Cooling question...

[Anthony.Ralph]

Having been unable to provoke much response to a thread I started in 'General discussion' apart from an excellent response from Rakk over OS software, I thought I would ask a couple of the related questions here.

In the spec for my (on hold) new PC, I have specified a FRACTAL DESIGN R3 - BLACK PEARL ATX CASE and although my initial consideration was for quietness, I do realise that heat dissipation is important too. The spec. includes a SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER so I reckon the CPU is looked after, but as my current PC's HDD are running a bit hotter than I would like (38-39deg) I wondered what, if anything I could/should do in addition?

My second and related question is that I note the case appears to have eight HDD bays, albeit with only one CD/DVD bay . With the the Asus P8P67 board having eight SATA ports, I guess I could have seven hard drives installed if I wish? I have specified a CORSAIR 650W TX SERIES (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU and whilst raw power would not seem to be a limiting factor, I wonder about the number of power leads to service such a large (to me) number of drives. Not forgetting the cooling issue in the question above.

Anthony.

 

[JSG10]

As for cooling. You could always either, change the position of your front fan or purchase a better more efficient fan and install that.

Yes if you really wanted to you could have 7 hard drives... why though? lol If you run out of molexs you can purchase molex splitters like THIS, THIS, or THIS. So long as your PSU can handle the power all those HDDs are going to need.

And yes, having that many HDDs will kick out quite a lot of heat, especially as they'll be pretty much on top of each other. You'll definitely need to upgrade your front fan at least.

 

[Anthony.Ralph]

As for cooling. You could always either, change the position of your front fan or purchase a better more efficient fan and install that.

Yes if you really wanted to you could have 7 hard drives... why though? lol If you run out of molexs you can purchase molex splitters like THIS, THIS, or THIS. So long as your PSU can handle the power all those HDDs are going to need.

And yes, having that many HDDs will kick out quite a lot of heat, especially as they'll be pretty much on top of each other. You'll definitely need to upgrade your front fan at least.

Thanks for the reply. The links for Molex splitters led me to some molex-to-sata plug splitters which look as though they would do fine. The Fractal Design 3 case has locations for 2 x 120mm fans at the front, with one fitted as standard, so I could get another one fitted during assembly - or fit one myself of course.

As to the number of hard drives; I have four coming in the PC on order and may fit two of the existing ones from my current PC. This will allow spreading out data - music, photos, scratch disks, etc; and mitigate the effects of a drive going down sometime in the future. (I do back up - daily) but you know what I mean.

Anthony.