Do i need active cooling?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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ryboto
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Do i need active cooling?

Post by ryboto » Sat Feb 18, 2006 7:09 am

I've got a lian li pc-v1000. Currently, my Raptor and my spinpoint are suspended in the first drive cage being cooled by a single acoustifan at 600rpm. Now, being that I have the V1000-plus, there are some neat revisions, like the fact that I can unscrew just about everything. The aluminum "wall" that's supposed to divide the hard disk and psu area, for instance, can be moved. Currently, the loudest component in my system is my hard disks, and having them right in the front of the case doesn't really help the situation.

What I want to know is if I really need the fan. The v1000 has a perforated floor, meaning, the hard disks could cool by convection with air from the surrounding environment. I would move them closer to the psu, which always seems to be exhausting cool air, and move the psu divider thing in front of the hard drives....i think this might help push the hdd noise to the rear of the pc, where it would have a hard time coming back to me. Does anyone thing I'd be hurting my hard drives by not actively cooling them, and only relying on convection?

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Post by McBanjo » Sat Feb 18, 2006 8:19 am

It shouldn't be a problem but I would advice you to keep the fan anyway. Cooled HDDs performe bether than uncooled ones (no idea why) and I doubt you'll have any noise-issues with the fan itself. Atleast I don't get that impression.
But I don't know where you should put the HDD in that chassie to get the best position for cooling and silence

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Re: Do i need active cooling?

Post by TomZ » Sat Feb 18, 2006 8:32 am

ryboto wrote:...my Raptor and my spinpoint are suspended in the first drive cage being cooled by a single acoustifan at 600rpm...What I want to know is if I really need the fan.
I would keep the fan. I have a pair of 74GB Raptors, and in my last case these drives were passively cooled, and they were pretty hot to the touch, even with lots of room around them. In my new Lian-Li V1100 (similar to your case), with the fan, they are cool to the touch. The fan makes a big difference in the temperature, and so I think it is worth the effort.

I assume your case also has the plastic HDD rails, where you put the special screws in the side of the HDDs, and slide them into the rails? Are you finding that hard drive seek noise is transferred to the case? I have that situation here, and I'm planning to look into suspending my drives. I was thinking of keeping them in that current space, just removing the plastic rails. Have you thought about that?

I like the thermal design of the Lian-Li, and I would really like to keep the drives in the space where they intended. I think that having them in a separate chamber, along with the PSU, is just a really good thing because the HDDs get good cooling and the PSU doesn't flow any CPU/GPU/memory hot air, so its fan never spins up, even under heavy load.

ryboto
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Re: Do i need active cooling?

Post by ryboto » Sat Feb 18, 2006 8:47 am

TomZ wrote: I would keep the fan. I have a pair of 74GB Raptors, and in my last case these drives were passively cooled, and they were pretty hot to the touch, even with lots of room around them. In my new Lian-Li V1100 (similar to your case), with the fan, they are cool to the touch. The fan makes a big difference in the temperature, and so I think it is worth the effort.

I assume your case also has the plastic HDD rails, where you put the special screws in the side of the HDDs, and slide them into the rails? Are you finding that hard drive seek noise is transferred to the case? I have that situation here, and I'm planning to look into suspending my drives. I was thinking of keeping them in that current space, just removing the plastic rails. Have you thought about that?

I like the thermal design of the Lian-Li, and I would really like to keep the drives in the space where they intended. I think that having them in a separate chamber, along with the PSU, is just a really good thing because the HDDs get good cooling and the PSU doesn't flow any CPU/GPU/memory hot air, so its fan never spins up, even under heavy load.
Mine are currently suspended. I use an eleastic fabric shoe-string. I just removed the plastic drive rails, and had enough room. With the suspension I can't hear seeks, but the operational noise is still there, which is why I was thinking about moving the drives farther into the case, and possibly using the hdd chamber divider to block noise from reaching the front of the case....I may even attempt to mount the fan farther back in the case....but, that might require more work...I'm gonna try passive at some point, and see where my temps go, it's a cool case, and my room is rarely above 24C.

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Post by TomZ » Sat Feb 18, 2006 8:55 am

I can only hear some seek noise, but no other HDD noise. But I think that could be just the difference between the case versions. Tradeoffs seem to be the V1000 is open and cool, and V1100 is closed/quiet and warmer inside. My temperature in my case is ~40C in my ~22C room. I was thinking I might upgrade to a higher flow chassis fan.

I did also like the looks of the V1000 better, but I was really determined to build a very quiet PC. Seeing your success, maybe I could have got the V1000 and had the best of both worlds?

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Post by ryboto » Sat Feb 18, 2006 3:16 pm

TomZ wrote: I did also like the looks of the V1000 better, but I was really determined to build a very quiet PC. Seeing your success, maybe I could have got the V1000 and had the best of both worlds?
well, a silent, or quiet computer is a subjective thing....it's quiet enough for me...though, on extremely quiet days, the hard drive noise aggravates me. Which is why I want to move them. System temps are 26C, pwm around 35C, and the cpu is at 43C overclocked 200mhz running Folding@home almost 24/7. If i could change some things, I'd replace my arctic cooling ati silencer, cause the fans beginning to make noise, and maybe the psu, or psu fans, as they're beginning to click, very low clicking, but I can hear them when i shut the pc down, and the psu fans stay on for a few minutes. Otherwise, the thing would be damn near inaudible from my position if the hard drives were moved. But, then there's also the problem of dust, as this case is very open. I'm fortunate enough to not have a dusty room, but after 5 months, there was enough dust to require a quick cleaning, mostly just on the intake fan.

