Fan and hard drive question

[puntoMX]

- if the drive is on the green dot, incoming airflow passes up and down the drive

Yes, passing, but it´s always better to hit the device by air...

- if the drive is one step higher or one step lower, incoming airflow passes only up or down, and most important, is reduced (less smoke gets in)

That’s not true, okay air will bounce against the device but that is cooling the device more...

And we all agree on using the case as a cooler. But most cases will not do it well, Aluminum cases like the Wavemaster from Coolermaster will do the job well with there 2 to 3mm aluminum frame but cases with galvanized 0.6mm steel will most likely not do any good for cooling.

To tell you the truth, I don’t use any fans in frond of my computer, just a 12cm outtake fan (on my new systems), side inducts for air to the CPU and that’s about it. I only will place 92mm or 12cm fans in frond of the system when bigger VGA cards are installed and for more hard drives I use fans too. I keep space in between them so warm-air will get away. I noticed that drives are cooler when they are not placed on the height of the rotor, although we are talking about 3oC to 10oC with room temperatures at 25oC.

Any way, like posted here before it’s always better to try it out, some things are not seen...

[ripken204]

andromeda, what temps does that give you for ur hdd? i have a 120mm fan in front of my hdd and it stays around 31C most of the time, and the fan makes pretty much no noise, those little fans on the hdd cooler must be loud.

[Andromeda43]

andromeda, what temps does that give you for ur hdd? i have a 120mm fan in front of my hdd and it stays around 31C most of the time, and the fan makes pretty much no noise, those little fans on the hdd cooler must be loud.

Well my calibrated heat sensor (my experienced index finger) says that my drives stay at room temperature even under heavy work loads like doing a Defrag or Ghost backup.

The fans run quieter than a mouse blowing bubbles in a feather bed,,,,,and I don't even have the side panels on, and the CPU is sitting here on the table right next to my mouse pad, so if there was excessive noise, I'd sure know about it.

With my drive+fan assembly, I can stick the drive anywhere, even in the bottom of the case and I have no worry about the drive getting hot.

Don't (anyone) tell me that 7200 rpm drives don't get hot! I burned my hand on one trying to remove it from a case after it had shot craps. It had no cooler. They can get DANG'd HOT!

It's rediculous, that one of the greatest heat generating components in a PC is also one that needs the greatest cooling to prevent its demise.

Well, y'all do exactly what you want. But, I put the little $10 coolers on all my drives and I don't have to have to ask anyone where to mount my drives.

Cheers mates!

B)

[Zxian]

The fans run quieter than a mouse blowing bubbles in a feather bed,,,,,and I don't even have the side panels on, and the CPU is sitting here on the table right next to my mouse pad, so if there was excessive noise, I'd sure know about it.

Silence is a relative term... if you've got your "quiet" computer sitting next to your fridge, then yea - most computers can be pretty quiet.

When the whirr of your hard drives is the only thing you hear from your computer, then that's a quiet computer. B)

[LLXX]

Don't (anyone) tell me that 7200 rpm drives don't get hot! I burned my hand on one trying to remove it from a case after it had shot craps. It had no cooler. They can get DANG'd HOT!

It was probably not attached well to the case (or the case itself didn't get cooled well) which explains why it got so hot (and also likely why it died - of overheating). They do get hot when isolated with no airflow, one time I was formatting a 120Gb 7200RPM WD, and it got hot enough to slightly melt the plastic coating of the tabletop it was sitting on.

[Delprat]

Yes, passing, but it´s always better to hit the device by air...

(...)

That’s not true, okay air will bounce against the device but that is cooling the device more...

And we all agree on using the case as a cooler. (...)

To tell you the truth, I don’t use any fans in frond of my computer, just a 12cm outtake fan (on my new systems), side inducts for air to the CPU and that’s about it. I only will place 92mm or 12cm fans in frond of the system when bigger VGA cards are installed and for more hard drives I use fans too. I keep space in between them so warm-air will get away. I noticed that drives are cooler when they are not placed on the height of the rotor, although we are talking about 3oC to 10oC with room temperatures at 25oC.

Any way, like posted here before it’s always better to try it out, some things are not seen...

« some things are not seen » ? like what ? noise ? heat ? or debiliting rays emitted by plasma screens imported from Beta-Centauri ? (just kidding...)

What i said is from my experience, that seems to differ than yours.

i suppose you know that the heat a hard drive, a CPU or whatever, generates does not depend on how it's cooled, thus having it hitted by the airflow to get it a few degrees lower is useless if its temp remains stable under the limits (that is, having a drive at 35 or 40 will not change anything since different constructors are placing the sensor at different places ; but having it taking one degree per hour is a problem).

on the opposite, the global cooling offered by the airflow dramatically depends on the constance of the flow. a turbulent flow will provide poor thermal dissipation and let hot points gets even hotter. If you have a correct flow from the front, you don't need those side inducts for CPUs (except for overclocking, or hard gaming when it's 45 C outdoor). moreover, those side inducts are bad for the airflow, they provide better CPU cooling, but the rest of the case gets warmer (like a disc burner for example)

++

[puntoMX]

Okay, I think this is getting... well... something personal against me?

