Advice about hard drive placement in case for best airflow

[Aznguy1872]

So the case I have is an Antec 900, I have two options to where I can put my hard drives. Either in the middle rack or the very bottom rack which is almost straight across from the PSU. I've been trying to think of which would give better airflow in the case. I'm thinking putting the hard drives at the bottom since the middle fan can blow freely into the bottom of the motherboard, what do you guys think?

 

[JohnVM]

I also have a Antec P900.

If you decide to put multiple drives in the very bottom rack, watch out for heat issues. When I put 4 there in RAID, even with that fan blowing directly onto them at max speed, they quickly overheatd under heavy load.

Read about my problems here: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=27&threadid=2086300

 

[Aznguy1872]

I see, hrm I guess I'll just leave them at the middle rack then. Did you use that extra black rack thing that can hold another fan along the drive bay? I'm thinking about using it to get extra air flow in the case but not sure how to install it.

 

[Zepper]

The key to cooling a stack of HDDs with a single fan is spacing. You want the moving air to be able to get to the bottoms (PCB sides) of the drives as that is where the heat is.

.bh.