Tiny NAS, High temps

[Jonathan Lemmens]

Hey guys,

 

I recently built a NAS in a 5,5L ammobox with a NAS4Free OS. I crammed 6 HDD's, an SFX PSU and all other necessary hardware in that tiny box so needless to say, it gets pretty hot in there.

Right now temps are about 60-65 on the CPU and about 50 on the HDD's under load with a Core 2 Duo E7300. This is "full NAS load" when I copy large files from 3 clients to the NAS simultaneously, not like a prime95 load. CPU usage never exceeds 50%.

 

There is absolutely no space for a bigger CPU cooler or even for better airflow, so my question is the following, which of these cpu's would be the "coolest" in this case:

Core 2 Duo E7300 http://ark.intel.com/products/36463/Intel-Core2-Duo-Processor-E7300-3M-Cache-2_66-GHz-1066-MHz-FSB

Core 2 Duo E4300 http://ark.intel.com/products/28024/Intel-Core2-Duo-Processor-E4300-2M-Cache-1_80-GHz-800-MHz-FSB

Celeron 440 http://ark.intel.com/nl/products/29736/Intel-Celeron-Processor-440-512K-Cache-2_00-GHz-800-MHz-FSB

 

My theory is that even though they're both 65W TDP chips, the E4300 will produce less heat than the E7300 because of it's larger die and the fact that is has a 800MHz FSB making the chipset produce less heat as well. Does this make sense? 

I'm afraid the Celeron will bottleneck the system too much, and therefore running hot as well.

 

I'm asking because of the tight case it's built in makes it quite a hassle to just swap the CPU and try all 3 of them. 

All insights/idea's will be appreciated  

[Huntsman]

Generally these older chips are not as power efficient and that's why you are getting so much heat. Best course of action is to improve the ventilation since your HDDs aren't gonna last very long with that temperature.

[Jonathan Lemmens]

6 minutes ago, Huntsman said:

Generally these older chips are not as power efficient and that's why you are getting so much heat. Best course of action is to improve the ventilation since your HDDs aren't gonna last very long with that temperature.

I'm afraid that isn't really an option, right now I have 6 500GB drives with 5mm of ventilation space between them  so I don't expect them to last very long indeed.

When they die, I will upgrade to 3 or 4 NAS-rated 2+TB HDD's and space them further apart, that should give the case more room to breathe. This was more like a "lets see if it fits" kind of build, but now that it works, I'd like to get the most out of the hardware that I have.

[SLAYR]

Some of the newer pentiums have a "t" version which is a low power version such as the g4400t, and g3220t which are 35w chips.

[Jonathan Lemmens]

1 minute ago, SLAYR said:

Some of the newer pentiums have a "t" version which is a low power version such as the g4400t, and g3220t which are 35w chips.

This is a 775 socket, so that won't work. When (if) I build the "Ammobox 2.0" I'll probably use an ITX serverboard with onboard CPU.

[Huntsman]

7 minutes ago, Jonathan Lemmens said:

I'm afraid that isn't really an option, right now I have 6 500GB drives with 5mm of ventilation space between them  so I don't expect them to last very long indeed.

When they die, I will upgrade to 3 or 4 NAS-rated 2+TB HDD's and space them further apart, that should give the case more room to breathe. This was more like a "lets see if it fits" kind of build, but now that it works, I'd like to get the most out of the hardware that I have.

Wow that is a REALLY tight fit. It's really impressive...

 

I would still prefer to have ventilation instead of swapping parts. Heat will still get trapped there no matter how little heat you put out. I've seen those 5mm thick fans that comes with Cooler Master Gemini coolers.. maybe you could use those?

[Jonathan Lemmens]

12 minutes ago, Huntsman said:

Wow that is a REALLY tight fit. It's really impressive...

 

I would still prefer to have ventilation instead of swapping parts. Heat will still get trapped there no matter how little heat you put out. I've seen those 5mm thick fans that comes with Cooler Master Gemini coolers.. maybe you could use those?

There are fans in there, a 120mm, 12.5mm thick Scythe fan up against the HDD's as an exhaust (it's on the top photo on the left side below the hinge) and an 100mm intake at the bottom blowing air into the PSU and towards the CPU, the (internal) exhaust from the PSU blows onto the RAM and chipset. I have all fans running at 7V which actually results in slightly better temps vs 12V. I guess because of turbulence.....?

[Huntsman]

Is it possible to somehow make it in such a way that the airflow is directly across the drives? Don't think the CPU would heat up much though. I run a 2.8GHz core 2 duo fanless in my NAS and it never goes above 40c.

[Jonathan Lemmens]

3 minutes ago, Huntsman said:

Is it possible to somehow make it in such a way that the airflow is directly across the drives? Don't think the CPU would heat up much though. I run a 2.8GHz core 2 duo fanless in my NAS and it never goes above 40c.

That's because your NAS has airflow  

 

I could flip all fans around, so that they blow over the drives first and exhaust though the bottom.... would that help?

[Huntsman]

You could try it out lol.. No promises tho

[Jonathan Lemmens]

I'll just see what happens. At least its less of a hassle than swapping CPU's

 

Thanks

[Jonathan Lemmens]

Hey, Just to let you know. I flipped the fans around, blowing the intake air directly over the HDD's now. This has made a very noticeable improvement  Under load the HDD's are about 5-7 cooler than before, CPU temps are pretty much the same at 60-65C, but that's OK.

Idle temps really impressed me though, the hard drives are at near-ambient when not in use.

 

Thanks again