effectively cooling hdd's (55 degrees!) - improve new rig airflow

[maldyzooks]

my new rig looks like this:
*i37.tinypic.com/11llder.jpg

problem is that my hdd's are overheating big time....reaching 50 degrees, yest night went upto 55 before i gave up n shut it down.

Have ordered a 120mm coolermaster fan to fit in the front slot to help with airflow and cooling,
but is there anything else i should do?

Right now, i've salvaged some other external 120mm fan that I had lying around and just blowing air from the outside , brute force...its a 15W fan and LOUD, but its doing its job currently, keeping all hdd's at around 40 degrees. But too cumbersome, not sleek, loud as hell and utterly power consuming.

Tips will be greatly appreciated.

 

[maldyzooks]

just for the interested,the config is

tagan tg-500-u37 smps
asus m4a785td-v evo mobo
phenom 2 x2 550 BE cpu - unlocked to X4 b50
corsair 2X1gb ddr3 1333mhz cl9 ram
the 3 hdd's are all 1TB all from different era
7200.11 , wd10eads and 7200.12 (new)
cabinet is thermaltake wing rs 201
cpu cooler is sunbeam core contact freezer 120mm
palit ati 4670 super 512gddr3

the external fan i mention is really a monster fan, so i dont think the CM fan i am about to put in will be anywhere remotely close to it in terms of blow capacity.

idling temperatures with fan are 40 degrees for hdd's and 49 without.

 

[Xeno]

The Harddrives are spaced way too close to each other. I have the same motherboard coupled with a AMD Athlon X4 620, and a single 500GB WD HDD.

Now, the problem is the airflow. Your harddrives are huge (1TB lol !) and they'll consume a lot of energy as the no.of platters / heads that drives are more. Therefore more heat generated

Now coming to the point,
- Can you remove one drive ? Do you really need 3TB to be used all the time ? You could use the E-Sata port for a drive, take out the middle one, creating some space between the top and the bottom drives. Use a CM 120mm Fan with 90 CFM, ( I have it on mine ) and my harddrive doesnt cross 32*C even its being used constantly to read/write (torrents run 24x7).

Plus you could do sooome cable management, the no.of cables is just ... a lot. Which would hamper in the airflow.

Since you stated already that using a 120mm "blower" like fan you were able to cool the drives, simply shows that your cabby is cramped,doesnt have proper airflow or maybe both.

Alternative :
This would be a bit ugly as I'd suggest you to like cut out the part of the cabinet side panel near the harddrives (if you don't want to remove any drives) , fit a 120mm Grill on it and have a fan blow at the harddrive's sides, along with the fan at the front.

Hope this helps

 

[maldyzooks]

1. yea, i will be moving hdd's up n down to create some more space in between.

2. yes will, also tie up cables nicely together.

3. unfortunately, i do need 3TB , work ,ent. , os's tp , virt, etc. But yea, good point about removing a drive...if i could only find a casing with esata


PS: u must live in one heck of a cool area/ room to have 32 degs....
even my old cabinet with every part stripped and me blowing cold air directly onto the hdd, the temps never went below 35 , except in winter

PS#2: is it strange that even with CCF and no OC, my cpu idle temp is 40 degrees and prime95 load after 2hrs temp is 59, isnt it bit too high?

 

[Xeno]

Yep its very cool here I need a blanket at night usually all the time except summer.

Just that dust is a problem..
Oh and yes that brings to my mind that just have a blower / vacuum cleaner handy and just clean the case once a week, its barely been a week since I bought and I see a fiiine layer of dust everywhere.

40*C hrm... that's normal however I see you have a custom cooler for the CPU with a 120mm fan. What kind of temperatures did you get at idle when you used the stock cooler ?

59*C after using Prime 95 isn't high at all. I'd say that's quite normal. Is that the max temp you saw ?

I have the Athlon X4 running at stock speed with the stock cooler and it hovers from 32*C-34*C at idle and 45*C at load (Video conversion ) Don't know about the Phenom X2 "unlocked"

Unless you're using your rig extensively all the time you might want to check out the cool'n'quiet feature on the motherboard.

