Hard drive cooling. Am I overly worried?

[husky1055]

Dell T20, ECC RAM 24 GB, 4X3 TB HD Freenas 9.10, RaidZ1. I looked up the Toshiba P300 (ada0) and it's temp is @42 C. Toshiba specs lists its operating temp as 0-60 C, 7200 rpm and recommends server use. The other Seagate also 7200 is running about 41 C. I have a Hitachi 4 TB 7200 (parity) in an Unraid system and it's temp is about 30 C. This is kind of an experimental build so I am not worried about any data lost or disk fails at this time. I did have scrubs and SMART setup and the HDs seem to be running continuously. The Dell T20 case is kind of tight and the HDs are kind of packed in but no more than normal. Thanks again for the responses and help.

 

[GrumpyBear]

Ahh - The system manual shows that there is only one cooling fan in that mini tower.

My Workstation is a supermicro in a similar form factor with 4 HDD bays in the front lower position.

I installed a 80cm Noctua NF-A8 in the front-panel when I filled the slots with 4 Seagate 5400RPM NAS disks.

From the exploded system diagram it looks like there are holes for airflow. If you are lucky there may be mounting holes for a 80 or 90mm fan in which case adding a PWM splitter and possibly an extension cable (the Noctuas come with both a splitter and a 30cm extension) will likely help things out.

You are running Enterprise disks in an Enterprise case and Dell has done solid engineering in the past so you are likely OK but if it were me and I could get another fan in there I would.

The other thing you might try is blocking off some of the holes in the 5 1/4" drive bays if they are unpopulated to force more air in through the bottom of the case over the HDDs or, alternatively, moving the Thermal Sensor above the HDD cage to see if you can force the existing system fall to pull more air.

I gather there is no fan options to change your cooling profile in the BIOS or via some utility?

 

[GrumpyBear]

Bottom line is that the airflow will always take the path of least resistance and in your case the drive bays are at the top and bottom of the case and in between is a nice empty space with lots of holes and this is also where the temperature sensor is mounted so the vast majority of the airflow will always come from the middle and the sensor will measure mostly the inlet temperature.

Probably great for ensuring lots of air goes past the cpu cooler but not so good for the drive bays.

I'm guessing but I suspect that the top drives are the ones running a little hot.

You could try blocking some of the middle vent holes but lord know what that would do to any other installed cards (HBAs etc).

The one and only case fan is a Foxconn PV903212PSPF-0A 0B with some sort of 5-pin connector so replacing that with a fan with more "oomph" might be possible but I'd want to first verify that the power, tach & pwm leads are in the right place.

 

[husky1055]

There is a fan control in the bios:
"Fan Control Override
Controls the speed of the system fan. This option is disabled by default.NOTE: When enabled, the fan runs at full speed". Presently at default, suspect at full speed now.
Dell T20 may not be designed for 7200 HD fully populated. It's a older design that I think is being discontinued. I bought it new from Dell at a discount.
I will pursue the option of adding a fan in the case. Moving the heat sensor is also a great idea. I saw that you have a Fractal R4, so if I was to move the whole thing to a Fractal case would that be another option? I know that Dell PS use a different connection to the MB so I have a Seasonic laying around that will do with some cable adapter. I do need to buy some fan cable splitter but you mentioned that the Noctua ships with it. What I do not know is if Dell MB is ATX compliant or proprietary.
Right now it's kind of cool in my town, but next summer is what I worried about. Although my house is AC there is quite a change in temperature between seasons.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I my T20 the drives at the bottom consistently run a couple of degrees warmer than the drives at the top. In an effort to improve airflow over all drives, I replaced the vented expansion card blanking plates with solid blanking plates and sealed the side cover vent. Drive temps dropped a couple of degrees, which seemed worth the effort.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I replaced the vented expansion card blanking plates with solid blanking plates and sealed the side cover vent

Probably worth noting, this could have negative consequences if there are any expansion cards installed, especially something like an M1015 that needs proper cooling.