Cooling 2 SCSI drives

[KyleMac]

My setup is not the best, it's crap. But I was recently given 2x Seagate Cheetah 36ES 17GB and managed to scrounge a SCSI adapter and cables. Now these things are damn hot. I'm not sure how hot since they have no sensors but they are under my 80GB Maxtor which used to read 28C-38C before I put the SCSI drives in. It now reads 38C-47C, so we can only imagine what temp the SCSI drives themselves are. The max temp for all the drives is 55C.

I'd like to get some HDD coolers but you will see my problem after this bad representation of my bays.

5'25 (ext) - CD/DVD
5'25 (ext) - CDRW
5'25 (ext) - 20GB IDE
3.5 (shaped to floppy) - Floppy (thinking of swapping this for SCSI or USB ext floppy)
3.5 (I think I can pull a bit off to make ext) - 80GB IDE
3.5 (int) - 17GB SCSI
3.5 (int) - 17GB SCSI

Pretty much every hdd cooler I can find needs an open front 5'25 bay and as you can see I'd only be able to do this for 1 of the drives.

If I have to buy an expensive case to keep these drives from overheating and breaking then I'd rather just put them away until some other day. I'd rather save for an NV30 (which it seems like it's going to cost exactly what I had been hoping for) than get some fast hdds that I don't really need.

So, suggestions?

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

can you somehow mount a fan there?

Aluminum Hard Disk Drive Cooler. Single-Fan. Retail
maybe get a couple of those and just leave them on the bottom of your case?

or
Enermax's Cooling device for HD/CD bays

go to www.newegg.com and look under harddrive coolers to see if you can find something you can work with

 

[sharkeeper]

nVidia is using a transparent dust buster cooler for their FX cards. That would make a nice drive cooler! :Q

On a more serious note, if you have less than 20 mm space between each drive, you are going to need at LEAST 20 CFM airflow across each drive to maintain temperatures deemed safe for continous operation. I use X15 36LP's and if they are run out in the open outside of any channeled airflow, they get HOT. I couldn't imagine running them in a PC case with no flow across the drive!

Cheers!

 

[KyleMac]

That's the problem. I've got no bays left to put any fans in or allow any airflow unless I take 2 drives out. I also can't put both of the drives in their own cooler bay thing because I only have 1 5'25 bay left.

Please try and understand the table of what's where in the case.

 

[dkozloski]

Use external drive bays. They are available used for a pittance.

 

[KyleMac]

I can only find 50 pin external bays for about £20 second hand. New 68 pin single external bays seem to be about £60, £90 for double external etc.

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

how about get a coulpe of those bay cooler things, but dont use it in a bay...just leave it at the bottom ofyour case or something

5.25bays
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3.5bays
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leave them here, they should be fine stacked on top of each other anyways

(hey what case do you have?)
if you have a case where the "rails" for the drives extend all the way to the bottom, you can mount them there and have a front mounted 80mm fan and that should be good

ifyou dont have the "rails" going all the way down, the hd's in the 5.25 inch drive bay things should be fine stacked on top of each other since the fan is in the front anyways

 

[Deskstar]

I have two X15 SCSWI drives, both inside my case and neither with dedicated cooling fans. Yes, they get hot. I solved my concerns by a/ monitoring the drive temps with a probe attached to document the temp rather than guessing at it b/ mounting one drive in the usual HD 3.5" location just above the front fan and the second drive at the top of the case in a special drive bay immediately in front of the accessory exhaust fan. I also have a 120mm "In" fan in one side and a 80mm "Out" fan in the other side (both low speed Panaflos). Temps are fine and I don't have to worry about some cheapo 50mm hard drive cooling fan breaking or getting full of dust.

Good case cooling and strategic placement of your fans will handle the SCSI drives just fine.