I've got a WD 2500KS sitting alone in the bottom HD cage of my P180. HDTune is saying its idle temp is 49C. I just removed the fan (YL) from the center of the bottom chamber to accomodate my OCZ Powerstream 520. Since its longer than most psus the fan is a hard fit. Is there any way to bring the HD's temps down? I've seen some mention of mounting a 120mm fan in front of the cage, but don't see how that is possible. Any help would be appreciated.

First up, tape up the vents in the back of the bottom chamber, around the PSU. This will force the PSU to draw air from the front of the case, providing cool airflow around the hard drive.

Already done. Even though the Powerstream takes up almost all of it. I did open up the side while running just to make sure the psu intake fan (its a push-pull 2x80mm) was running. It is. Also, the HD isn't real hot to the touch. Not even mildly uncomfortable. Could this be a case of the drive misreporting temps? Maybe an HDtune issue? I can't run speedfan, it seems to crash DFI LP based systems when it starts. I'm going to try MBM later on too just to rule that out.

Are you using the plastic fan holder? If so you can remove it and mount the fan directly to the metal fan partition for some extra space.

I was able to fit my 25mm thick fan on the other side of the metal fan holder, closer to the hard drives, after switching my SATA data cables to 90 degree type. I also changed the SATA power connector at the end of my PSU's SATA cable to the 90 degree type as well.

I have since moved my fan back to the normal position, since it didn't seem to cool the drives any better and I didn't like removing the fan every time I wanted to remove the hard drive, as this made disconnecting the hard drive cables difficult.

But if your PSU is very large and you need to run that lower chamber fan, using low-profile cables should definitely help...

No bottom fan/bracket at all. I've got the cables from the psu running through that hole and then up into the main chamber from the other side.

Start the system cold, check HD temp. Is it ambient? If not, the sensor is wrong.

That's good advice.

Some of these drives have a firmware bug that causes incorrect temperature reports. See this post and this one at WD's support forum.

Thanks for the links hammer. Looks like I have the same revision/firmware that everyone is complaining about. As for the temp @ cold start, 38-40C, then magically jumps up to 49-51C. No HD usage either. Sitting still. Thanks guys.

Glad to help.

Doesn't crash on mine

Shuts the machine down anytime speedfan is started. There's info about it on dfi street. Might just be the newer high end boards (I have the expert). Seems there is a fix, but MBM DFI edition is working fine for me.