Hard drive ventilation

[Umberger]

I am in the process of watercooling, working my way toward a (nearly) silent PC. I'm installing a Zalman Reserator, and planning on removing all of my case fans, since the majority of the heat from my CPU and video card will be removed from the case. I'm putting a passive heatsink on the northbridge. What i'm wondering is if I really need to have some sort of air movement over my hard drives. They are in the bottom front of the case and currently have fans blowing across them, they run at 25-35C. If I remove all of my case fans, convection will tend to make air rise out the fan hole in the top of my case and draw it in the side window and the bottom vents near the hard drives. Will this be enough to keep the hard drives reasonably cool, or would this be a good place for a single case fan?

 

[Umberger]

morning bump?

 

[corsa]

Disconnect ur front cooling fans and see what temps u reach under heavy load on ur HD.
There are passive HD coolers available aswell.
Also heat sinks by design need air to make them work.....so that nth bridge on ur asus will get very hot without it.

 

[Tiamat]

Relying on natural convection didn't workout for me. I installed a 92mm Nexus fan and run it at 5V and it works like a charm. Even though it barely blows any air, it is enough to drop the temps by 10C and be without noise.

 

[Umberger]

Originally posted by: corsa
Disconnect ur front cooling fans and see what temps u reach under heavy load on ur HD.
There are passive HD coolers available aswell.
Also heat sinks by design need air to make them work.....so that nth bridge on ur asus will get very hot without it.

i'm doing that now. i am finding that my casefans aren't what's making the majority of my noise, it's the cpu, video card, and N-bridge, so if they get hot, it won't hurt to have some quiet case fans running.

i'm considering adding a northbridge water block to the system, but a big zalman heatsink was only $4.99 at newegg, so I figured I might as well try it... if it stays cool, great... if not, I'll water cool it.

 

[potato28]

Ya... use low speed fans or undervolted fans.

 

[The Linuxator]

Originally posted by: potato28
Ya... use low speed fans or undervolted fans.

 

[corsa]

just 1 question....how will u live with the noise from ur hard drives? lol :laugh:

 

[Umberger]

Originally posted by: corsa
just 1 question....how will u live with the noise from ur hard drives? lol :laugh:

RAM drives FTW!!!

 

[Howard]

If the drives are hard-mounted, they won't really need any forced air.

If you suspend them with rubber bands/cords, you'd be a lot better off installing aluminum heatsinks on the sides (U-channels or whatever you can find).

 

[Umberger]

Originally posted by: Howard
If the drives are hard-mounted, they won't really need any forced air.

If you suspend them with rubber bands/cords, you'd be a lot better off installing aluminum heatsinks on the sides (U-channels or whatever you can find).

i'm not sure i follow... is this because the case acts like a heatsink if they're hard mounted?

 

[GalvanizedYankee]

Put a low flow fan on'em.

BGMicro.com and AllElectronics.com have Delta 60x10 fans for <<$3. Buy several.

They will fit in tight spaces and are near silent at 5V. They start/run without a hitch at 5V.
Just hook'em up to the 5V wire in the 4pin Molex=the red wire. 12V is yellow.

They will fit where a 80x25 or 92x25 is a no-go.


...Galvanized

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: Umberger

Originally posted by: Howard
If the drives are hard-mounted, they won't really need any forced air.

If you suspend them with rubber bands/cords, you'd be a lot better off installing aluminum heatsinks on the sides (U-channels or whatever you can find).

i'm not sure i follow... is this because the case acts like a heatsink if they're hard mounted?

Yes. The metal sheets that the HDs screw into act like heatsinks. That's why HDs heat up so much more when suspended by rubber.