ATX Case Cooling

gpw928

gpw928

It's summer again in Australia. There's no A/C in my office. I have switched the PWM fans in my ZFS server to manual over-ride, running flat out. But ther airflow is uneven. It's early morning, and ambient is 15 degrees C. Extracting from smartctl --log=scttemphist /dev/da?:
Code: 
da0 2021-12-17 07:34    40 degrees C  *********************
da1 2021-12-17 07:34    42 degrees C  ***********************
da2 2021-12-17 07:34    45 degrees C  **************************
da3 2021-12-17 07:12    44 degrees C  *************************
da4 2021-12-17 07:12    41 degrees C  **********************
da5 2021-12-17 07:12    47 degrees C  ****************************
da6 2021-12-17 07:12    41 degrees C  **********************
da5 is a worry.

I'm looking for a quality ATX full tower case, with capacity for seven 3.5" spinning disks, plus two SSDs (but the SSDs can be mounted with velcro).

It must have provision to install fans to directly cover all the spindles. To that end, I think it needs fan mounts all down the front of the tower. I'll use PWM cable splitters to control them.

Premium cooling and solid construction are the requisites.

Does anyone know of an ATX case that meets these requirements?
 
Ever thought about using swappable harddisk cages? Most of these have a fan that blows directly over the drives. You will need a couple of external 5.25 inch bays though. But you can fit 5 3.5 inch disks in a 3 x 5.25 bay. Makes swapping out broken harddisks a lot easier too, you don't have to take the machine apart to replace a disk. With hotswap enabled you don't even have to switch it off.

MB155SP-B_5 x 2.5”/3.5” SATA/SAS Hard Drive Backplane Cage in 3x External 5.25" Bay

www.icydock.com www.icydock.com

There are also bays for 2.5 inch drives. You can fit two in a 3.5 inch 'floppy' bay. Or 4 2.5 inch drives in 1 5.25 inch bay.
 
diizzy said:
They're also usually of quite poor quality and noisy due to 40mm FAN.
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I generally buy cages with a fan that's easily replaceable. They usually don't have the best quality fans, that's certainly true. But even good fans tend to whine after a while (it's quite dusty in my home). But if it's easily replaced it's not that big of a problem. I had to ditch a couple of cages because the fan was nearly impossible to replace.
 
I would like to thank everyone for their inputs here. They made a difference.

The Supermicro case is premium. The 5000 RPM fans testify to that. However the cost is so far above any other option, it's hard to justify for
a home server. It's also the most difficult to procure. I ordered:
With two 140 mm fans supplied with the case, there will be a total of 5 x 140 mm fans:
  • 2 x blowing in at the front, with speed control on a common manual switch (cooling disks),
  • 1 x blowing out at the back, with speed control on a common manual switch (alleviating case pressure),
  • 1 x blowing in and upwards from the bottom, with PWM control on the motherboard (cooling the motherboard), and
  • 1 x blowing out from the top, with PWM control on the motherboard (alleviating case pressure).
There are removable gauze dust filters at the front and underside of the box (at all the 140 mm fan suction points).

The power supply mounting position is on the floor of the box, and has a (filtered) vent grid under it, so I will invert the PSU to allow its fan to suck clean air from the underside of the box, and exhaust to the rear. It's air flow will thus be completely independent.

The two fans at the front fully cover all 8 x 3.5" fixed disk trays. I'm very pleased with the air flow coverage.

The hot swap disk cage will provide an additional three vacant 3.5" slots at the top of the box, with front access (it replaces a removable cage which accommodates two 5.25" DVD trays). It has an 80 mm fan servicing the hot swap enclosure that will also blow inwards.

I didn't absolutely need all my disks to be hot swap, but with three vacant hot swap 3.5" slots I have the option to securely attach the off-site backup disks inside the case for the day or so it takes to run the backups. The previous scheme was to attach them externally by USB, with power and data cables everywhere, and a desk fan pointed at the disks (which had to be restrained to prevent them marching across the desk). Not to mention that the interface is now SATA, without USB conversion.

I also get the option to react quickly to any loss of disk in the tank. I generally keep two spare spindles, with one installed and spinning. I can now store them both in anti-static bags, and hot plug them in at a moment's notice, to commence recovery. The shutdown for the dead disk swap-out can then be done at leisure.

In the event that the six fans turn out to be overkill, I'll be happy :).

