Case with above average actual harddrive cooling.

[Zakin]

Curious, I currently use a Silverstone Raven and it's pretty good in every regard that isn't harddrive cooling. I won't say that it's bad at it, but the fact it relies heavily on back compartment harddrives makes it more difficult.

This is a topic I've been thinking of for a little while is in my next build that will likely be end of year/early Spring I would like a case with a better airflow over harddrives. I currently run three mechanicals and two SSDs, one SSD may drop between builds because I'm giving this entire old computer to a good friend and thought that'd be nice.

So thoughts? I've liked a lot of Phanteks, and a few NZXTs, most others I haven't been a huge fan of. There was also the thought of just going Case Labs, because I really don't think the prices are all that outrageous.

PS: I would imagine a case doing well in the harddrive department would probably be fine everywhere else, or at least good enough. But I would likely enjoy at least one 360mm radiator possibility, maybe two but not the end of the world honestly.

Opinions?

 

[taz420nj]

(Pardon my dust, it's been a while since I opened this one up, LOL )

I got this guy a few years ago, CoolerMaster Centaurion 590.. It was like $60 at MicroCenter. Probably the most well ventilated case I've ever seen. The entire front is mesh, and it has a 4-in-3 hard drive rack at the bottom with a fan right in front of it. It has 2x 120mm mounts at the top (suitable for a 240mm radiator) and 2x 120mm mounts on the left side. There's even a spot for a motherboard fan between the tray and the right panel (although it's a bastard size, 90x10mm). I'd definitely buy it again. The Centaurion 6 seems to have the same features just an updated design.

The Thermaltake triple bay has its own built-in fans.

 

[rtwjunkie]

My Fractal Design Define R4 keeps all my hard drives between 29-31 Celsius. That cool enough for you?

 

[AsRock]

Sure that's dust and not mold ^^

My Fractal Design Define R4 keeps all my hard drives between 29-31 Celsius. That cool enough for you?

Wont this highly depend on room temp and were you live how long the pc has been on and what type of HDD you have and such ?

 

[taz420nj]

Yeah its dust. No water cooling, can't grow mold on dry plastic filter.. I did drywall a few months ago, that's probably what the white is.

 

[rooivalk]

As alternative, you could use something like this

http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00000235

You need access to multiple 5.25" bay though, currently an endangered species.

 

[Steevo]

According to a Google study of thousands of hard drives cooler temps kill drives faster than warm drives.

Put a nail in the coffin of the belief that normal case heat will kill a drive.

 

[OneMoar]

keep it under 50-60C
magnets + heat = bad(especially at nano-meter scale)
I can a test that operating a drive above its recommended temp WILL Result in errors or reduced performance early failure isn't likely unless you are pushing the drive well beyond its temperature limits e.g more then +10c

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

Yet to have a problem with drive temperatures. Laptops are probably the worst in this department (my W230 case gets hotter around the HDD than the CPU/GPU...) as the drives get basically 0 airflow in a very confined space. Sure, 2.5 inch drives are less power hungry than 3.5s, but the difference is pretty small.

 

[ManxBob]

Interesting discussion here - aand having experienced WD Black drives die due to temps of 45-50, would offer the following: it really depends on the kit you are using - most HDD makers specify a wide range of operating temperatures -
Western Digital:
Red: 0-70 Deg C (middle:35C) Black: 5-55 Deg C (middle 30C) Purple: 0-60 Deg C (middle 30C)

Seagate:
7200.12: 0-60 Deg C (middle 30C) 15K.7: 5-55 Deg C (middle 30C)

Picking middle of the range would look on first viewing as the best compromise - and knowing that you could get away with 50C - but there are a couple of reports from WD which make interesting reading - see the links below.

First is one on WD reliability figures - they say they test at 50C so if you operate your drive at 50C as well, your drive life figures should match theirs (see Thermal paper link). Another paper shows that reliability decreases once you take temperature much above 45C - see the second link below.

My preference? Never let my drives drop below 30C and "run them in" at 35-40C for maybe 20-30 hours before committing them to system use - just power up and leave to run. When operating "for real" I try to get them to sit 35-42C.

I found this works for me, and the papers you can get from WD give some good indicators, but electronics reliability - especially once you talk about moving parts - is a Black Art and your experience may blow this, and my experience out of the water!

Milspec reliability of electronics has been the pet study for decades as the military try to maximise their hardware life expectancy - some of the techniques rubs off onto civilian stuff, and HDD life expectancy like everything else will sit in a "bathtub" curve - both for failures with hours in use along the horizontal scale and also a similar situation with operating temperature on the horizontal scale.

If you are not convinced, search out the spec sheet for your own HDD's and also see if your manufacturer has published any interesting relaibility stuff. Do not bother with Seagate or WD Tech Support - they will just quote straight out of the tech spec for your drives (I've tried!). And don't believe stuff that was reported a few years back by web farm that "ordinary" drives are ok for "farms". The terms are irrelevent - if your "ordinary" machine glows in the dark under oc'ing then your drive(s) are unlikely to last long; similarly if your machine runs so cool that you can blow-dry your dog if it stands behind your rig, don't expect epic lifetimes from HDD's that are worked hard there either!

Disk life is dependent on duty cycle, temperature and disk type. WD appears to have created a huge range of coloured disk types "tuned" towards the varying duty cycle types. Some differences will be firmware related, but I suspect much of it will be related to closer drive mechanical tolerances and more extensive manufacturing quality control - hence the higher cost for higher duty drives.

The best solution here though might be a partitioned case, creating a "micro-climate" for the HDDs. I've yet to try it myself, but an old Dell 650 workstation case I have used ducted air flow over its dual xeon CPUS which drew it air from outside across the HDDs which were in a boxed part of the case - so they never saw anything much above ambient airflow around - they sat at 35C and are still working at 9600 hours and 10800 hours off the SMART data.

Hope my ramblings help.

ManxBob

WD Thermal Reliability ( published 2005):
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/other/2579-001134.pdf (page 3 & 6)

WD HDD Reliability - CERN report (published 2013):
https://indico.cern.ch/event/247864...ts/426734/592321/HEPIX_October_2013_ver_6.pdf