Antec P180. Serious design flaws?

[IceWindius]

I got to reading this and it REALLY started to make me feel let down about this case. What is your guys opinion? Think he's right or is he just bitching? Here is the post and link to the discussion

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview ... TMP=Linear

Intake air must make a sharp 90 degree turn when entering the case with the front door closed. This will result in more air turbulence and lower efficiency when compared to a traditional front vent design.
http://silentpcreview.com/article249-page2.html


The top-mounted vent allows dust particles to settle inside the case. It also redirects exhaust noise out the top of the PC.
http://silentpcreview.com/article249-page2.html

Note the positioning of the rectangular VIDEO air INTAKE duct (middle right of the back panel). This duct is positioned between the top hexagonal exhaust vent for the PC and the bottom rectangular exhaust vent for the power supply. Hot rising exhaust air is re-directed back into the case via the video air intake duct!

I prefer to apply Dynamat or equivalent to the side panels. This is a cheaper and more effective solution to the noise problem.
http://silentpcreview.com/article249-page3.html

We see the power supply cage at the bottom left of these pictures. An extra long power supply will come very close to the 120 mm case fan located midway in the bottom chamber, resulting in excessive air turbulence.

A modern power supply has one large bottom-mounted cooling fan. There appears to be 3/4 inch of free space between this fan and the bottom of the Antec can. Incoming air must pass through this 3/4 high opening and make a sharp 90 degree turn before reaching the fan. The results...more noise and less efficient cooling.

Some modular power supplies DO NOT have a rear vent. The entire back plate of the power supply is used to populate the output connectors. Let's also not forget the PATA and SATA cables extending from the hard drives. These wires will negatively impact airflow across the bottom chamber. In this case, the exhaust air must go around the power supply before it can exit the case.

If we remove the 120 mm case fan as suggested by this article, then the heat from the four front hard drives would have to go through the power supply before exiting the case. This will result in a very HIGH temperature at the power supply. Remember that in a traditional ATX case, the 100W of heat from the CPU is dissipated 360 degree into the motherboard (cooling fan blowing into the CPU). The rear 120 mm case fan AND the power supply share the duty of heat extraction. Very few power supplies will run at 80% efficiency. 75% is a more realistic number.

Let's take a look at the other extreme, with only one hard drive. The case fans in the top chamber would have to work harder to cool the system because they are NOT getting the extra help from the power supply.
http://silentpcreview.com/article249-page4.html

You pay big bucks for a case only to find that you should use SATA hard drives to provide adequate cooling to the power supply! I also don't like to mount the hard drive vertically, as this will place an uneven load on the main drive bearing assembly.
http://silentpcreview.com/article249-page5.html

Man and this guy has me REALLY worried about HDD reliabilty on this post.

Simple physics. Draw a free body diagram of the loads on the main bearing in the horizontal and vertical positions. The loads are evenly distributed AROUND the bearing in the horizontal state. Translation, longer bearing life. I wouldn't use DELL PCs as models for engineering excellence.

A hard drive used to carry 3 yr warranty. Currently, most are backed with 1 yr warranty. Want more proofs?

The pickup heads move in a horizontal plane (in and out) if the hard drive rests in the horizontal position. There is no changes in potential energy. Again, less wear and tear on the head actuation mechanism. This would also apply to any point on the disc platter.

If you were attached to the outer edge of a vertically mounted hard drive, your change in potential energy for each disc revolution would be 2x the distance to the center of the disc plat

[andyb]

Most of the concerns listed by the guy in the AnandTech forums would get rubbished here. The main reason I disagree with the AnandTech post is because the guy is probably a fan fanatic, and does'nt comprehend "over-cooling", anyone can make a really cool case, no just anyone can make a really silent case thats also cool enough for power users.

I am going to briefly rubbish that post.

1, Turbulance is only a noise concern if their is a large airflow.
2, Top mounted fans WILL allow dust to settle inside the case, but that hole can be blocked for those concerned, anyhow I leave my PC on all of the time, so the fan will be on.
3, Nothing stopping anyone using extra padding if they are totally anal.
4, Bullshit.
5, Bullshit.
6, I didnt really get the whole thing about hard drives, BTW superb HDD mounting method in the P180.

I personally have only one concern, and thats about a 120mm fan PSU, if the PSU could be mounted right at the bottom of the case, that would allow a far larger gap above for air to be sucked in to the TOP of the power supply and then blown out.

