Air-flow questions for cooling 7 HDDs. Which blow-hole direction is optimal? (Pics inside)

CZroe

Lifer
Jun 24, 2001
24,195
857
126
First of all, a new case is out of the question. I am designating my old P4 system as the fileserver and have spent as little as possible to get to this point.

Seven hard drives get searing hot, so I need some helpfull suggestions for additional air-flow other than tidying up the PSU wires (It's impossible. Antec tangles the wires and zip-ties them that way for some reason and any "touching" seems to make the AUX connector pop off).

OK, after extending my HDD cage, I had to remove the plastic cage which holds the case's 80mm input fan (Inwin S508-IW... The first available case with P4 s423 mounts and P4 PSU). This case would have seven instead of two drives and yet have LESS cooling than it did with only two? NO WAY! But I couldn't add a normal sized fan even without the fan cage. There simply isn't enough clearance. I had to buy a slim Zalman fan and temporarilly use a slim heatsink fan (Soon to be replaced with two chipset fans.). Untill I have the chance to mount them permanently, they are rigged up like this

Now, should I drill intake holes in front of the drive cage and mount the Zalman directly in front of the bulk of the drives or should I make a side-mounted blow-hole (Leaving the Zalman where it's at but more neatly mounted)? The original drive cage has vent holes perfectly sized for the two chipset fans I plan to add (See the first external shot). I don't plan on trashing that HSF, so it'll need its fan back ;)

The seven IDE cables are as tidy as I can get them without stressing the unsecured full-length card (five here, the other two are in fan-rigging shot.). They certainly do cause dead air for the Intel i960RM RISC CPU though. I don't want another blow-hole just for that though and mounting it one slot higher for a slot-fan would only suspend those cables in the middle of the case, blocking air to the rest of the system. Any suggestions?
 

justly

Banned
Jul 25, 2003
493
0
0
When you go to his link and get "The page cannot be found" you should also see "Please try the following:" then below that "Open the pics.apartment808.com/ home page, and then look for links to the information you want."

If you did this you can see the individual picture links listed on the left side of the page.

He may not be able to get a direct link using that site, but it does work if you do it this way.

edit: guess I'm moving to slow tonight, and missed the subdirectory problem also...oh well.
 

CZroe

Lifer
Jun 24, 2001
24,195
857
126

Thnx! That's what I get for composing it off-line and quickly posting it during a break :) (Ichinisan: You know the password, why didn't you fix it for me? :| )

Originally posted by: AWhackWhiteBoy
christ what a mess. just buy a new 300gig drive :p

The reason I needed it wasn't for additional storage space but to END the series of catastrophic HDD failures and fragmented file archive (Never know if that important file was on the failed drive or not).

The point was not to have 300GB or more of storage... the point was that I simply could not stand to loose another 60/80/100GB HDD. I don't know what I'd do if I had to redownload and rearchive 300GBs of data ;) (Give up computers alltogether? Probably...) Besides, this is a 6-drive array of 120GB drives (720GB, 600GB after RAID5 trade-off). I went ahead and used enough storage to last for whatever we could need because a Promise SuperTrak SX6000 will not allow you to expand a RAID5 array. Also, 120GB had a sweet price point ($59 after rebate). Oh, and what the hell would I image a 300GB drive to for my planned weekly backup? ;)

Originally posted by: justly
When you go to his link and get "The page cannot be found" you should also see "Please try the following:" then below that "Open the pics.apartment808.com home page, and then look for links to the information you want."

If you did this you can see the individual picture links listed on the left side of the page.

He may not be able to get a direct link using that site, but it does work if you do it this way.

Actually, minendo of Anandtech Off-Topic fame provides this service for free specifically to Anandtech members ;)

I just had my links wrong. ST4RCUTTER corrected them. (Thnx again)
 

AIWGuru

Banned
Nov 19, 2003
1,497
0
0
I know you said no new case but I mean...
...
...
You can't fit an anvil inside an orange.
...
...
The chieftec dragon series has supports at the front of the case for full length PCI cards, front 80mm fans, two hard drive cages with 3 slots each, and you can always mount the 7th hard drive in one of the 5.25" bays with an adapter. Much better for airflow and support for your full length PCI card.
 

CZroe

Lifer
Jun 24, 2001
24,195
857
126
Originally posted by: AIWGuru
I know you said no new case but I mean...
...
...
You can't fit an anvil inside an orange.
...
...
The chieftec dragon series has supports at the front of the case for full length PCI cards, front 80mm fans, two hard drive cages with 3 slots each, and you can always mount the 7th hard drive in one of the 5.25" bays with an adapter. Much better for airflow and support for your full length PCI card.

But I fear that any enthusiasts chasis probably suffers from OCS (Overbuilt Case Syndrome) :D

I would NEVER buy a case just because it has those mounts after experiencing that. From now on if I can help it, I only buy if I've tried. Learned my lesson with Antec TruePower PSUs and front-mounted USB connectors (Though they are sending me the USB2.0 compliant connectors).
 

CZroe

Lifer
Jun 24, 2001
24,195
857
126
I think I've settled on:

Front mounted fan draws in (For system and partial drive cage air-flow).
Blow-hole blows in (For direct drive cage air-flow).
Chipset fans blow out (For immediate removal of the hottest air from the top two HDDs).

I think the surplus of intake fans will easilly balance the air-flow so the tiny output fans on the front will not disturb the rest of the system's air-flow. Perhaps it'll stir up enough air for the XOR CPU, though I still worry about that.