I considered the ICY DOCK MB153SP-B and SilverStone FS303 hot swap cages. Both looked plausible, and were cheaper than the StatTech HSB3SATSASBA. I like StarTech products, and the way that they support them.

The Fractal Design case looks like a good one. I'll report the disk temperatures over summer...
 
For cases, I would set a budget, like $40-60 USD. I'd recommend something w/o a PSU - EVGA PSU's are the stuff of legend, BTW. Most gaming cases are very easy to disassemble, and have very good airflow. But for keeping disks cool - I'm frankly sold on SSD's rather than platters.
 
gpw928 said:
I would like to thank everyone for their inputs here. They made a difference.

The Fractal Design case looks like a good one. I'll report the disk temperatures over summer...
Click to expand...
That Fractal Design Define R5 has proven to be a pleasure for me -- I can lean on it while working in it, probably could stand on it, the cooling has been good and yet it's very quiet. I use a hot swap cage in the external bay for backups and alternate boot disks. Remember to clean the front intake once in while and keep decent airflow around the case; I have 2 ssds, 4 hdds, 3 GHz i5, wifi 6 card, dual ethernet card, 32 GB ram and a fanless power supply.

I checked my hdds (using smartctl) just now while heavily loaded for more than an hour with a poudriere bulk build and drive temp is 31 deg C
 
I have now had the new case in service for 10 days.

The Fractal Design Define R5 is a very competent piece of engineering.

It's quiet and roomy, has well-placed removable dust filters, superior cooling options, extensive and flexible "disk" accommodation, and nicely sorted cable management.

There are plenty of on-line reviews, most quite positive. A few mention disk drive vibration issues, dating back some years. I have 7 x 3.5" drives permanently installed, and there are no issues with vibration. My disk cages are all in their factory default position -- but I do suspect that breaking them apart and moving to their alternative locations could lead to loss of torsional rigidity.

The case is a little wider than most towers. This allows the 8 x 3.5" cages to face sideways. It also allows for a lot of cables to be removed from the area above the motherboard. They are routed through several wide-mouthed grommets to the area behind the motherboard where the SATA and power connectors for the SSD and 3.5" disk trays need to be.

I had to deploy several power splitter/extension cables. I needed to use the power cable with Molex connectors on SATA drives, plus the cable routing made it difficult to reach the SATA power connector required for the fan switch, and the two SSDs mounted under the motherboard.

I'm especially pleased with the separately purchased 3 x 3.5" hot swap enclosure fitted into the 2 x 5.25" vacant bays at the top of the case. This facilitates the off-site disk rotation backup strategy, and rapid disk replacement in the event of a disk failure in the tank.

The case is factory fitted with two 140 mm fans. I front-mounted these, sucking air over the disks. I added a 140 mm bottom-mounted fan sucking in air over the motherboard, and a 140 mm back-mounted fan exhausting to the rear. There's also an 80 mm fan attached to the hot swap enclosure, sucking air inwards. I decided against fitting an exhaust fan at the top of the case, mainly because of the risk of detritus falling into the case through the opening.

My 3.5" disks are now consistently running about 10 degrees Centigrade lower than they did in the old Antec NSK4000B-II case (which had provision for only two fans). The highest disk temperature I recorded in the old case this Summer was 55C. Since the new case was deployed, the highest is 41C.

The storage capacity is well suited to a ZFS server, with a total of 3 x 3.5" hot swap disk bays, 8 x 2.5"/3.5" cold swap bays, and 2 x 2.5" SSD-only mount points (there is little cooling under the motherboard, and they run routinely at 50C).

The Fractal Design Define R5 is a worthy contender where superior cooling is required.
 
That's the model I've been using for my workstation for five or seven years now. Of course, I don't have it filled up at all but I have a huge finned, heat sink on the CPU and just one quiet cooling fan for the whole thing. The nvidia card's fan and the cooling fan never rev up beyond their lowest settings so I never hear it.
 
Jose said:
How loud is that sucker?
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I don't have a sound meter. It's impossible to separate the noise of the case fans with the 80 mm fan attached to the hot swap enclosure.

The case in in my office, under the front of my desk. I can definitely hear it, but it's not annoying me. Kind of like the noise you get a few hundred meters from a surf break.

The Fractal Design Define R5 is well regarded for the sound deadening material lining the inside of the case.

But with five fans, it's not silent.
 
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