Am I too stingy with cooling/fans?

[Antoneo]

Hey guys, I've never been a cooling freak and perhaps it is biting me now.

I have 4 hard drives in a one chieftec/antec cases that everyone and their mother has (that tower thing). They are all seagate barracuda IV/V (one 80 and the rest 200GB) and my case or motherboard temperature reads at 40 degrees celsius usually. I have no case fans and only my ATI card and and Intel retail CPU fans are running. Is this not a good idea? I hate fan noise, and I just hate noise in general so I was aiming to get it as silent as possible by running as few fans as possible.

I know computer components die faster when subjected to increased heat but I've been running this setup for 3 years now and only recently have one of my hard drives been giving me some problems. Well, actually all of them fail the seagate seatools (the one that is run from a floppy) quick test with either some possible bad sectors and all of them have some sort of problem with their filesystem. Which is strange since I ran chkdsk /f on all of them, and nothing seems to be wrong. I'm now running chkdsk /f /r and it's taking real long. Can't say that there are any errors since the prompt goes away while I'm doing other things. I've gotten "Delayed write failure" often just recently on my last hard drive and that has me worried the most.

I have a old setup of a P4 1.6a at stock, might overclock in the future. In that case I'll probably need better all around cooling. PSU is a Antec TruePower 330W, not the quietest (esp. compared to my Fortron 300 with a 120mm fan inside.. )
For now, should I finally break down and get some panaflos for the computer? Do seagates notoriously not like a little heat or something?

Ok, yes, there is noise from the computer as it's not a silent PC but for the number of hard drives it's quiet. Much, much better than all of the PCs my friends have. I don't know how they put up with that racket from the fans and their WD drives grinding away.

 

[Farvacola]

I think its been pure luck that youve had no trouble till now. I have 6 case fans and i am very thankful because i have a fx 53 and a 6800U so airflow is essential. I reccomend you get fans immediately.

 

[0roo0roo]

you need atleast a few. even at very low rpms they help lots. use a fan controller. i somehow doubt your psu is that quiet to begin with.

 

[oogabooga]

if you're going to be overclocking, you will need fans. I'm surprised you don't have any now. Don't your harddrives must make noise as is their being 4 of them and such [though granted they are seagates]...

i'd sucumb and get the panaflows, and if it REALLY bothers you, get a rheobus or a voltage limiter and run them at 7v for even further reduced noise. Airflow won't hurt your parts (generally speaking) and the noise increase should be relatively negligable.

 

[prometheusxls]

Originally posted by: Antoneo
Hey guys, I've never been a cooling freak and perhaps it is biting me now.

I have 4 hard drives in a one chieftec/antec cases that everyone and their mother has (that tower thing). They are all seagate barracuda IV/V (one 80 and the rest 200GB) and my case or motherboard temperature reads at 40 degrees celsius usually. I have no case fans and only my ATI card and and Intel retail CPU fans are running. Is this not a good idea? I hate fan noise, and I just hate noise in general so I was aiming to get it as silent as possible by running as few fans as possible.

I know computer components die faster when subjected to increased heat but I've been running this setup for 3 years now and only recently have one of my hard drives been giving me some problems. Well, actually all of them fail the seagate seatools (the one that is run from a floppy) quick test with either some possible bad sectors and all of them have some sort of problem with their filesystem. Which is strange since I ran chkdsk /f on all of them, and nothing seems to be wrong. I'm now running chkdsk /f /r and it's taking real long. Can't say that there are any errors since the prompt goes away while I'm doing other things. I've gotten "Delayed write failure" often just recently on my last hard drive and that has me worried the most.

I have a old setup of a P4 1.6a at stock, might overclock in the future. In that case I'll probably need better all around cooling
For now, should I finally break down and get some panaflos for the computer? Do seagates notoriously not like a little heat or something?

I always use atleast one exhaust 80mm fan in every system. Even is the system is just running at stock witha bear minimum of addons and extras. The cheap 80mm ones at 7V will push enough air and be pretty quiet. Its totally worth the small price for reilablity.

In your case you especially need a fan or two. You have 4 HDDs thats like 100+ watts of heat right there. Something has to remove that heat from the case right? If your case is at 40C then you HDDs areprobably at like 45-50C and your CPU is at 50 (if you use stock cooling). So yea you need to do somethign to make a breeze

 

[Nickel020]

Get two Panaflo L1As for the back and at least one for the front and run them at 7V. With four HDs and stock hsfs you won't be able to hear them.

