Cooling my NAS using 12V from SATA?

[tomini]

Hello
I'm moving my NAS (Odroid HC4) into a 3D printed case (CloudShell4) to cool my two HDDs as they weren't cooled before. Compatible size of the fan is 92mm.
My plan is to power the fan using 12V SATA power rail, because the USB 2.0 on my NAS is not powerful enough for 5V fan with USB adapter and this solution is least expensive.

So this is what I am going with (ignore that I picked Noctua fan):

Spoiler

From Odroid HC4 SATA power an Y-splitter into 2x SATA female connectors - one for HDD and second for Noctua NA-SAC5 cable that will adapt into 4-pin that will power the fan.

And if the fan will have high RPM and/or be noisy, then fan control would be handy:

Spoiler

Same thing, just fan controller between the Noctua NA-SAC5 cable and fan.

From my calculations I will have only ~31mm inside for the fan and SATA connectors (the box on pics is upsidedown). 

Spoiler

Should I go for fan with 25mm or 14mm thickness?  I doubt that even 90° SATA cables will fit inside with the 25mm fan. Even if I would flip the HDD...then the cable wouldn't fit against the wall probably.
And which fan should I go for? It should just cool the HDDs so they won't go above 40°C in best case.

Or I can screw the fan outside of the case and that way I can have the 25mm for sure. But wont the airflow be worse than if it was inside and not blocked by the plastic shield?

 

I found few fans (they differ in price, Noctuas are like 20$ and the Arctic and SilentiumPC are 4-5$):

• SilentiumPC Zephyr 92 | 1300 RPM, 13,9 dB, 3pin
• NOCTUA NF-B9 redux 1600 PWM (or non-PWM) | 350 - 1600 RPM, 17,6 dB, 4pin PWM (or 3pin for non-PWM)
• ARCTIC F9 Silent Black | 1000 RPM, 20,5 dB, 3pin
• NOCTUA NF-A9 PWM | 500 - 2200 RPM, 19,9 dB, 4pin PWM
• Noctua NF-A9x14 HS-PWM Chromax Black Swap | 600 - 2500 RPM, 23,6 dB, 4pin PWM
• NOCTUA NF-A9x14 PWM | 500 - 2200 RPM, 19,9 dB, 4pin PWM

What will happen if I plug one of those fans that can go in different RPMs into my setup as shown in first two diagrams? Will it run at 100%? If so, then I should go for lower AND static RPM fan or get the fan control (Noctua NA-FC1)...

What would be better choice? Inside or outside and which fan?

If the 12V plan won't work, then please tell me

And...I am worried about hooking it up as I found only this SATA data cable (needs to be male-female, because drive has male and NAS has female, unlike motherboards in PCs) and it has these hooks/locks on the sides (those will have to be cut, or at least one of them, but will it still hold in the port?):

Spoiler

Thanks a lot for your tips and suggestions

[Bitter]

How are your soldering skills? You may be better served soldering some wires directly to the board at the 12V and ground pads to get power. It would  be way less bulky that way (board could connect direct to drives as intended) and free up space for better fans. I assume that the part labelled "DCJACK" on the board is a 12V barrel connector, just grabbing power off that with a cut fan header would be really easy with even a cheap soldering gun, I can't see the bottom of the board but I assume there's some amply sized pads down there for the through holes with the power jack.

I'd run with the Noctua fans, they're pretty reliable and changing out failing fans often on a bit of 'set it and forget it' hardware gets annoying quickly. You may find that the low noise adapters bundled with the fans are plenty and a speed controller isn't needed. Hard drives and airflow is weird, they have poop for surface area compared to devices designed to have airflow, you may have good luck locating the hot chips and putting heat sinks on them to aid in cooling and maybe even sticking heat sinks to the metal chassis of the drives. Sometimes just an aluminum drive cage is enough to move a lot of heat from a drive through direct contact and the larger surface area. Did you 3D print this case? If you're confident with tinkering with the design you may add some channels next to the drives for some flat heat pipes to move heat outside the case then epoxy some heat sink to the heat pipe and put the fan out there.

Another issue I see is there's a fan hole but where does it's air go or come from? If the drives are installed in the direction you're showing the fan would be butted against the back of the board??

[tomini]

33 minutes ago, Bitter said:

How are your soldering skills? You may be better served soldering some wires directly to the board at the 12V and ground pads to get power. It would  be way less bulky that way (board could connect direct to drives as intended) and free up space for better fans. I assume that the part labelled "DCJACK" on the board is a 12V barrel connector, just grabbing power off that with a cut fan header would be really easy with even a cheap soldering gun, I can't see the bottom of the board but I assume there's some amply sized pads down there for the through holes with the power jack.

