6 drives and quiet(ish)?

Mupp · Post by **Mupp** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 5:01 pm

Well here's the deal:

My fileserver is about to retire, and I have to replace it. The core of the next one will be six (6) Hitachi drives (stop laughing), raid5. Where do I put them? Is there a case able to house six suspended drives and not drive me nuts? I've searched and not really found much. I've been looking at a lian li v2100, but it's a bit steep, especially since I don't know if it'll actually be any good. I've looked at those server cube thingies, but they seem to be even pricier, and not many of them like 12cm fans.

I went and built a wooden (MDF) case, quite large with its WxHxD = 90x50x50 cm approx. I planned to put a lot of dampening material in it, along with the sound traps I built in it. However, I did a quick test today without any dampening foam in it, 4 of the disks, and with the doors shut I couldn't hear it over the dreadful ventilation we have here. I started having second thoughts though, if something gets terribly hot I'd rather have it in a steel case than a wooden one. I guess my insurance company wouldn't share my pride of my fancy case when it starts a fire, would they? But I gained a little confidence in the fact that 6 discs doesn't have to sound like a jet taking off.

So I'd like a case with good filtered airflow, or atleast one that can be modded (easily) to allow this. I'd also like it to be _very_ quiet, i'm going to have to put it in the living room, and I enjoy hearing what they say on the TV. Can anyone point me in the right direction, please?

Thanks!

DryFire · Post by **DryFire** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 5:05 pm

have you looked at a stacker? since it's all 5.25" bays you shuld beable to so some crasy suspension.

however teh perforated front may leak out a good bit of noise.

acaurora · Post by **acaurora** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 7:06 pm

I don't see what the problem is with using a regular case - like the 3700BQE. 4 in the HDD rack, 2 in the 3.5" bay above it. Or, just suspend as many as you can fit in the 5.25" area, then the leftovers go in the HDD rack.

yeha · Post by **yeha** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 7:14 pm

i finally mocked up a badly-thought-out idea! i'm surprised i've never done this before.

anyway, i'd go for a horizontal case orientation and :
- put 2 screws into the side of each hdd
- attach suspension material to those screws, then attach that material to screws that you manually drill into the case side
- suspend/mount two 120mm fans blowing across the hdds

and now for the stunning mock-up:

note the terrible color choices and labeling. anyway that's all i can think of for doing it on the cheap - it'd work with any old $20 case, which you could insulate if desired. if you're after a case with 6 5.25 bays and a way to suspend/ventilate them all in the respective bays, you may end up being out quite a bit more cash. then again with my way you'd have to drill holes in steel and be stuck with a larger case footprint.

grosskur · Post by **grosskur** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 10:18 pm

Greetings,

I am running five Seagate drives suspended in a Lian Li PC6077 case. This case has been mentioned before in the forums. It has seven 5.25" drive bays. I leave the bay covers off, and I have two 80mm Panaflo 24 CFM/21 dB fans blowing out the back of the case. I've also got a 300W Seasonic Super Tornado power supply with a vertical 120mm variable speed fan.

I am quite happy with this configuration -- I really wanted a case with a lot of 5.25" bays for my fileserver so I could suspend the drives, and the PC6077 seemed to have the most 5.25" bays of any mid-tower. (For space reasons, I did not want a full tower.)

FYI, this system is running dual 600 MHz Pentium III CPUs fanless with Alpha heatsinks. Sorry, I don't have any temperatures to report or pictures, as I am away from home right now.

All that being said, if I had to do it over again I would probably go with 2.5" drives. I know these drives are more expensive and have less capacity than 3.5" drives, but there is really no comparision in terms of heat, noise, and space requirements. Check out what this guy has done:

http://mini-itx.com/projects/tuxserver/ ... asp?page=5

He has made a truly tiny fileserver using six 2.5" drives. Very nice work.

Finally, I know this is quite off-topic, but I would strongly advise using RAID 10 over RAID 5. The reason is that with large drives (>100 GB), RAID 5 can take a long time to rebuild after a failure (days), and if you lose another drive during this time you're toast.

