HDD Cooling

Ok so i need to pick some brains here.

I have 2 Sata Hd's, one 750Gb Seagate, and a 250Gb WD Caviar.

by themselves they stay respectively cool, the Seagate @ 39 dgrees celcius, the WD @ 42-44 degrees celcius.

But when I add the two together in my M-atx case, the Seagate runs at 44 degrees, and the WD runs at 54 degrees.

I'm assuming anything over the 50 degree mark will start to shorten the life of my drives. what would be the best way to keep them cool?

There are only 2 HD bays in the case, both mounted 1/2 an inch apart, so the 2 drives heat each other up.

anyone had to combat this issue before? and am I worrying for nothing, or should I work on cooling down these HD's asap?

 

Hi David,

Thanks for the reply. On most of my other PC's the HD cage extends to the bottom of the case, allowing me to utilize a front-mounted intake to keep them cool.

this case however only has a partial cage, it has room for 2 HD's. The card readers, 2 USB ports, and a mic and headphone jack occupy the 3rd slot (which i do not use).

for cooling it already has an 80mm front-mounted intake, an 80mm side-mounted intake blowing at the CPU, northbridge, and RAM.

as well as a 120mm rear-mounted exhaust fan directly below the PSU. I noticed the side-mounted intake doesn't really have much of an effect on temps, it was just to create more airflow, so I could re-position that fan somehow possibly to focus on the HD's. just not sure how to go about it yet.

layout of the case is almost identical to this pic below.

 

Sorry, my mistake, the rear exhaust fan is 100mm, not 120mm.

and I do have 1 free 5 1/4 bay, but I was worried that sticking a hot HD up there where there is even less airflow might give me even more troubles.

 

I dont mind modding at all, as long as it's cheap and effective

sawz-alls and dremel tools go hand-in-hand with making mods. It took me 3 weeks just to get the body-kit on my nissan hung just right, and alot of cutting and tweaking brackets so front-clip and side-skirts fit just right. so hacking up my case doesn't scare me too much.

but back to the HD's, I was also thinking of possibly reversing the airflow from front to back, to back to front.

I know this isn't the best idea normally, but I see that the rear fan is perfectly lined up with the HD's with absolutely nothing to restrict the airflow. whereas the front fan blows the cool air right past the HD's to the PCI/GPU slots without even so much as blowing on the HD's. right now I dont have any PCI cards or a GPU installed yet. so i might give that a try and see if it helps any.

Ideally I'd like to use both the front and rear fans as intakes, and have a top mounted 120mm exhaust i suppose. but that might be hard on this case, theres not too many options for cooling in these bitty cases.

 

Also, here's a question thats bugging me.

If I have my OS on the cooler of the 2 HD's, and I set windows to shut off my hard disks after 15 minutes of inactivity. Will using a temp monitor or HW monitor keep that disk active by reading it's sensors and forcing the sensor to reply, and therefore stop it from shutting off after 15 minutes of inactivity?

or will windows just ignore the monitor and shut off that drive anyway?

Because that is what I have done, and I do not see any temperature change at all after 15, 20, 25, or even 30 minutes.

I figure if the HD shut's off, it will stop using power, and I should see some type of temperature difference when the device is not using any power, no?

:confused

 

Well since it's poring rain, and I'm at home sick all day , i opened up the case, cleaned everything with a can of air, even did the blades of both fans with a toothbrush.Then I reversed the fans, and put it all back together to see what difference if any i would get.

Ran a quick scan on both drives to heat them up and see where they would top out, and low and behold the Seagate held steady at 31 degrees, and the WD flatlined at 45. However this setup wont work once a GPU is added, but it will keep my mind from worrying until I can find a cage to hang in front of the fan. I'll head to one of the 2 local scrap metal yards we have around and see if I can scavenge one for a buck, might get lucky :-D

 

You might want to consider a heat shield between the hard drives.A heat shield will absorbed infra-red heat stopping the hard drive opposite absorbing the heat.

