what is better cooling for the HDD?

GLO · Post by **GLO** » Mon Jan 02, 2006 8:34 pm

Im undecided over what proves the better option here.

1. Fan blowing over across bare mounted HDD, or
2. a HDD Sink (like hdd rails) with natural convection? ( negligible case air flow)

Thanks

Post by **CA_Steve** » Mon Jan 02, 2006 8:57 pm

A fan.

For convection to be better, the HDD would have to sit on a big hunk of metal. The rails do very little.

dddibley · Post by **dddibley** » Mon Jan 02, 2006 9:14 pm

The ongoing dilemma.. warm silence or cool noise. If the HDD's in an open area, I'd go quiet. If it's a capture drive, it needs cooling down.

ddd

Kythe · Post by **Kythe** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 8:13 am

I recently relocated a Western Digital drive from the top 5-1/4" drive bays in a mini-tower to the bottom of the case. The drive is mounted using small-diameter bungee cord suspension, but it's mounted in the path of the case fan airflow and has aluminum channel heatsinks attached to the sides.

Typical temperatures have dropped from around 50 degrees Celcius to around 30-35 degrees Celcius during operation, and the drive is basically silent (the case fans make more noise, and that's not much).

As an aside, I mounted the same drive in a detached 3.5" drive cage in the same path of airflow, and the drive was warmer by several degrees. The side aluminum channels do a better job of cooling the drive, even when suspended.

To answer the question, then: forced convection will almost always provide better cooling. But it probably doesn't take all that much forced air to help, so noise doesn't have to be much of a factor, especially if you already have a case fan and have the room to relocate the drive in front of it.

More-beefy heatsinks attached to the drive, however, can make up some of the difference, so it's not a clear-cut thing. I have yet to read anything about people trying to do so using thermal grease, too. I have a project in mind that will experiment with exactly that, and will report the results.

In my (relatively limited) experience, the simple location of the drive in the case matters most.

Skylined · Post by **Skylined** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:28 am

I've just heatsinked both HDDs without any fan and the temperatures are ok.
My Seagate is even cooler than many Seagates of the same kind that I've seen over here.

To the left it's a Samsung, on the right it's the Seagate, with smaller heatsinks because it's going to be into a server.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 9:13 pm

your case needs blue glowing tubes

It is the beginning of being jazzy, but it needs more work. the sandwich lacks prettiness too.

Skylined · Post by **Skylined** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 11:20 pm

Well, first of all I got this case just a couple of weeks ago.
Some days ago I've cut a front intake and placed a 120x38 fan, the one that you can barely see at the back is another 120x38 fan.

I don't have a window, and I don't plan to have one, I never liked windows.

The sandwich works great, in my case, all it has to do is too cool down those HDDs.

The Seagate works at 35C, and the Samsung at 30C, more or less.
Also take in consideration that we're in summer and my bedroom gets pretty hot.