Andy

[moritz]

Well, most if not all of these issues were already raised in other threads, especially the (long) review thread.

Intake air must make a sharp 90 degree turn when entering the case with the front door closed. This will result in more air turbulence and lower efficiency when compared to a traditional front vent design.
http://silentpcreview.com/article249-page2.html

That has always been something of an issue with door-designs. Then again, the door blocks some of the noise from inside the case.

The top-mounted vent allows dust particles to settle inside the case. It also redirects exhaust noise out the top of the PC.
http://silentpcreview.com/article249-page2.html

The vent doesn't so much redirect the noise as simply let it out. The vent, however, might redirect it to the back of the case, I'm not sure how effective that'll be. I don't think the dust-settling will be a problem, if anything is, this is the reason for having a mesh vent above the hole - the mesh should stop most of the dust.

Note the positioning of the rectangular VIDEO air INTAKE duct (middle right of the back panel). This duct is positioned between the top hexagonal exhaust vent for the PC and the bottom rectangular exhaust vent for the power supply. Hot rising exhaust air is re-directed back into the case via the video air intake duct!

From what I have read, the bottom exhaust air will not be particularly hot. to begin with, and of course not all of the hot air will be drawn straight back in. Someone else suggested to switch the fan to get another exhaust instead of an intake. It's not exactly a vital part anyway, unless I was using a passively cooled card I'd probably just remove the thing. It's a smart way to implement something like the CPU themal zone that's mandatory for BTX without having a huge honking hole leaking noise in the side of the case.

I prefer to apply Dynamat or equivalent to the side panels. This is a cheaper and more effective solution to the noise problem.
http://silentpcreview.com/article249-page3.html

Maybe, maybe not. At the very least, this is more elegant.

We see the power supply cage at the bottom left of these pictures. An extra long power supply will come very close to the 120 mm case fan located midway in the bottom chamber, resulting in excessive air turbulence.

This has been raised as an issue. I'm not sure how problematic this "excessive air turbulence" really is, I think this may be fairly irrelevant. Then again, maybe it's not - in that case, well, don't use an extra long PSU in this case, I guess?

A modern power supply has one large bottom-mounted cooling fan. There appears to be 3/4 inch of free space between this fan and the bottom of the Antec can. Incoming air must pass through this 3/4 high opening and make a sharp 90 degree turn before reaching the fan. The results...more noise and less efficient cooling.

A modern PSU doesn't have or not have anything. Modern PSUs come with a variety of fan setups, the one he mentions is one of the popular ones, true. I agree this is somewhat of a problem, although as usual I reserve judgement for now and I tend to think it's not as big a deal as he makes it out to be. To put it bluntly, it might be 10% more noisy this way, but since the PSU fan setup should be "inaudible" in this configuration who the hell cares?

Some modular power supplies DO NOT have a rear vent. The entire back plate of the power supply is used to populate the output connectors. Let's also not forget the PATA and SATA cables extending from the hard drives. These wires will negatively impact airflow across the bottom chamber. In this case, the exhaust air must go around the power supply before it can exit the case.

Personally I think modular power supplies are just a way of redistributing money away from those who have too much of it, but anyway, I guess the above answer applies: don't use these sort of PSUs in conjunction with this case if it really turns out to be a problem. But from what MikeC tells us (biased as he might be), PSU noise and heat is a non-issue anyway, so who cares if it's efficient - the whole point is to take PSU and HD out of the cooling equation!

If we remove the 120 mm case fan as suggested by this article, then the heat from the four front hard drives would have to go through the power supply before exiting the case. This will result in a very HIGH temperature at the power supply. Remember that in a traditional ATX case, the 100W of heat from the CPU is dissipated 360 degree into the motherboard (cooling fan blowing into the CPU). The rear 120 mm case fan AND the power supply share the duty of heat extraction. Very few power supplies will run at 80% efficiency. 75% is a more realistic number.

Well, what can I say. MikeC says PSU heat won't be a problem at all, in fact I think (don't take my word on it tho) he said something like "with the fan at the lowest level, the PSU fan shouldn't ever spin up at all". This guy says the PSU temperature will be "very HIGH". I tend to believe MikeC.
Others have made better arguments, to sum it up neither PSU nor HDs generate a significant amount of heat compared to either CPU or GPU. On a sidenote, if I recall correctly the 80% efficiency MikeC refers to were explicitly linked to modern, high efficiency PSUs - we all know they exist, SPCR among others has reviewed a couple.