A reflective heat shield will reflect the infrared heat away from the colder device protecting it BUT it could cause the hotter hard drive to heat up more than normal,you can easily make one with a piece of aluminium foil or multiple layers of foil with the shiny side facing out to reflect heat away and the inside painted black to absorb heat.

You could also try a thin piece of metal such as a slice of case,just be sure to make sure there's still airflow between it and the hard drives.

An extra fan would be the way to go but if ya fancy trying a free mod,well there ya go:cool

 

Suspend the hot drive using some knicker elastic

 

That is an ingenius idea.. and it totally works

Many thanks for that one, I can even loop more pantyhose through the first suspended drives hose, and suspend a 3rd drive from the 2nd one if needed.

I love it :-D

and by suspending the hot drive in front of the fan and leaving the cool drive in the stock cage, both temps are between 33-35, regardless of direction of airflow in the case now.

And yes david I notice alot less vibration noise when the drive is active now, actually, almost no noise, I have to listen very closely to hear it over the fans.

Problem solved..


and I'm proud to say my PC wears knickers :-D

 

Not my idea, I just read a lot

 

I was almost ready to do this with some scrap plywood :-D

 

Hmm, "wood" and "knickers without elastic" is bordering on an HBT topic

 

searching google, i found someone who used both the knickers and a european ford to create himself a birdhouse. definately a neat idea for keeping your HD's cool and silent.

http://www.mypage.tsn.cc/pcsilencing/

 

Indeed I will. I wont be making any drastic mods until i get my GPU placed and stable, then i'll figure out how my air-box is going to be laid out. For cooling, cleanliness and silence the filtered air-box seems like a superb idea for just about anyone with the ability to make one.

even if you're HD's are already cool, fashioning a filtered air-box for your case would be very simple, and reduce dust-cleanings tremendously.

I'm going to ponder this one for a bit and draw up a few different sketches and see where I can go. Ideally, I'd like to have a 120mm fan pulling air through the box and blowing directly onto the GPU

Then I could have my rear fan become an intake as well, cut a 120mm hole on top of the case and fashion a 2nd air-box (Mounted externally) as a silenced exhaust :-D

and the foam padding the guy used for his air-box in the link seems like it would absorb a great deal of vibration and noise as well, and is fairly cheap at the hardware store, cheaper than wood anyway.

so many ideas... :drool

 

Yup, on the (cheap) filter topic, stocking (not fishnet ) or something like a nappy liner sheet (unused!) or one of the fabric conditioner sheets for tumble dryers; the less resistance it offers to the airflow, the quieter the PC will be; it would ideally be attached to some kind of easily removable frame for cleaning but the frame itself would need to be a tight fit to the case or too much air will be passed at higher speed around it, increasing noise levels and allowing ingress of more dust.

 

Well i have roomates who tend to complain about my fans after midnight, So i will definately look into upgrading to some more quiet fans. Current fans are those blue LED Thermaltake fans with the knob for speed-adjustment from Newegg for $7/each. Noisy, but pretty :-D

For HD's im currently running the 750Gb Seagate barracuda ST3750528AS, and a 250Gb WD Caviar WD2500JS. No raid array yet, not that i dont plan to, it's just that I've never researched RAID and figured it all out yet. thats another rainy-day project.

Regarding the sheer-mesh hose for filter material, great idea! I was going to cannibalize an old vaccuum cleaner for the HEPA-grade filter. But the stocking will be an endless supply of good easy to manage filter material.

I also really like that Zalman CPU cooler. I currently just have a fairly modest looking Asus block and fan (see below pic). It does keep my core temps under 50 degrees celcius during overnight stress-tests or folding. Once I install my new motherboard and raise my Vcore to achieve a better OC, it might need to be replaced, but will take care of me for now. It is however silent below 40% fanspeed, and noisy as all heck above 50%.