Something else you could try, is using posterboard (thin cardboard) or similar materials to make an air-tube from the fan to the drives, possibly surrounding the drives on several sides. This will direct airflow to exactly where it is needed, and should improve cooling by quite a bit.

Cheers

Yes, a metal working shop would do a great job, even to just cut a hole in the side panel. But, I was thinking to do it myself. It's a fun project and the good thing is that a Cooler Master HAF XB side panel is € 8 on-line, should I destroy mine in the process

All I really need to go down to the quite remarkable 29/30 °C is, I believe, a square air intake the size of a 12 cm fan, approximately. I am thinking of a 12x12 or 10x10 square hole.

That is a relatively simple thing to do with a dremel and some patience. It won't have super round edges, but I am planning to use some rubber finishing all along the edges. Possibly not the very best and most elegant solution, but I liked it when I did it in the past.

Mark, the air-tube is going to be difficult because of all the cabling around the drives, I am afraid.

I would prefer to use sheet metal shears rather than a dremel. Much faster, less messy, potentially smoother lines.

But cut a round hole, not a square one. That way you'll better match the round fan, and have the option of attaching the fan to the side panel using the four corner screws.

Consider mounting the fan against the opening in the panel or perhaps mount the fan to the panel. The less air flow leakage between the fan housing and the exterior the more effective the cooling will be.

Alternate is to make a 10-12 cm diameter 'ring' of foam weather seal or similar and use that to create a stubby air guide 'tube' between case inside surface and the fan housing. Self adhesive weather strip is widely sold in home improvement stores in my region, available in a wide range of profiles and foam densities.

The fan specs (online?) may include a template for fan mounting, probably a large round hole with four small holes for the mounting screws. If you want a cover/grill or air filter, they are sold in sizes to match the fan mounting holes.

Some low noise fans use rubber 'pins' rather than metal screws to retain and yet isolate the fan vibrations from the panel material.

The rubber pins can also be found on eBay. But I imagine he already has a set from the Noctua fan.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Yes, round hole also sounds a great idea (and I have plenty of rubber pins, actually). The only issue with the idea of attaching the fan to the side panel is that the side panel is completely removable and I'd have to disconnect the fan form the MoBo (or from the extension cable) every time I remove the side panel to open the case. Not a big annoyance, but still, I'd rather avoid that.
The foam weather seal is a great idea, I'll do that. I should have some already!


Now, some more interesting news: 9cm fan, full speed, side panel completely removed, and temperature does not decrease below 35 C / 37 C ! So, the SIZE of the fan seems to have a significant impact in this particular case.

So, guys, the only reason I mentioned a square hole is that I've been using a dremel in the past and I needed square holes back then . In this case, as soon as you mentioned a round hole (which makes perfect sense, of course), I thought of a simple hole saw, like this:

http://www.amazon.it/Sourcingmap-a121205...zza+per+metallo

Does it make sense, or am I making it all too easy?

In my experience, those types of hole saws make a complete mess in sheet metal. Don't do it.

Really, just a set of (green or red) aviation snips is all you need. Useful for other stuff too, once you have them.

Eg. These: http://www.amazon.it/meccanici-meccanism...sr_1_13?s=tools

Just draw the circle on the panel with a marker or pencil, drill a 3/8" starter hole anywhere inside the circle, insert tip of aviation snips into hole, and start cutting.

Thanks Mark. I never used hole saw in metal in general...

I use them for lots of things here, including cutting holes in doors prior to installing the latch/knob assemblies. Exterior doors are often clad in sheet metal, and the hole saws scuff up the paint around the hole edges by many mm.

And that's with 2-3cm of wood core inside the door to help center the bit. Not a precise implement.

For thin (most) sheet metal, step drills are best for small round holes, nibbling tools are great for small rectangular holes, and snips are hard to beat for anything larger.

Cheers

... because I am impatient and I do not own (yet) snips, as a temporary solution I decided to

- reinstall the 12mm fan
- make some small holes, approximatiely in a circle, on the side panel, by using a regular drill with metal bits (which I do own).

Side panel has been in place for 1 hr and temps are
34 C
36 C

Also, i can't hear anthing.

Pretty good

And thank you again everyone for your precious recommendations!

I'll take my time to create one large hole, finish the job, and make the side panel nice looking again. Not that it is horrible now, I have to say.

... and so I have to take that back. Not good. Temp increased up to 42/44, so the few holes I made are not sufficient.

Would it be ok to use a 10cm hole saw (which I do have) to create a 10cm hole, and then enlarge it to 12 by using snips, once I get them and practice using them?

Or alternatively, take a 6mm drill bit and make a lot of small holes in a nice symmetrical round pattern.

tanstaafl.

Yes, that is an option too Doug. The ones i made are already larger than 6 and pretty random, though, so i'll probably resort cutting a big round hole somehow...

Tin snips, man. Just practice on paper or plastic first. Just like scissors, except they only go around a circle in one direction. The red one goes one way, the green cuts from the other direction. Don't touch the yellow ones for this job!

Practice is easy: just draw/trace a couple of concentric circles inside the real/final larger circle. Practice on the inner circles, then graduate to the outer real one. Has the benefit that larger circles are easier, too.