Let's take a look at the other extreme, with only one hard drive. The case fans in the top chamber would have to work harder to cool the system because they are NOT getting the extra help from the power supply.
http://silentpcreview.com/article249-page4.html

I don't understand what he's saying here. The fans will have to work harder? Who cares? It's not as if there was anything intrinsicly silent about PSUs doubling as a case exhaust. It's a pretty stupid idea (just think of the "air turbulence" inside the PSU - haha!) and is only done for historic reasons.

You pay big bucks for a case only to find that you should use SATA hard drives to provide adequate cooling to the power supply! I also don't like to mount the hard drive vertically, as this will place an uneven load on the main drive bearing assembly.
http://silentpcreview.com/article249-page5.html

The line he refers to from the SPCR article: "When using more than two hard drives, SATA drives are recommended for best cable management and minimal compromise of airflow." That's quite different from what he says.
With regards to vertical mounting, this has been done for ages. Lian Li does it one most if not all of their cases. It's just a way to cram more HDs into the normal midi-tower form factor. I'm not sure if there's anything to his claims, I think he's talking out of his ass, but maybe someone else can say for sure.

Sheesh, now I sound like a fanboy. Just to be clear, I do think the P180 has some issues, and some of the things he mentions are part of it. I've written extensively about it in other posts. This doesn't change the fact that I think the case is pretty gorgeous, and that I'm fairly convinced that the issues that exist are fairly minor in the long run. But then, I'm not in a rush to buy one, I'll wait and see.

[Ralf Hutter]

Ice - Take a chill-pill dude, that guy doesn't have a clue. He's so far out in the weeds that I didn't even bother writing (I post regularly at Anandtech) any sort of a reply. I doubt that anyone would be able to make much of an impression on someone with views that are so far from reality.

[hofffam]

I think it odd that he raises turbulence as a negative when the vast majority of cases are all about turbulence. They blow warm air around and around instead of exhausting it in defined paths. A few of the more recent cases designed for low noise (like the Silverstone) work much differently.

He says the hard drives will cause the PS to intake very hot air. Don't hard drives generate about 5W of heat each? A PS close to a 75W cpu has a much tougher job than what the PS in the P180 might require. I agree a PS with a 120mm fan doesn't have much clearance, but I'll wait for tests before I reach a conclusion. I also have confidence that Antec (and Mike) tested this before releasing the case!

He also appears to have never seen the guts of a modern hard drive. The heads do not move in and out. They rotate over a partial range like a record player tonearm. Mainframe hardrives years ago had linear actuators that did move in and out. But they are not common anymore. Back when large (14 inches or more) platters were the norm, many hard drives were oriented with the axle horizontal. These platters weighed several pounds each and this orientation was more stable, not less. As a bearing wears ever so slightly, a vertical bearing will allow increasing amounts of "teeter totter" or wobble. When the wobble is excessive, the head scrapes the platter surface with catastrophic results. Modern smaller hard drives don't have this kind of problem because of drastically less moving mass.

[Devonavar]

I got to reading this and it REALLY started to make me feel let down about this case. What is your guys opinion? Think he's right or is he just bitching? Here is the post and link to the discussion

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview ... TMP=Linear

I prefer to apply Dynamat or equivalent to the side panels. This is a cheaper and more effective solution to the noise problem.
http://silentpcreview.com/article249-page3.html

Cheaper? Yes, the P180 is expensive, but it's not like the only thing you're paying for is the side panels. In my book, case + Dynamat is always more expensive than case alone.

We see the power supply cage at the bottom left of these pictures. An extra long power supply will come very close to the 120 mm case fan located midway in the bottom chamber, resulting in excessive air turbulence.

Most PSUs generate their own airflow ... which means you don't have to use the 38mm fan! The only PSU this is likely to be an issue for is the Antec Phantom 500, which has already been pointed out on these forums. I might add that I've already tried installing a Phantom 500 in the P180 (review teaser), and while the installation was a major pain in the ass, it was not difficult to keep cables out of the airflow for the most part.

If we remove the 120 mm case fan as suggested by this article, then the heat from the four front hard drives would have to go through the power supply before exiting the case. This will result in a very HIGH temperature at the power supply. Remember that in a traditional ATX case, the 100W of heat from the CPU is dissipated 360 degree into the motherboard (cooling fan blowing into the CPU). The rear 120 mm case fan AND the power supply share the duty of heat extraction. Very few power supplies will run at 80% efficiency. 75% is a more realistic number.