 

[Antoneo]

My CPU at idle is about 42-43C and it'll hit 53C under load. Yeah, now that I think about it, having the hard drives in a nest formation (they're all right underneath each other) is probably not good. Only recently have I run the computers 24/7 (for the past 2 months... during the summer). Uh ok.

Anyways, just to keep you guys amused, I'm probably buying another hard drive tonight (Outpost deal for the seagate 200GB). I'll hook up some cheap fans while I'm at it and order some better ones..


Where's the cheapest place (without getting ripped off) to get panaflos? I checked newegg and they wanted 12 shipped for a 80mm fan.

Hrmm, I just checked some other places and they go for about $10. Lots of money eh?

 

[t3hmuffinman]

i'd just like to say that that's pretty hardcore (in a leet way) that you had no case fans hehe...

 

[0roo0roo]

shouldn't be nest formation in that case, there are two removable 3 1/2 inch bays. enough for space between each. and one bay has a fan mount to boot. other one has it as optional... u can order it i think but thats overkill since the case has so mnay other fan mounting areas to provide flow

 

[xbassman]

Where's the cheapest place (without getting ripped off) to get panaflos?

SVC has em with 3-pin connectors for $6.99 here.
They don't add shipping on each item. Goes by weight.

 

[caz67]

Originally posted by: Farvacola
I think its been pure luck that youve had no trouble till now. I have 6 case fans and i am very thankful because i have a fx 53 and a 6800U so airflow is essential. I reccomend you get fans immediately.

Too many fans can cause negative pressure, ie to much heat by actually reducing airflow. So having lots of fans isn't necessarily a good thing.

However having none, is ridiculous. You should at least 2 or 3 fans as a minimum.

 

[0roo0roo]

well that only happens if your intake vs exhaust is seriously imbalanced. case fans are really bad at fighting back pressure. only bad thing about too mnay fans is at a certain point, your heatsinks can't get any cooler

 

[Operandi]

Normally I would say your fine with just 1/2 exhaust fans but with that many HD's your going to have to provide them with some cooling as well. I'm running all my L1A's off my motherboard headers and control them with Speedfan, if your board supports it look into it. 95% of the time they are running at 60% which is nearly silent but if the need for extra cooling comes in they increase their speed accordingly.

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

Originally posted by: caz67

Originally posted by: Farvacola
I think its been pure luck that youve had no trouble till now. I have 6 case fans and i am very thankful because i have a fx 53 and a 6800U so airflow is essential. I reccomend you get fans immediately.

Too many fans can cause negative pressure, ie to much heat by actually reducing airflow. So having lots of fans isn't necessarily a good thing.

However having none, is ridiculous. You should at least 2 or 3 fans as a minimum.

uuuuummmmmmmmm...this makes no sense

even if you do have more exhaust than intake adding another fan as exhaust will still move more air through the case and therefore more heat. you will maximise airflow with equal intake and outtake fans

there is a utility called DiskCheckup that will tell you the temp of the drive, though i don't have a download link...based off my temps when i turn off all fans, and i only have 2 hds, i'd say yours are closer to 60 than 50, seagate says the operating temp is supposed to be between 5 and 50 C so you should get at least a fan over hds and a rear exhaust. you won't notice any extra noise due to a 7v panaflow over that

 

[fanboi]

Originally posted by: caz67

Originally posted by: Farvacola
I think its been pure luck that youve had no trouble till now. I have 6 case fans and i am very thankful because i have a fx 53 and a 6800U so airflow is essential. I reccomend you get fans immediately.

Too many fans can cause negative pressure, ie to much heat by actually reducing airflow. So having lots of fans isn't necessarily a good thing.

However having none, is ridiculous. You should at least 2 or 3 fans as a minimum.

Actually...

Negative pressure: Caused when more air is blown out of the case (through fans) than is blown in. Causes air to be sucked into the case through cracks and openings to compensate for the pressure.

Positive pressure: Caused when more air is blown into the case (through fans) than is drawn out. Causes air to escape the case through cracks to compensate for the pressure inside the case.

In either scenario, you'll get airflow. Just that with negative pressure, you'll get dust sucked into the case as well.