Listen, try this:

- put a ventilator that blows next to you

- put a ventilator on you

Then tell me what you feel...

Only thing I can say is that I tried it out, even with the servers I sell, some are placed in rooms that are 30oC and I did a lot of test on it.

Before in Holland, talking about 1996, I was selling video editing systems with FAST (brand) capture cards and systems normally just worked 5 hours rendering with normal cooling. By experimenting a lot I got the system stable to 8 hours just by playing with fans.

Could you just say for ones that I could be right with some points?

[Delprat]

Okay, I think this is getting... well... something personal against me?

Listen, try this:

- put a ventilator that blows next to you

- put a ventilator on you

Then tell me what you feel...

Only thing I can say is that I tried it out, even with the servers I sell, some are placed in rooms that are 30oC and I did a lot of test on it.

Before in Holland, talking about 1996, I was selling video editing systems with FAST (brand) capture cards and systems normally just worked 5 hours rendering with normal cooling. By experimenting a lot I got the system stable to 8 hours just by playing with fans.

Could you just say for ones that I could be right with some points?

You're right on all of this , and reading me back i don't see where i'd say you weren't

(hey, we're maybe both right ? )

You're talking about somewhat extreme conditions...

I'm just saying that if i were a harddrive (not the ones you're talking about for sure), i'd feel better if i could stay cool whith no fan blowing on me :

that's the difference between a windy day and a vveerryywwiinnddyyddaayy, not between a fan next to me and a fan that blows on me.

I must insist on the importance of eliminating the turbulences inside the case, they do nothing really good for cooling on the long term, and they increase the static electricity problems... switching to passive or liquid cooling is also a good idea (specifically for the so classic "servers in a room @ 30" problem)

btw, i've nothing against you

++

[puntoMX]

I’m happy that you have nothing against me , neither do I have something against you, we all like to be a team here on MSFN .

Talking about water cooling in servers; Not such a good idea, well, the idea is good but it’s still to risky to do that and it takes a bit more maintenance then just a fan and a some software that alarms you when a fan is dead or bad by sound or mail. I just try to use cases with 12cm fans in towers and 80 or 92mm fans in 19" rack cases. I use AMD in all my servers and I’m happy with the new coming X2 at 35Watts. I use nVidia cards in workstations because they are getting less hot, and with that it uses less power too. High efficient power supplies like 80-85% do wonders too, although the heat of it is blown directly out.

Turbulence indeed kills the purpose of airflow many times, not all the time (there are things I can’t explain, aerodynamics is not my career ). But most of us remember the Super Orb from Thermaltake, with 2 fans above each other. This orb cooler sucked in cooling well with both fans on, using only the fan on the bottom of the cooler gave it a better result and so I sold those coolers telling my customers to take off the top fan, btw, those coolers are also known as AMD core killers , never had problems with them dough.

I like the vveerryywwiinnddyyddaayy, that’s cool B).

[Delprat]

Talking about water cooling in servers; Not such a good idea, well, the idea is good but it’s still to risky to do that and it takes a bit more maintenance then just a fan and a some software that alarms you when a fan is dead or bad by sound or mail. I just try to use cases with 12cm fans in towers and 80 or 92mm fans in 19" rack cases. I use AMD in all my servers and I’m happy with the new coming X2 at 35Watts. I use nVidia cards in workstations because they are getting less hot, and with that it uses less power too. High efficient power supplies like 80-85% do wonders too, although the heat of it is blown directly out.

Using components that generates less heat... i would have said that as clearly.

The water cooling is maybe poorly spread, but i've seen air-conditionned rooms hosting servers... and that's a waste of energy when there is only a few computers.

Inapropriate software can be easily replaced with the saved money in this case (and all good waterblocks comes with dedicated soft) ; and i'm not sure there is really more maintenance : it's not always easy to keep these rooms "dust clean" in offices, and with some thinking, you can ensure that no liquid escape can create short-circuit.

I've also seen "chained" circuits between computers, it seems that, when one is "heavy loaded" and another less, cooling capacity is better used ; but i'm unsure that's realy useful in small setups.

Turbulence indeed kills the purpose of airflow many times, not all the time (there are things I can’t explain, aerodynamics is not my career ).

Nor mine : just try to sort that matter with some smoke, or better with tamised dust or flour (use a "false" case with false hard drives, cards, etc for that ) 'coz more dust will fall inside the case if the flow is inconstant, insufficient, or too turbulent. In brief, you can make a non-direct equivalence between the amount of extracted dust in a cold test case and the amount of extracted heat in a real case.

If you want very accurate results, burn a tire and see how many rubber is not extracted and, more important, where it goes inside the case : as soon as you have turbulences, cleaner places appears, and they are frequently "hot spots" in a real case ; rarely they can be "cold spots" if an "ordered turbulence" appears (like hurricanes are at the world's scale -- sorry i don't know how to explain better)

About the T.S.O., it's obvious that having two fans in a tunnel-like structure is a bad idea, since it needs an extremely precise calibration to keep air presure the same between fans (and this will be dependant of the airflow around the S.O., a thing thermaltake engineers has no control over)

I like the vveerryywwiinnddyyddaayy, that’s cool B).

++

edit: 500th post ! chanpagne !

Edited September 25, 2006 by Delprat