Typical power consumption for HDDs is ~7.5W. Seek is ~11W. Variance isn't much more than a watt or two across all the models I've tested. 4 x 7.5 = 30W. That's MUCH less than a 100W CPU, and most users won't be using four drives. If airflow impedence worries you that much, there's two more bays that aren't in the way of the PSU air flow.

You pay big bucks for a case only to find that you should use SATA hard drives to provide adequate cooling to the power supply! I also don't like to mount the hard drive vertically, as this will place an uneven load on the main drive bearing assembly.
http://silentpcreview.com/article249-page5.html

Uh ... SATA drives are pretty much par for the course now aren't they? I suppose SCSI drives might cause difficulties, but PATA is pretty much dead. This is a MODERN case, right? See this thread for a debate about the effect of mounting a hard drive at an oblique (not horizontal or vertical) angles. There seems to be a general consensus that there is no reason to worry about horizontal or vertical mounting, and only a very slight reason to worry about other angles.

Simple physics. Draw a free body diagram of the loads on the main bearing in the horizontal and vertical positions. The loads are evenly distributed AROUND the bearing in the horizontal state. Translation, longer bearing life. I wouldn't use DELL PCs as models for engineering excellence.

Not so simple physics. Read the thread I linked to above for some very complicated physics that can't quite resolve the question.

[IceWindius]

He still doesn't believe you guys.

Let's touch up on turbomachinery design 101...

Most machines DO NOT operate at 7200 rpm in the X, Y, Z axis for 8 hours a day, 260 days/year. They are also significantly larger than the hard drive. A larger package translates to a more durable bearing with much higher factor of safety. We often see force feed lubrication to extend the service life of the bearing.

Race car engines can hit 10,000 rpm, but they are only designed to run a 500 mile race. The hard drive manufacturers could increase the safety factor, but this would increase the cost of the product.

Eccentric loading is a very important variable in the design of high speed rotating devices. In today's faster n cheaper economy, finding that perfectly balanced disc platter is increasingly rare. You certainly don't want to mount the hard drive in a manner that would INCREASE the flywheel effect at 7200 rpm. F=ma.

The effect of potential energy (mgh) is real on the pickup head. It requires more force to move the head against gravity. This translates to more heat and wear and tear on the drive mechanism. The faster the seek speed, the more force is required to quickly change the direction of movement. By mounting the hard drive in the horizontal plane, one can ELIMINATE the effect of potential energy on the pickup head. A system will wear out faster if it has to do more work per unit of time.

What is the number one failure mode in a notebook? Can it be the hard drive? Vendors reduce the warranty from 3 to 1 to beef up profit margin. When folks are mounting the hard drive in a postition that will increase the wear rate on the bearing, the most effective course of action is to reduce the warranty period.

I have the laws of physics to backup my analysis. If the hard drive doesn't fail within the warranty period, then the hard drive mfr will make $.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview ... erthread=y

[thetoad30]

Yes. So he can throw around physics equations. Here's some of my physics.

Relativity.

Everything is relative. Yes, putting the hard drive vertical instead of horizontal WILL increase the amount of energy for the mechanism to move towards the inside cylinder.

F=ma. A is the acceleration of gravity. That stays constant. So, how much mass does the arm have with the heads on it? I am sure its some rediculously LOW weight. Which means this: The force required is extremely minimal. Very, very low. Meaning, that the amount of energy required to move the arm should be very miniscule, especially if you take into account friction.

And while nothing in life is free, remember that at some point the head has to return to its original position. In this case, the motor actually has less work to do, by roughly the same amount. So all in all the amount is negligable.

And remember this... when the hard drive is in the horizontal position, the read/write head has torque applied to it in the downward direction. Read/write head crashes are the result of this torque (and probably some excessive handling). So, if you really wanted to think about it, mounting a drive in a horizontal position is probably more risky than the vertical, because in the vertical position your best bet is that the head just won't move to read and write... but your data is never corrupted.

Tell him to eat that.