I'd run with the Noctua fans, they're pretty reliable and changing out failing fans often on a bit of 'set it and forget it' hardware gets annoying quickly. You may find that the low noise adapters bundled with the fans are plenty and a speed controller isn't needed. Hard drives and airflow is weird, they have poop for surface area compared to devices designed to have airflow, you may have good luck locating the hot chips and putting heat sinks on them to aid in cooling and maybe even sticking heat sinks to the metal chassis of the drives. Sometimes just an aluminum drive cage is enough to move a lot of heat from a drive through direct contact and the larger surface area. Did you 3D print this case? If you're confident with tinkering with the design you may add some channels next to the drives for some flat heat pipes to move heat outside the case then epoxy some heat sink to the heat pipe and put the fan out there.

Another issue I see is there's a fan hole but where does it's air go or come from? If the drives are installed in the direction you're showing the fan would be butted against the back of the board??

Hi,

my soldering skills suck. I don't even have proper soldering station.

And even if I had skills (I have friends that do) I wouldn't solder anything to it.

I don't know how well this will perform etc... I don't want to make permament changes. This solution will have a bit more cables, but I can cable manage them to the bottom. Not blocking much airflow.

 

Speed controller isn't needed? How so? The fan will run on 100%, am I right? That could get noisy.

 

Locating hot chips on HDD? Where? They are sealed...

 

Heat pipes? Too expensive. I think that this solution is good enough. Keep in mind that I was running them with no fan and in closed cabinet. You are saying how HDDs have poor airflow benefits - which I can understand, but then pull out epoxying expensive heatpipes. That as a whole would cost as much as this NAS, maybe even Synology and with not much benefit.

 

The air comes through holes on side and small hole in the front made for display that won't be there. There is a link to the forum in "CloudShell4" word in my original post that will lead you to gif where you can find all the holes and more info. But here you go:

Spoiler

But I could take off the front to have free space for the air to flow through.

So Noctua fans. But again... If I go with higher RPM/dynamic RPM fan, I will need fan controller, won't I? Otherwise it will go full speed -> noise. And what config is better? Pull air IN or push air OUT? Fan inside or outside?

[Bitter]

Noctua brown fans come shipped with acessories, 2 of which are lower speed adapters that drop fan RPM, a LNA and ULNA (low noise, ultra low noise).

 

Not knowing what kinds of drives you're running it's hard to gauge how much cooling you'll need.

[tomini]

18 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Noctua brown fans come shipped with acessories, 2 of which are lower speed adapters that drop fan RPM, a LNA and ULNA (low noise, ultra low noise).

 

Not knowing what kinds of drives you're running it's hard to gauge how much cooling you'll need.

Oh, really? And they are standard 4-pin that will work...

That is truly great! How come I never heard of it during research

 

I have 10TB IronWolf Pro and 12TB DC HC520.

[brob]

Can you mount the fan on the outside?

[tomini]

7 minutes ago, brob said:

Can you mount the fan on the outside?

Yes, I mentioned that option in the first post.

 

2 hours ago, tomini said:

Or I can screw the fan outside of the case and that way I can have the 25mm for sure.

 

[brob]

3 hours ago, tomini said:

Yes, I mentioned that option in the first post.

 

 

 

Strikes me as the best option if you can get a fan grill to protect the blades.

[Bitter]

5 hours ago, tomini said:

Oh, really? And they are standard 4-pin that will work...

That is truly great! How come I never heard of it during research

 

I have 10TB IronWolf Pro and 12TB DC HC520.

Those for sure need cooling in that enclosure.

Yeah, 4 pin. They just drop the 12V down which drops the max speed of the fan down but still leave it PWM controllable. So if you're running them on straight 12V it would lower the max RPM to something more tolerable. Externally mounting the fan with a grill would be an absolutely fine solution. Honestly I'm not sure that the lil hole in the case is going to get enough air out and it won't let the air out evenly so one drive may suffer higher temps as a result. I think having 2 holes of fan size is the best solution with one fan blowing straight through between the drives.

 

As for the heat sinks on hot chips, most SMD heat sink into the PCB so a heat sink on the back of the PCB will still cool the chip on the other side. Ditto for the spindle motor, you can slap some heat sink on the HDD case near the motor and it'll sink motor heat out of the case and lower platter temps somewhat as a result. If you're really serious and really worried about drive temps in a small enclosure (like you're expecting constant read/write work) you may find mounting the drives both PCB facing each other and installing a water block between them to be a solid solution, a single 120MM rad with a built in pump would do just fine,  but you'd likely need an extra power brick for that depending how much the adapter you have now can supply. https://modmymods.com/aquacomputer-aquadrive-micro-copper-g1-4-25125.html

[tomini]

Thank you @Bitter and @brob. I went with the 25mm and will be mounting it outside the case. Now when I have all the parts...even the 14mm wouldn't fit inside.