Hope this helps,

Alan

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 1:18 am

grosskur, WELCOME TO SPCR!!!

yeha, I've tried doing a similar suspention but got worse temps than I expected. I'm still trying and will post results with pics - hopefully this week

Mupp, check out my suspension in my sig (a 3700AMB, could also work with a 3000B). With a little tweaking you should be able to mount 5 suspended drives there without totally blocking up the front intake. The last one goes into a top 5.25" bay?

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:16 am

Mupp wrote:I started having second thoughts though, if something gets terribly hot I'd rather have it in a steel case than a wooden one. I guess my insurance company wouldn't share my pride of my fancy case when it starts a fire, would they?

I've seen people thinking this before and I don't agree.

Components inside a computer that touch the case all break down way before they reach 100°C. The spontaneous combustion temperature of MDF, wood or even cardboard is way higher than 100°C. So a case made of these materials is perfectly safe.

---------------------
yeha,
The way you have drawn your suspension, the HD's can swing like a pendulum when something rocks the case. If you use something like aluminium U-channel to connect them in pairs, then the structure becomes more rigid, without compromising the suspension. Plus you get some additional cooling effect.

Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting

Edit: Stupid error in picture corrected.

Mupp · Post by **Mupp** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:33 am

DryFire wrote:have you looked at a stacker? since it's all 5.25" bays you shuld beable to so some crasy suspension.

however teh perforated front may leak out a good bit of noise.

No, not really, I thought 12cm was a no-no in them, but it I see I was wrong. Thanks!

acaurora wrote:I don't see what the problem is with using a regular case - like the 3700BQE. 4 in the HDD rack, 2 in the 3.5" bay above it. Or, just suspend as many as you can fit in the 5.25" area, then the leftovers go in the HDD rack.

Well, from my point of view, what pops up in my head when I think about having 6 drives in a 3700BQE (I have 1½ of them) is resonance, airflow/dust problems and cable mayhem, in that particular order. Sure I love the case for a single drive system, but I can't put two or more in the HDD cage, the resonance kills me. If I start suspending 6 drives, I'm gonna run out of space fast.

yeha, thats very similar to what I tried in my MDF case, and it worked out fine I would say. But have you seen any retail cases where this is easily achieved, with necessary "muffling"?

grosskur, what about noise in your setup? Leaving the bay covers off doesn't feel like something I would do with my Hitachis.

burcakb, very nice, but IMO you are at the limit of that case's ability. I don't like it more crouded than that.

Mupp · Post by **Mupp** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:50 am

Tibors wrote:I've seen people thinking this before and I don't agree.

Components inside a computer that touch the case all break down way before they reach 100°C. The spontaneous combustion temperature of MDF, wood or even cardboard is way higher than 100°C. So a case made of these materials is perfectly safe.

But can I be sure of what happens when they break down? Plus, If I add dampening material (for computers or cars), what happens if that is somehow ignited? I'm asking because I don't know, and not knowing doesn't feel safe. "be quiet"-foam for example is pretty easy to light with a lighter, and then it keeps on burning. If there is even a remote possibility I could ignite that, I'm pretty sure the MDF would join in before long. Please tell me I'm folish, and what I'm saying is wrong...

Tibors wrote: ---------------------
yeha,
The way you have drawn your suspension, the HD's can swing like a pendulum when something rocks the case. If you use something like aluminium U-channel to connect them in pairs, then the structure becomes more rigid, without compromising the suspension. Plus you get some additional cooling effect.

I mounted my drives between two 5 mm thick copper plates, very good for cooling, not as bad for noise as you would think. Suspended, it didn't resonate that awfully, pretty easily muffled in the MDF case.

Edit, sorry, I forgot to thank you (all) for answering, please continue!

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 4:12 am

Temperatures inside a flame are arround 1500°C (depending on what you are burning). I can't think of anything happening to my computer that would make a part that hot.

If you are really that worried about the foam catching fire, then you should look for materials that conform to the UL94HF-1 norm (or any other form of UL94). Materials that conform to that norm are certified for use in electrical appliances. The eggcrate foam I bought at the local DIY shop conforms to it. I didn't see any fire retardend norms on the packaging of my BeQuiet foam.

Mupp · Post by **Mupp** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 4:46 am

Tibors wrote:Temperatures inside a flame are arround 1500°C (depending on what you are burning). I can't think of anything happening to my computer that would make a part that hot.