[Rusty075]

The fundamental flaw in the troll's logic is that he is boldly assuming that he somehow has a firmer grasp on the design of FDB's than the people who actually design them. Yes, mounting a drive vertically changes the stress on the bearing, does he think the engineers at every single HDD company aren't aware of that, and don't factor it into bearing design? Until he has anything besides useless theory to back it up, such as MTBF numbers, analysis of warranty return rates, or a photocopy of his diploma for his Phd in Engineering, ignore him. The internet is full of people who know just enough about a topic to think they know everything....his diatribe on case airflow analysis with zero real knowledge to back it up clearly puts him in this category. There's no real point in debating people like that, they can never be proven wrong, even in the face of insurmountable evidence.

I'll stick with following the manufacturer's installation guidelines, which say vertical is just fine and dandy, and I'll keep buying drives with 3 year warranties, thank you very much.

[frostedflakes]

If MikeC/Antec wanted low-restriction intakes, they would've cut a large hole in the front panel.

In my opinion, he's just an attention whore.

And FWIW, my dad recently got a P2-350 Compaq with a vertically-mounted hard drive from work that was probably run 24/7 for the past 3-4 years, and it's still going strong.

[wussboy]

I love it when you get grumpy, Rusty!

[lenny]

My company has a few of those rack mounted SCSI arrays. The 15Krpm disks are mounted vertically.

About the only thing I sort of agree with is the VGA duct. I pointed out a related point about the holes around the PSU compartment might result in PSU exhaust being sucked back in by PSU fan if PSU fan airflow is higher than the airflow of the mid case fan, but no one seemed particularly concerned. Anyway if it is a problem I'll tape up the holes.

Ralf has the case. It is unlikely that this furballi guy has it. I'll pay attention to what Ralf says.

[Rusty075]

I love it when you get grumpy, Rusty!

I'm glad my frustration is entertaining.

Now that I'm a "celebrity", along with Bluefront, Isaac, MikeC, et al, I'm allowed to rant incoherently without consequences, right?

[lenny]

Now that I'm a "celebrity", along with Bluefront, Isaac, MikeC, et al, I'm allowed to rant incoherently without consequences, right?

You left out "Ralph Hunter"

[Rusty075]

Bah! The Wall Street Journal had no interest in "Ralph", only in us "A list" silencers.

[wussboy]

When I read that and saw "architect in Grand Rapids" I thought, "Don't I know an architech in Grand Rapids?" Lo and behold it was our very own Rusty! I must admit I'm a little disappointed they didn't contact me for information. I mean, I have over 500 posts! Then I realized that about 450 of them are smart-ass remarks about someone else's posts, and the other 50 are me asking questions. Sigh.

[Shadowknight]

Wussboy: They didn't contact you because of your smart-ass comments, or asking questions, they didn't contact you because your a wuss! And a boy. Who going to interview children for a very adult article?

[lenny]

Rusty, I didn't know about the WSJ article. I'll be sure to grovel at your feet and beg for your autograph if I ever meet you in person

Regarding mounting drives vertically, I was standing there looking at the (horribly noisy) fiber channel array 4 cubicles down from me, when I suddenly remembered a Tom's Hardware article. A quick search, and..



They obviously didn't mind placing 92TB of hard drives (70TB after RAID5) vertically. But they're Germans, so perhaps we should take that into account

Edit : and don't piss off that Ralph something or other guy - from some other forum he's the only one with a P180

Edit2 : image got lost somehow, replacing it with another image linked to Tom's.

[wim]

wow, that fellow sure is a negative nelly.
looks like most of the issues have already been tackled but i wanted to have a shot anyway..

Intake air must make a sharp 90 degree turn when entering the case with the front door closed. This will result in more air turbulence and lower efficiency when compared to a traditional front vent design.

i like the P180 front intake. right-angle turn is harder for noise (wave) to make than for air (fluid), i bet this is more beneficial for noise supression than detrimental for airflow. wouldn't you only get air turbulence noise there for very high airflow system, where the actual fans inside would be swamping this noise anyway?

The top-mounted vent allows dust particles to settle inside the case. It also redirects exhaust noise out the top of the PC.

i'll agree with this one. it's also ugly (looks like a spoiler). think i'm going to close it up

positioning of the rectangular VIDEO air INTAKE duct...

so what? close it up, or reverse the duct.
optional duct is always better than no duct.

