Case/Ventilation Question

[Jeff]

....anyone familiar with Chenbro cases? Specifically the SR105?

I'm looking to have a small company build a small server for me, since I'm
not paying the bill directly and will save my time to build only the
machines that I use at home.

The only thing in the specs I'm slightly concerned about is the case.

The machine will have 2 dual-core AMD Opteron 2218 processors and 4 15K
Seagate SAS drives.
It is possible that I may add a large Sata drive for backup.
The mainboard will hold up to 16 sticks of DDR2 ram, although I doubt that
I'll ever install that much.
The PSU is 600 watts, and likely won't be the most efficient made.

The case has a single 120 mm exhaust fan in the rear and a smaller intake
fan behind the hot-swap drive bays at the front of the case.

The only video will be what's on the mainboard, so that shouldn't throw off
much heat.

The case isn't all that large, and it doesn't look like it would take any
additional case fans.

....any opinions about whether there is enough ventilation? I'm mostly
concerned about the heat from the drives.

 

[Tomcat (Tom)]

This is hard to answer without seeing the case after it's built. With
any case, cooling fans won't do much good if the cabling inside is
blocking all the airflow. Make sure there is unblocked airflow from
the intake fan to the outtake fan. For a server you really should have
a full tower case but I think that case is a mid-tower case.

 

[Paul]

...anyone familiar with Chenbro cases? Specifically the SR105?

I'm looking to have a small company build a small server for me, since
I'm not paying the bill directly and will save my time to build only the
machines that I use at home.

The only thing in the specs I'm slightly concerned about is the case.

The machine will have 2 dual-core AMD Opteron 2218 processors and 4 15K
Seagate SAS drives.
It is possible that I may add a large Sata drive for backup.
The mainboard will hold up to 16 sticks of DDR2 ram, although I doubt
that I'll ever install that much.
The PSU is 600 watts, and likely won't be the most efficient made.

The case has a single 120 mm exhaust fan in the rear and a smaller
intake fan behind the hot-swap drive bays at the front of the case.

The only video will be what's on the mainboard, so that shouldn't throw
off much heat.

The case isn't all that large, and it doesn't look like it would take
any additional case fans.

...any opinions about whether there is enough ventilation? I'm mostly
concerned about the heat from the drives.

I have one of these. A battery operated dual digital thermometer.

Lian Li Black T4 5.25" Temperature Monitor
http://www.xoxide.com/liliblt45tem.html (item)
http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/xoxide_1923_53576676 (picture)

There is another version here.

http://www.lian-li.com/Product/Accessories/Other_Thermometer.htm

A thermometer like that, will come with a kapton (polyimide) encapsulated
thin sensor, which you can tape to the top of one of the disk drives. Your
main concern, would be the drive operating temperature.

If you place four drives in the middle bay, there would likely be zero
room between drives. (1 inch thick drives, on slightly more than 1 inch
centers.) Even with a fan present next to the drives, if there is no air
channel, expect the drive temperature to increase.

In one of my previous cases, what I did, was drilled extra holes in the
rack, to convert the rack from four drives holder, to a three drive
holder with extra room between drives. If you make a metal plate, with
guide holes in it, then clamp the plate to the rack, you can prevent a
hand drive from scratching up the finish when you drill the holes.

Your processors are 95W each. The four drives are 17W each when busy.
You could start a bunch of copies of Prime95 on the processors, to get
them busy. And do a network restore to the array, to get the drives
chugging. Then use your digital thermometer to measure case air temperature,
and the temperature of one of the "middle" drives in the sandwich.

In the past, I've downloaded a few OEM product manuals for disk drives,
and those manuals can have a temperature versus relative humidity graph
for the drive. I think a drive can only take 35C at about 60% humidity.
As the air gets drier, the allowed temperature rises. Disk drives are
not sealed, and have a pressure equalization hole (the "breather hole").
That hole has a filter on it, but stuff like water vapor can still pass
through. If the server is operated in an air conditioned environment,
then achieving 40% humidity should not be a problem. If the server is
to work in an uncontrolled environment (house without A.C. in the middle
of summer), then I would pay more attention to drive spacing and
fan cooling.

A case with more racks in it, each rack with a fan, would allow
changing the spacing between drives.

The racks in this case, might leave a bit more room between drives.
I'd probably plug the large side vent, to force the airflow to be
front to back.

COOLER MASTER Stacker 810 RC-810-SKN1 SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/11-119-093-09.jpg

HTH,
Paul

 

[OSbandito]

Paul replied:

I have one of these. A battery operated dual digital thermometer.

Lian Li Black T4 5.25" Temperature Monitor
http://www.xoxide.com/liliblt45tem.html (item)
http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/xoxide_1923_53576676 (picture)

There is another version here.

http://www.lian-li.com/Product/Accessories/Other_Thermometer.htm

A thermometer like that, will come with a kapton (polyimide) encapsulated
thin sensor, which you can tape to the top of one of the disk drives. Your
main concern, would be the drive operating temperature.

If you place four drives in the middle bay, there would likely be zero
room between drives. (1 inch thick drives, on slightly more than 1 inch
centers.) Even with a fan present next to the drives, if there is no air
channel, expect the drive temperature to increase.

In one of my previous cases, what I did, was drilled extra holes in the
rack, to convert the rack from four drives holder, to a three drive
holder with extra room between drives. If you make a metal plate, with
guide holes in it, then clamp the plate to the rack, you can prevent a
hand drive from scratching up the finish when you drill the holes.

Your processors are 95W each. The four drives are 17W each when busy.
You could start a bunch of copies of Prime95 on the processors, to get
them busy. And do a network restore to the array, to get the drives
chugging. Then use your digital thermometer to measure case air temperature,
and the temperature of one of the "middle" drives in the sandwich.

In the past, I've downloaded a few OEM product manuals for disk drives,
and those manuals can have a temperature versus relative humidity graph
for the drive. I think a drive can only take 35C at about 60% humidity.
As the air gets drier, the allowed temperature rises. Disk drives are
not sealed, and have a pressure equalization hole (the "breather hole").
That hole has a filter on it, but stuff like water vapor can still pass
through. If the server is operated in an air conditioned environment,
then achieving 40% humidity should not be a problem. If the server is
to work in an uncontrolled environment (house without A.C. in the middle
of summer), then I would pay more attention to drive spacing and
fan cooling.

A case with more racks in it, each rack with a fan, would allow
changing the spacing between drives.

The racks in this case, might leave a bit more room between drives.
I'd probably plug the large side vent, to force the airflow to be
front to back.

COOLER MASTER Stacker 810 RC-810-SKN1 SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/11-119-093-09.jpg

HTH,
Paul

Paul, you guys are serious computer geeks. You might want to look at a
small desktop or vertical rackmount; would give easy access, ventilation
and flexibility. Found one site with related products but there's a lot
of equipment out there, used as well as new.
http://www.amtrade.com/ipc/industrial_pc_rackmount_lg_pix.htm