 

[maldyzooks]

got this just yesterday, so dint have much idea abt phenom temps or on stock
But after 4 yrs with prescott on stock cooler, this feels positively chilly.
yea dust cleaner very impt. far too much dust here in mum...

 

[Xeno]

Oh anooother thing that came to my notice.

Does the fan on the CPU Cooler blow the air into the heatsink or suck out of it ?

Cause if it blows the air into the heatsink then it'd be somewhat less efficient as the red fan on the case also blows the air out. Therefore most of the hot air in the case would come to that zone and your CPU cooler would be sucking in relatively hotter air again and again. Also that'd make the "red" fan blow out less air than normally it would.


Sidequery:
How did you unlock the 4 cores ? The Phenom X2 550 BE would be just too awesome with the cores unlocked How much did you pay for the CPU ?

 

[asingh]

Just do this and you will get approximate 7-8 degree drop:

1. Place the HDDs alternatively.
2. Fix the cable management. See if you can route some cables from behind the right side internal metal siding, and then to the HDDs, motherboard, GPU. Buy a packet of cable ties, and neatly tie up the cables in bunches, and using similar cable ties bind the cables to the cabinet.
3. I am assuming the HSF fan is of type 'pull'. And it is too close to the back cabinet fan which is obviously push. As a general rule keep cooling fans widely spaced out far as possible. Put the HSF fan on the other side of the HSF and keep the orientation 'pull'.
4. Place a pull fan on the mesh that is in front of the HDD array.

Do this, and check the airflow. To do this...get all fans to blow, and hold a burning incense stick inside the cabinet. The smoke flow, will give you an idea of the airflow.

 

[maldyzooks]

@xeno:
1. HSF is pull, sucks air from heatsink and pushes it to the exhaust fan.
2. i dint buy components specifically with intention to unlock, it just happened. cpu part is 0929APMW.cpu i paid 5.x something.
Just enabled acc in bios and the option below it which i read in some forum.

@asigh:
1. there are only 4 X2.5 slots, so 2 disks will still be very close to each other
2. the smps wires are too thick to be handled well, but i've managed to push most of the wires above the disks. Will tie up the sata power n data cables neatly too.
3. hsf is pushing air to the exhaust fan which is also pushing it out. But I imagine that the big heatsink is preventing any airflow on the other side of the cabinet
4. ordered a fan already

nice idea with the incense stick

 

[asingh]

@xeno:
1. HSF is pull, sucks air from heatsink and pushes it to the exhaust fan.
2. i dint buy components specifically with intention to unlock, it just happened. cpu part is 0929APMW.cpu i paid 5.x something.
Just enabled acc in bios and the option below it which i read in some forum.

@asigh:
1. there are only 4 X2.5 slots, so 2 disks will still be very close to each other
2. the smps wires are too thick to be handled well, but i've managed to push most of the wires above the disks. Will tie up the sata power n data cables neatly too.
3. hsf is pushing air to the exhaust fan which is also pushing it out. But I imagine that the big heatsink is preventing any airflow on the other side of the cabinet
4. ordered a fan already

nice idea with the incense stick

How are the temps..now..?

 

[maldyzooks]

havent got the front fan yet, so removed the side panel and blowing air directly onto the disk whose temps are all 36 right now. vent tied up cabling or moved disks yet. will do it sometime this long weekend

 

[harishgayatri]

Get yourself a hard Disk cooler.

I got it for Rs.220 from Lamington road.

It was pretty tough to get hold of One.

It consists of two fans one for Intake and other for Exaust

Look at the Below image
*modfactor.com/images/cooling/Spire/SP4.jpg
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Posted again:
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It is available in ebay.

google hard disk cooler.

 

[maldyzooks]

update: i've connected a front 120mm fan in the cabinet now and temperatures of all hdd's never cross 37 for now

dont think i've enough space for hdd cooler to fit , but will check em out anyway

 

[Xeno]

the hdd coolers wont work wells if there's no air circulation in the cabinet, would only keep on circulating the hot air in a local loop. they themselves require a whole slot as well.

Glad to see the front fan effects did you space one of the drives out a bit ?

 

[maldyzooks]

not yet, no enthu to remove all the power cables and mobo connectors...will do it on a later date when i clean it