I prefer to apply Dynamat...

so do it. hardly a design flaw of the case

extra long power supply will come very close to the 120 mm case fan located midway in the bottom chamber, resulting in excessive air turbulence.

any closer than a psu-fan is normally placed from it's own components?
on the one hand turbulent airflow is noisier, on the other hand it results in better heat transfer to the fluid even at same flow rate. since noise per cooling potential is the useful indicator for us, i'd be really interested to see if any experiments have compared turbulent vs. laminar flows in respect of this measure.

A modern power supply has one large bottom-mounted cooling fan. There appears to be 3/4 inch of free space between this fan and the bottom of the Antec can. Incoming air must pass through this 3/4 high opening and make a sharp 90 degree turn before reaching the fan. The results...more noise and less efficient cooling.

yes, i wouldn't use a bottom-feeder in this tunnel either. or if i did, i would remove the fan and work only with the fan in the bottom tunnel.

If we remove the 120 mm case fan as suggested by this article, then the heat from the four front hard drives would have to go through the power supply before exiting the case. This will result in a very HIGH temperature at the power supply.

now this is just nuts. it can't possibly be worse than atx, where psu is pulling right off the cpu. hard drives create relatively little heat, certainly not enough to result in very HIGH psu temp. i know this 1st hand because of a build where i had the bottom-feeding psu sitting at the top of a vertical tunnel, with 4 HDs suspended underneath.
if you're still unhappy, there's room for HDs above instead

Let's take a look at the other extreme, with only one hard drive. The case fans in the top chamber would have to work harder to cool the system because they are NOT getting the extra help from the power supply.

wait up, it's bad for the PSU to be moved into a separate chamber because it won't help cooling the case - but it's also bad to let the PSU cool the hds because this results in very high psu temps? where can the psu go, then? and what does this issue have to do with one hard drive?

You pay big bucks for a case only to find that you should use SATA hard drives to provide adequate cooling to the power supply!

not adequate. optimal. i personally doubt the type of cable would make a measurable difference anyway.

I also don't like to mount the hard drive vertically, as this will place an uneven load on the main drive bearing assembly.

here we go again this guy knows more about the drive bearing assembly than the manufacturers!

A hard drive used to carry 3 yr warranty. Currently, most are backed with 1 yr warranty. Want more proofs?

that's proof that we shouldn't mount HD vertically? what about the scientific method?

The pickup heads move in a horizontal plane (in and out) if the hard drive rests in the horizontal position. There is no changes in potential energy. Again, less wear and tear on the head actuation mechanism.

general 'wear and tear' is a frictional effect, unrelated to changes in potential energy, the frictional force in the head actuator mechanism is not affected by gravity (at least, not in this way)

This would also apply to any point on the disc platter.

huh?! how would it also apply to a point on the disc platter - i can't even figure out a way that somebody could accidentally stumble into thinking this. same amount of work got to go into spinning the platter (imparting rotational kinetic energy), irrespective of orientation in the gravitational field. as far as potential energy concerned, the weight of one bit always cancelled by the weight of the symmetrically opposite bit.
this is as silly as if i said that a horizontal mount is bad because it imparts a bending moment across the platters which creates internal stresses in the disk (except my statement is true)

If you were attached to the outer edge of a vertically mounted hard drive, your change in potential energy for each disc revolution would be 2x the distance to the center of the disc plat

is it true? yes. does it matter? no.
does he mean the bits (electrical charge) could get corrupted by having an oscillating potential energy?

[chylld]

The fundamental flaw in the troll's logic is that he is boldly assuming that he somehow has a firmer grasp on the design of FDB's than the people who actually design them. Yes, mounting a drive vertically changes the stress on the bearing, does he think the engineers at every single HDD company aren't aware of that, and don't factor it into bearing design? Until he has anything besides useless theory to back it up, such as MTBF numbers, analysis of warranty return rates, or a photocopy of his diploma for his Phd in Engineering, ignore him. The internet is full of people who know just enough about a topic to think they know everything....his diatribe on case airflow analysis with zero real knowledge to back it up clearly puts him in this category. There's no real point in debating people like that, they can never be proven wrong, even in the face of insurmountable evidence.

i agree whole-heartedly. too many people (like the turnip that wrote that article) feel safe behind the security of their computer screen, because they can type away all they want in an attempt to shout other people down, even when they have no idea what they're talking about. what you'll often find though is that what they're afraid of is hard proof that they're wrong, i'm confident the p180 will work and when it does work i'd like to see mr. turnip's reaction.

i've had my fair share of experience dealing with trolls like him, i was recently involved in one regarding the effectiveness of fitting a swaybar to a torsion beam rear suspension setup. i presented about half a dozen solid, logically sound proofs that i was right, as well as my own and others' testimonies, and he ignored everything and said "bla bla i've had so much more experience tuning cars, it's obvious that i'm right duhhh" etc.

once you see through their lack of genitalial substance it really does become amusing though, the most important thing is for spcr to know that we, the loyal followers (and clear thinkers, i might add) stand behind spcr and its beliefs, and always will.

that is until mikec turns into a turnip himself

also there's the jealousy factor. antec co-designed a case with spcr. yes, they chose spcr. BITE IT.