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Post by teejay » Mon Feb 20, 2006 1:30 pm

I have the V1000 (non-plus version), but I drilled out the rivets for the PSU chamber divider and both drive cages. I also taped up the hole between the top and bottom section and suspended 2 drives in the bottom compartment (right now a 74 Gb Raptor and a 250 Gb Samsung but this will get changed to dual Raptors as soon as funds allow). All the bottom holes are also taped up. With a Nexus NX-4090 - unmodded except for the removal of the fan grill - my disks stay at or below 35C. For the moment I still have a 92mm YL fan in front of the disks but this is off 100% of the time: the fan is connected to a T-Balancer that acts on Speedfan readings and turns the fans on at 42C. I used the rest of the space near the front to create a baffle to block any direct noise path to the outside. Case sides are glued down with a vinyl + acoustic foam combination.

It is still in its experimental stages, but I am very pleased with the preliminary results. I finally got rid of the aluminium hum and the hard disk noise escaping through the front... now I face the challenge of cooling the upper section efficiently, but I am very pleased with the HDD part.

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Post by ryboto » Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:01 pm

teejay wrote: It is still in its experimental stages, but I am very pleased with the preliminary results. I finally got rid of the aluminium hum and the hard disk noise escaping through the front... now I face the challenge of cooling the upper section efficiently, but I am very pleased with the HDD part.
Got any pics of that?? I don't know if i'll go into that much detail with my mod...as I don't have the time....I like how the case is open, so, I don't wanna tape up the bottom. I guess I'm just going to have to try them passive, and see what temps i get. As for aluminum hum...i've yet to encounter it with this case.

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Re: Do i need active cooling?

Post by Tyrven » Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:10 am

ryboto wrote:Mine are currently suspended. I use an eleastic fabric shoe-string. I just removed the plastic drive rails, and had enough room. With the suspension I can't hear seeks, but the operational noise is still there, which is why I was thinking about moving the drives farther into the case, and possibly using the hdd chamber divider to block noise from reaching the front of the case....I may even attempt to mount the fan farther back in the case....but, that might require more work...I'm gonna try passive at some point, and see where my temps go, it's a cool case, and my room is rarely above 24C.
Man, this makes my day. I just ordered the Lian Li and while I love the design of the case, my only complaint was the wasted drive compartment since I *assumed* I would have to put the drives in the 5.25" bays up above.

I ordered the 160GB Spinpoint which seems like it is a quieter design than the new 200/250GB drives; I'm hoping that they are quiet enough that I don't run into this same issue (re: operational noise). My main concern, though, is the seek noise; that's what drives me batty.

Question: have you had any problems with your CPU heating up your video card? I've heard complaints about this with similar inverted ATX chassis designs and was concerned enough that I went with the V1000 over the new V600 since the former seems to have better all-around airflow.

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Post by Tyrven » Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:21 am

teejay wrote: It is still in its experimental stages, but I am very pleased with the preliminary results. I finally got rid of the aluminium hum and the hard disk noise escaping through the front... now I face the challenge of cooling the upper section efficiently, but I am very pleased with the HDD part.
I'd like to see pictures of this as well. Sounds like a neat project. I'm not totally following the mods, though, so I think a pic would help a lot - from how it's described I'm not sure how the harddrives are getting much of any air flow (although I'm sure you've thought about that and got it covered).

ryboto
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Re: Do i need active cooling?

Post by ryboto » Tue Feb 21, 2006 7:41 am

Tyrven wrote:
I ordered the 160GB Spinpoint which seems like it is a quieter design than the new 200/250GB drives; I'm hoping that they are quiet enough that I don't run into this same issue (re: operational noise). My main concern, though, is the seek noise; that's what drives me batty.

Question: have you had any problems with your CPU heating up your video card? I've heard complaints about this with similar inverted ATX chassis designs and was concerned enough that I went with the V1000 over the new V600 since the former seems to have better all-around airflow.
One of my drives is a spinpoint 160gb...I can't be certain, but I think it's emitting some drive whine....the Raptor I have just adds to it. I think I just purchased a bad apple. As for the cpu heating up my video card, i've yet to see that happen. At idle, my gpu is sometimes 10C cooler than what my motherboard reports my cpu at. It gets up to 50-55C under full load. I think a lot of that has to do with the cooler I'm using. The shear size of the 9500 dissipates heat extremely efficiently, under full load It's not even warm. The heat pipes at the base feel warmer than the surrounding air, but not by much. So, in my case, the hsf and the fact that the exhaust fan is right next to it probably lead to no more than 1C, if even that much of the gpu temp..

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Post by teejay » Tue Feb 21, 2006 7:41 am

Tyrven wrote:I'd like to see pictures of this as well. Sounds like a neat project. I'm not totally following the mods, though
Yeah, the not-following part could have had something to with a Ledaig induced stupor on my side 8)

I'll try to put up some pictures this weekend, too busy right now to power down my work rig.

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Post by Tyrven » Tue Feb 28, 2006 12:22 am

Ha! I can respect that. I've never had Ledaig... I'll have to add it to my list of scotches to try. My current favorite is Laphroaig.

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Re: Do i need active cooling?

Post by kentc » Sat Mar 04, 2006 7:37 pm

ryboto wrote: What I want to know is if I really need the fan. The v1000 has a perforated floor, meaning, the hard disks could cool by convection with air from the surrounding environment. I would move them closer to the psu, which always seems to be exhausting cool air, and move the psu divider thing in front of the hard drives....i think this might help push the hdd noise to the rear of the pc, where it would have a hard time coming back to me. Does anyone thing I'd be hurting my hard drives by not actively cooling them, and only relying on convection?
i didn't know the case but after looking at pictures of the internals: couldn't you pretty much surround the drives with some sort of foam, keeping the active cooling but relying on the foam to take the edge out of it's noise? if you mount both drives closest to the psu you'd have a good 10cm of foam between you and the fan and drives?

regards, kent.

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