You mentioned earlier that you already plan to wrap the cut edges with something, so absolute perfection isn't needed. Black gaffer tape is an excellent edge wrap, if you don't want to bother with something more specialized.

Cheers

Mark, ok, I'll see if I can refrain from using that tempting hole saw and break the case side panel, and wait to get those snipping tools.

Jokes apart, I just did not want to keep the server open and do something temporary in the mean time. But the truth is, server case can be left open no problem. I'm just impatient to have some fun with this.

Thanks again.

You do realize, I hope, that once you finish with this project, you will need to install some sort of drip pan underneath your server, because if you ever turn the server off, all the frost and ice that has accumulated on the hard drives is going to melt and leak onto the floor as they comes back up to room temperature.



tanstaafl.

How about moving the server on a shelf over my kitchen sink?

So, on a more serious note, I've been observing temps, of course, for few days - 12cm fan and no side panel.

They did not stay at 29/30. They increased up to 33/34 (please notice how the delta is almost constantly 1 °c between the two hdd), to stabilize more or less at 31/32 . My best guess is that it depends on the environment temperature. I am now curious to see how the hot Rome summer would affect the system (of course, I'll turn on AC at some point, so...).

It can be useful to review the entire airflow path through the equipment. Not just the air flow in, through the fan, and around the hard drives.

Examine the air flow route beyond the drive locations. What restrictions impede the air trying to exit the case? Does the airflow have to go around tight corners, past large cable bundles, etc?

Are there other fans in the case that assist, oppose or influence the new cooling fan's air flow?

In a good airflow configuration the temperature difference between ambient and drive should be relatively consistent, for a given drive workload (heat output).

A good fan driven cooling arrangement should maintain the hard disc temperature rise to a fairly modest delta. What temp differences are you seeing above ambient?

K447,

My server case has two main sections. The section above for Mother Board, Video Card, CPU, expansion cards, etc, is extremely well cooled. Two 12cm Noctua Case Fans, plus 1 14cm CPU heatsink fan, produce what i consider an ideal airflow.

Underneath, case section devoted to PSU, Optic unit, HDD, is instead poorly cooled. There is no fan other than the one mentioned in this thread. ALso, there is not much space, and several cables (fromt he PSU to the above section and to two SSDs, 2 HDDs, and DVD reader), and SATA cables to all the same units from the above motherboard.

So, yes, you are correct, air flow is actually significantly compromised by all cabling. I was thinking precisely to see if I can re-route them in some more orderly way to improve the situation.

I do not have a thermometer in my studio, but I'd guess the room is around 25°C . Delta between environment and HDDs is therefore between 5°C and 10 °C

Edit:
Bottom section has 2 locations for 2 8cm fans. Unfortunately, they'd be at the opposite side of the HDDs, separated from them by a lot of cables, which is why I decided to go with a larger fan close to the HDDs (see pictures above) and related case modding that I've been mentioning in this thread.

One more test with flipping the fan (still large one, case side panel removed).

30/31°C vs 36/37°C .

Quite amazing.

Guys (mostly Mark), is it normal the snips (which I have finally received) are very (very) hard to use on my case side panel? I managed to make some small cut, but they require a lot of strength.
My uneducated guess is that the metal panel is relatively thick. All the videos I saw on line, admittedly, seem to be using the snips on thinner metal sheets than my case side panel.

Mmm.. the case sides could be thicker than I thought. One trick is to open the shears as wide as possible, so that the cut is done from closer to the hinge on the shears. More leverage and control from there.

The temptation is to cut with the tips of the blades, so overcome that thought and use the part of the blades as close as possible to the pivots.

Did any one mention sheet metal nibbling tools for this job.

Yes, cutting closer to the blade hinges is surely helping. Still hard though. No big deal, I am still trying, if it really does not work, I'll think of something else. I still have the hole saw or dremel options.

Yes, up a few posts. Best for smaller holes and straighter lines.

Liquid gallium and fisticuffs? (Only works if your case is made of aluminium.)

Peter

Thank you Taym overall for sharing your experiences with the 8TB archive drive from Seagate. I may now seek out a pair of them.

In my absence, a 2 TB seagate drive in the NAS that holds the backups for this site went into a degraded. It's up over 1000 uncorrectable errors. And unfortunately the second drive in the RAID 1 pair also has some issues spinning up at times, so the mirror was out of sync. I ignored some warning signs that this could happen, so the outcome isn't too surprising.

It's got me rethinking my home storage overall now, earlier then planned. Thankfully backups for the site are okay still, as they are now being routed to my second NAS that runs RAID 5 across 4 disks.

One unfortunate thing, I can't find a retailer that stocks these 8TB drives in a SATA internal form factor. I share some of Mark's concerns over buying such high capacity spinning disks from an online retailer. The warranty goes out the window if the casing of the external drives that hold this 8TB archive drive is removed.

Temp wise, the drives in the failing NAS never went above 35C during their busy times of trying to resync.

To my knowledge, I don't have any way of buying drives except from an online retailer. My favoured Central London PC retailer (Yoyotech, just off Tottenham Court Road) closed their retail store a couple of years ago. Sure, there's PC World or Maplin, but they're not the cheapest at the best of times, and 8TB NAS drives are a little bit niche.