[clocker]

All this discussion about the physics of HDD construction is entertaining, but so far I think a very relevant point has been ignored.
IceWindius: "Man and this guy has me REALLY worried about HDD reliabilty on this post."

A hard drive used to carry 3 yr warranty. Currently, most are backed with 1 yr warranty. Want more proofs?

Seagate has increased their warrantee to five years.
This will probably prod the other big guys to do the same.

"Want more proofs?"....yes, please.

[Shadowknight]

Also, note that WD's Raptor drives carry a 5-year warranty.

[Ralf Hutter]

All this discussion about the physics of HDD construction is entertaining, but so far I think a very relevant point has been ignored.
IceWindius: "Man and this guy has me REALLY worried about HDD reliabilty on this post."

A hard drive used to carry 3 yr warranty. Currently, most are backed with 1 yr warranty. Want more proofs?

Seagate has increased their warrantee to five years.
This will probably prod the other big guys to do the same.

"Want more proofs?"....yes, please.

The entire "1 year warranty" thing was started a few years ago by Maxtor and quickly jumped on by the other manufacturers*. The reasons given were that the HDD industry was too competitive and the (until then) normal 3 year warranty was cutting into the bottom line too much. It had nothing whatsoever to do with "sideways mounted HDDs failing too soon".



*Feel free to search the web, it was given tremendous negative coverage back then, it should be easy to find.

[pdf27]

He still doesn't believe you guys.

Let's touch up on turbomachinery design 101...
Most machines DO NOT operate at 7200 rpm in the X, Y, Z axis for 8 hours a day, 260 days/year. They are also significantly larger than the hard drive.

The turbomachines (turbomolecular pumps to be exact) I work on reliability testing for have a rotor of roughly 5kg have a quoted lifetime of 20,000 hours at 50,000 RPM and any temperature from 10-70 deg C. This translates to 10 years use at the rate he is suggesting would be typical for a hard drive.

Edit: Just thought to add, we do reliability testing in both horizontal and vertical orientations, and I have never seen any indication of more wear on the bearings in one orientation compared to another.

[Oliver]

Comment on the harddrive issue here.

I don't know specifically about harddrives. But this is a comment on general concepts.

The issue about a bearing being in the vertical position, well so what if it was designed to work that way. Car wheel bearings are designed to work in the vertical position and to take a massive lateral torque simultaneously because they were designed that way. So if the engineers on the the harddrive bearing so ok, then it is ok in that position. And if you wanted to confirm, well take apart a drives bearing and see for yourself if it makes sense.

And as far as the thingy moving over the drive platter in the vertical orientation, well it has a certain mass, and probably accelerates/decelerates very rapidly all the time. So if force of gravity is small compared to the rapid acceleration/decelerations then it just does not matter. If gravity is large comparred to that, then it does matter. And if the mass of the thing moving is really small then it does not matter either, even in that case.

[rhashem]

The turbomachines (turbomolecular pumps to be exact) I work on reliability testing for have a rotor of roughly 5kg have a quoted lifetime of 20,000 hours at 50,000 RPM and any temperature from 10-70 deg C. This translates to 10 years use at the rate he is suggesting would be typical for a hard drive.

LOL. The turbine blades in a modern jet engine weigh tens of kgs, operate at 10,000-20,000 RPM at temperatures reaching up to 1000 deg C, and have quoted lifetimes of 50,000 hours. Oh, and they operate vertically! Turbomachinery 101 indeed...

[pony-tail]

I have a single complaint -:
Don't like the blowhole in the top of the case (or the grill over it )
The rest I could deal with or mod.
I bought another Sonata instead ( I can mod it to do what I want)

[Oliver]

I agree Pony-tail. I don't like the look of that blowhole up top -- with or without the guard attached. I just like a smooth top. Oh well.