However those Low Noise and Ultra Low Noise cables are really handy! The fan runs really quiet even without them. However during the evening/night without any ambient noise...the fan is pretty noticable. So I will experiment with the cables and position of the whole NAS.

 

Thanks again and sorry for not using your ideas @Bitter for better cooling. It is just too overkill and pretty expensive. If the temps will not go under 40°C in idle and it will be toasty during load - then I will go with some plan of yours.

[Bitter]

Looking forward to see what the results are! If you find temps are warmer than you like the first thing I'd do is cut away case at the other end to better allow flow of air through, try the cheap stuff first! I seem to recall way back when some 3.5 HDD heat sinks that made them fit in 5.25 bays and 2.5 to 3.5 heat sinks (looking at you WD Raptor!) but I don't think there was anything for 3.5 HDD in 3.5 bay like that and probably nothing that would fit in your tiny case either. There's other ways to dampen fan noise without impacting air flow too. Just put a bit of plastic on stand offs about 1.5 inches in front of the fan (if it's sucking air, further if it's blowing) that's at least the same dimensions as the fan and it'll deflect sound away from the direction the fan is pointed and have little to no impact on airflow.

 

I guess there's always this...

 

[tomini]

On 9/24/2021 at 1:35 AM, Bitter said:

Looking forward to see what the results are! If you find temps are warmer than you like the first thing I'd do is cut away case at the other end to better allow flow of air through, try the cheap stuff first! I seem to recall way back when some 3.5 HDD heat sinks that made them fit in 5.25 bays and 2.5 to 3.5 heat sinks (looking at you WD Raptor!) but I don't think there was anything for 3.5 HDD in 3.5 bay like that and probably nothing that would fit in your tiny case either. There's other ways to dampen fan noise without impacting air flow too. Just put a bit of plastic on stand offs about 1.5 inches in front of the fan (if it's sucking air, further if it's blowing) that's at least the same dimensions as the fan and it'll deflect sound away from the direction the fan is pointed and have little to no impact on airflow.

 

I guess there's always this...

 

I kept the faceplate, so only intakes are the 3 lines by sides that look like those hamburger-style menus in mobile apps and the rectangle that is made for screen, but I don't have that.

 

Drives run around 30°C while idle and I've seen highest of 33°C while under load. I'm happy with it and frankly amazed that one fan did that much difference. Maybe I could do a better cable management job and make space for airflow.

[Bitter]

22 minutes ago, tomini said:

I kept the faceplate, so only intakes are the 3 lines by sides that look like those hamburger-style menus in mobile apps and the rectangle that is made for screen, but I don't have that.

 

Drives run around 30°C while idle and I've seen highest of 33°C while under load. I'm happy with it and frankly amazed that one fan did that much difference. Maybe I could do a better cable management job and make space for airflow.

Nice work, 3.5 mech hard drives aren't terribly dense heat producers vs their surface area so a little air can go a long way. How's the noise with the grill like that? I've had issues in the past with fans against grills being rather noisy but if you're spinning it at slow speed with the LNA or ULNA it's probably a non issue unless you're putting an ear against it. I have low tolerance for certain tones of noise as well, you may not.

[tomini]

3 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Nice work, 3.5 mech hard drives aren't terribly dense heat producers vs their surface area so a little air can go a long way. How's the noise with the grill like that? I've had issues in the past with fans against grills being rather noisy but if you're spinning it at slow speed with the LNA or ULNA it's probably a non issue unless you're putting an ear against it. I have low tolerance for certain tones of noise as well, you may not.

While nothing is playing it can be heard. I didn't plug neither LNA or ULNA cable. So I will try those, because it is pretty annoying.

[Bitter]

1 minute ago, tomini said:

While nothing is playing it can be heard. I didn't plug neither LNA or ULNA cable. So I will try those, because it is pretty annoying.

The old school chrome wire grills are the quietest grills I've found, not the best looking but they keep fingers out, have no perceptible change in airflow, and add very little to no noise. 

[tomini]

9 minutes ago, Bitter said:

The old school chrome wire grills are the quietest grills I've found, not the best looking but they keep fingers out, have no perceptible change in airflow, and add very little to no noise. 

I bought this one:

This is how I mounted it. I sadly don't have the screws, so I used cable ties for now 

[Bitter]

Yup, that's them.