Any advice on cooling drives in mobile racks?

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frogtech

Well-Known Member
Jan 4, 2016
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I've got one of those AthenaPower 1x5.25 to 8x2.5 drive racks installed into a Silverstone GD09, I've installed a 40mm noctua fan on it but not really having great temperatures, or, at least what I consider to be great. 8 S3700 400GBs all idle around 31-33c, and during use they climb up to 35-36c and some even hitting 37.

I want the drives to last as long as possible so for me proper cooling is tantamount. The problem with these things is that there isn't much room for airflow in the actual enclosure itself and one of the backplanes blocks off like half of the hole. Maybe I need to get a SuperMicro 40x28mm fan that can pull higher RPMs? The Noctua basically maxes out at around 4.5-5k rpm.

Would it be worth drilling holes into the side of the enclosure? Just curious if anyone's tackled a similar issue.

Athena Power BP-15827SAC an 1 x 5.25" External Drive Bay to 8 x 2.5" SSD / HDD Hot-Swap SAS / SATA Backplane Module - Transfer Rate Up to 6 Gbps SAS (I, II) / SATA (I, II, III) - OEM - Newegg.com

Maybe I should swap the drive rack out for an IcyDock cage that uses 2 fans instead of just 1?
 

Netwerkz101

Active Member
Dec 27, 2015
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70°C Operating Temp Maximum ... ??
You seem well under that.

I've owned a few different variations of these drive cages and all of them have a fan or two
at the back of the cage ... more or less cooling the small circuit board acting as a backplane.

I have removed the fans from them all (or at least disconnect them for quiet operation).

Best option i can think of is to mount fans to the sides of the cage if room permits.
After alll, it's the top of the bottom two drives ..the second row from bottom and third row
of drives that will hold heat. Top row has holes to breathe/release heat.
 
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fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
Nov 20, 2016
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30's is nothing, I would almost consider it low for a RAID array. My stuff sitting in a server with giant fans in a cold datacenter sit around the same:

Code:
[root@XEN-DARIA MegaCli]# ./MegaCli64 -PDList -aALL | grep -i temp
Drive Temperature :34C (93.20 F)
Drive Temperature :34C (93.20 F)
Drive Temperature :34C (93.20 F)
Drive Temperature :34C (93.20 F)
Drive Temperature :33C (91.40 F)
Drive Temperature :34C (93.20 F)