2011 You want to control the airflow. Either pull air into the case over the drives (fresh air). And then exhaust out the back, or blow air in through the back and exhaust (warm air) through the front both create air movement over the drives, but I prefer first approach. Link to comment
opentoe Posted January 12, 2011 Author Share Posted January 12, 2011 I noticed two different power ports on the rear of my sata cage. It is the istar model that supports 5 drives in one cage. Two power ports are SATA and three are molex. Do I need to hook up power to all 5 of these connectors or just the two SATA and/or just the three molex? Link to comment
Kaygee Posted January 12, 2011 Share Posted January 12, 2011 Molex are good for 10a per connector, so each is capable of supporting 5 drives, I'd use two molex given the choice. IMO they are betting seating than the equivalent SATA power connectors. Link to comment
lionelhutz Posted January 12, 2011 Share Posted January 12, 2011 I'd hook up 2 of either one. In my PS cables was one with 2 Molex and one with 3 Molex. I connected a Molex from each cable to a drive cage and use the last free one for the case fans. Peter Link to comment
kizer Posted January 12, 2011 Share Posted January 12, 2011 My 590 pulls air in the front and blows it out the back. I often every other week pull off the front cover and blow off anything that might be on the front screen, which is normally nothing to even point out and its pretty easy since its designed to pull off. I have also blocked all of the fan holes top and sides with a simple sheet of paper to keep air from going anywhere, but out the back through the rear fan. My power supply is mounted so air comes in from the bottom and goes out the back. Some say its not prefered, but I figure I'd rather have cold air come in from the bottom and be sucked out the top over my mother board. Then again I have all 3 cage fans pulling air in so I'm pretty sure my machine stays pretty cold anyways. I think the last time I checked my cpu ran around 19c and my drives normally run 26-30c. I'm probably running an overkill amount of fans and have even considered running a fan controller with a temp probe just to lower power consumption until some of the drives fire up or when its running a pairity check. Link to comment
opentoe Posted January 14, 2011 Author Share Posted January 14, 2011 My hard drive cages have a fan attached to the back of it. Which means it would be blowing the air towards the front of the case where there are two fans blowing the other way around. It usually makes sense to me to pull in air from the front and exhaust in the rear, but because the cage fans are one direction I may be forced to reverse the fan direction. What has people done when their drive cage fans are blowing towards the front? Link to comment
lionelhutz Posted January 14, 2011 Share Posted January 14, 2011 My hard drive cages have a fan attached to the back of it. Which means it would be blowing the air towards the front of the case where there are two fans blowing the other way around. Are you sure? Mine were on the back of my cages too but they originally sucked the air in, not blowing it out. Peter Link to comment
kizer Posted January 14, 2011 Share Posted January 14, 2011 Exactly are you sure? Most of those cage fans on the rear are pulling air from the outside in. My Cooler Master 590 cages are mounted on the outside of the case and blow air into the case. Link to comment
Rajahal Posted January 14, 2011 Share Posted January 14, 2011 I always just use a small piece of plastic or paper to test them. Incense/smoke works too. Link to comment
opentoe Posted January 15, 2011 Author Share Posted January 15, 2011 Good idea. I did take off the fan assembly and the fans are easy to replace and if need be to flip around. I'll take the recommendations from users here and have everything sucking/blowing into the front and then exhaust out the rear. I can't wait to get all the parts to get everything together. I need 2 more drive cages (those things are $100 a pop!), some fans, and PCI-E add one SATA card. I did buy some SATA cables from monoprice website but couldn't find any adapters that added power for fans. I'd like to have a couple in the front and a couple in the rear. Total of 4 fans, I don't think my mainboard has all those connections. Link to comment
kizer Posted January 15, 2011 Share Posted January 15, 2011 Honestly air blowing in the front or air blowing out as long as you have air moving through your case you should be good to go. Link to comment
Heretic Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 on every "normal" computer i build i always had the air pulling in at the front/bottom and pulled out at the top/back. makes more sense since hot air rises. doesn't cooling the hardrives is proritized since it usualy many stacked close together? an the mb and cpu are usual low power so not as hot as normal" rigs then again i'm totally new to Unraid so i might be wrong. so much to learn... greets Link to comment
lionelhutz Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 In theory cold in at the bottom and hot out at the top works best. In reality, it really doesn't much matter if you have enough fan to move the air and the air is forced to travel certain ways. For example, you can't have cold in at the top and hot out at the top and expect components at the bottom of the case to be cool. I have a CM590. My case has 2 x 120mm fans with filters on the top sucking in. The 2 hot swap drive cages have their fans blowing out. The power supply is at the bottom with it's fan blowing out. All the other holes are covered except the front filtered grills (3 x 5.25" drive slots) below the drive cages. My theory is for the 120mm fans to pack the top of the case with cool air and then the cages exhaust that air out the front. The power supply and lower front grills can flow however they want. I ran the cages before with the fans sucking in and I was noticing a decent dust build-up inside the drive drawers. They keep clean now. I see about a 5C to 7C temp rise on my drives when doing a parity check. Peter Link to comment
Heretic Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 ye dust-filters are great . my current pc is so clean on the inside thanks to them (coolermaster cosmos 1000 case). my old pc was always filled with dust which then had to be vacuum cleaned. It can be helpful (if you don't like cleaning) to have more air blow into the case than gets sucked out. this will create high pressure preventing dust to come in through all gaps in the case. Link to comment
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