Neither can I really. Still, electricity starts a lot of fires in peoples homes. Granted most of these are either TVs or bad wiring, who's to say it can't happen? It's not very likely, but would you bet your life on it? Of course, if it can happen in a wodden case it can happen in an ordinary retail steel case, but then I can atleast it's not my fault. Anyways, I probably just being rediculous.

Tibors wrote:If you are really that worried about the foam catching fire, then you should look for materials that conform to the UL94HF-1 norm (or any other form of UL94). Materials that conform to that norm are certified for use in electrical appliances. The eggcrate foam I bought at the local DIY shop conforms to it. I didn't see any fire retardend norms on the packaging of my BeQuiet foam.

Just to clarify, BeQuiet conforms to UL 94 HF-1, the (German) manual claims.

I've had a look at the CM Stacker, I like the price compared to the lian li. Seems like a really good case, however I'm a little concerned about the seemingly very open front. Anyone tried to limit the direct noise leaking out the front on this case? Also, the huge unnecessary hole on the side of the case, anyone done something nice with it? To make it an even three questions, How big is the hole in the bottom of the case?

niknik · Post by **niknik** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 7:53 am

Also re-done my main PC recently and had a lot of trouble finding how to get 6 HDDs into a "normal" case.

Furter more, I received a wrong version of the case I wanted (with no front intake) - so, I had to completely redesign my "air flow" strategy. But that made me take into account another issue: dust. So, I designed my own "dust filters" and got a nice result.

I can post pics if you want. Complete customization, with holes cut on the side pannels and fans added, PSU fan replacement, etc.

It's not a "silent" pc on the strictest sense, but having a GF6800GT in it would hardly qualify for a silent PC.

And it's in fact the loudest part of the pc.

acaurora · Post by **acaurora** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 1:22 pm

Well, I got 4 HDDs, including 2 74 GB raptors in them. I don't hear any resonance, if any.

Mupp · Post by **Mupp** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:26 pm

niknik wrote:...
I can post pics if you want
...

Yes please!

acaurora wrote:Well, I got 4 HDDs, including 2 74 GB raptors in them. I don't hear any resonance, if any.

Are they suspended? Do you have any pictures? My current server, 3700BQE with 3 Hitachis in the standard drive cage, is killing me. Once in a while I shut it off, for one reason or the other, and it feels almost like I can hear birds sing or something, it really makes a difference in our apartment.

acaurora · Post by **acaurora** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:49 pm

They aren't. They're mounted using the standard grommetted HDD trays -

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=19636

grosskur · Post by **grosskur** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 9:48 pm

Mupp,

It is not that noisy, but it is definitely not silent. I keep this server inside a storage room, so I'm more concerned with airflow rather than noise (as long as I can't hear the noise through the wall, which I can't).

Regards,
Alan

Mupp · Post by **Mupp** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 12:25 am

acaurora, I looked at your case (nice BTW) and if it weren't for the w/c and the extra drive, it's almost exactly like my server. I'm beginning to think something is wrong with my case. If all three drives are on, it's really awful.

grosskur, if only I had that choice...

niknik · Post by **niknik** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 5:21 am

Ok, so this is where I spent my last few days.
This is the case that forced me to rethink the airflow managment:

There was no front air intake in the bottom HDD area.
Having 4 HDDs to put there (besides other 2 on the top 5.25" bays) I wasn't too happy with it.

After some (not) careful thoughts, my idea was, having a fan blowing on one side
and another sucking on the other, creating an air stream right in the HDDs area.
Time to call in some favours with some friends.

Some days later I had the side panels back.
Well, as he was going to cut it, it didn't hurt to have a few more cuts on it.
I went for 2x 120mm fans on one panel: 1 for the HDDs, the other for the PCI/AGP area.
Oh and one "window" so I could take a look inside. (This is my first "closed PC" - I used to have all my rigs in an open box.

This was a test build, just to check the panels wouldn't start ressonating.
I later had all the panels stuffed with anti-static foam.

You're probably wondering what are all those strange cables and stuff running around.
Well, I love light - since the day I first opened up my keyboard to change it's green leds for blue ones

- so, I got some white Leds to light up the inside and fans.

That green ones are aligned to stay right behind the front panel USB/Firewire Ports, giving a nice green glow on them when it's dark

Trying to have have the PC as silent as possible - due to it's spec I knew I couldn't get a *silent* without going to extremes - and remembering most of the noise comes from the PSU:
I exchanged the fans of the PSU with some Papst low noise fans. Having those 2 "extra" fans, I found they were extremely silent after all, when running at 5v. So I stuck them on the back.

This is the "final" panels:

The one with the 80mm fan sucking hot air from the 4HDD Raid array.

The one with both 120mm fans pushing air in.
I didn't want to have it clogged with dust, so I made my own "dust" filters.
I found that even when running at low speeds, the 120mm fans would still push a nice amount of "dust-free" air in.

As the PC stays in my bedroom and I keep it on "forever", my goal was to have it as silent as possible by night, and if I have to ramp things up by day or when running games, that's fine by me.
Having the Zalman controller, I can control all the fans in the system, plus turning the "Lights" on/off - together with an extension cable ouside: I also have some leds lighting my keyboard at night.

Using the Cool'n'Quiet feature of the AMD64, I have my 3500+ at 30ºC at idle. On load it goes a little above 50º, no big deal.

If I do turn up all the fans, you hear the air being sucked in by those 2 120mm fans, but still hadn't the need to do that. Only when summer comes will I see if that's needed.
I also got a Zalman VGA cooler, but thinking of messing with the Gainward 6800GT, that already comes with copper HS on everything... I hadn't the guts.
I know that's the next step, as the fans on it are the ones making the most noticeable noise... Maybe the next time I open the case.

Oh, the top 2HDD have fans on each "belly", and are stucked in there with rubber blocks. It was kind of messy but it worked.

And here's the final product:

Feel free to coment.

The specs are:
AMD64 3500+
2Gb RAM (finally... no paging file!

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
Gainward 6800GT @ 420/1100
4x Seagate 80Gb Sata RAID 0
2x Hitachi 120Gb (with "belly" fans")
QTec 560W PFC, with 2 Papst 80mm fans
2x80mm fans at the back (the ones that came from the PSU)
1x80mm Noiseblocker Fan
2x120mm Noiseblocker Fans
Zalman Multi Fan controller ZM-MFC1
Zalman CNPS 7000B Cu Led (CPU)
Zalman VF700 Cu (to be installed

DVD+RW, Drive, bla bla, etc.

Mupp · Post by **Mupp** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 12:57 pm

Oooh, that's a _lot_ of cables! And light! And cables! I like it, it must have taken a while, but I'd hate to think I'm going to have to get that drastic with the outside of my case. I takes skill, time, tools and a place to be, I have neither...

acaurora · Post by **acaurora** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 1:03 pm

I think everyone here should learn the art of cablegami.

*puts on a white cloak*

"Oh Ralf, teach us the ways of the wise *bows down* "

DryFire · Post by **DryFire** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 1:09 pm

acaurora wrote:I think everyone here should learn the art of cablegami.

*puts on a white cloak*

"Oh Ralf, teach us the ways of the wise *bows down* "

I once saw a case where a guy cut holes in it soley to route teh cables and even when through the trouble of taking the wires out of their harness and running them through unsed mobo mounts and whatnot.

I'll look for it when hardforums comes back up.

acaurora · Post by **acaurora** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 1:17 pm

well the problem for me is that in order to fully "cablegami" my case I have to take everything out. And especially with watercooling, that is a VERY tedious job, and... yah it's gunna take a long time for me to do that.

DryFire · Post by **DryFire** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 2:53 pm

yeah watercooling is a big pain to redo.

niknik · Post by **niknik** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 5:33 pm

I can assure you the final version was a lot more "organized"!

Those photos were from when I was testing everything.
Later on I checked cable lengths for the most efficient routing and cutted them to size.

Mupp - Yes it took some time, and a place to mess around, and some stuff I was lucky to have easily available.

6 drives and quiet(ish)?

6 drives and quiet(ish)?

Re: 6 drives and quiet(ish)?

Re: 6 drives and quiet(ish)?

Here goes...