http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Thermaltake/M4
Saw that & thought I'd share in case it mght be useful to someone out there. By itself it won't act as a silent solution, but since it can passively cool your HD it might work well to extend the life of high performance drives in situations where soundproofing reduces airflow.
Interesting HD cooling solution
I found it interesting how much heat a harddisk can dissipate by just the sides of it's metal frame - guessing from how hot the disk cage in the PC becomes after a short while.
Since that thing usually isn't a good heat conductor at all, one might replace it by 2 solid alloy plates with drilled holes for the screws that fix the drives.
A few extra parts that increase surface (mounted directly to the plates) from (say) outdated CPU or hifi-amp coolers should decrease drive temperature significantly.
the cutting of the alloy is probably difficult - 2 big (identical) transistor coolers are most likely easier to handle...
anyway, it's just an inspiration for the DIYer
cheers, Tom
Since that thing usually isn't a good heat conductor at all, one might replace it by 2 solid alloy plates with drilled holes for the screws that fix the drives.
A few extra parts that increase surface (mounted directly to the plates) from (say) outdated CPU or hifi-amp coolers should decrease drive temperature significantly.
the cutting of the alloy is probably difficult - 2 big (identical) transistor coolers are most likely easier to handle...
anyway, it's just an inspiration for the DIYer
cheers, Tom
I always dreamed of modding out a " Super DAW " before practicality smacked me
in the head. Afterall this is a mobile live/studio rig and my builder talked me out of several ideas I had. Koolance had the same rackmount case that I used w/ water cooling included, and of course a fancy LCD. I loved the idea but went with 4 raptors @ 10k rpm in 3Ware SATA RAID cage. They are far from cool, but Giga really works over HDD's. My rig has run 4 several hours everyday since last June w/o incident. I used the RAID 1 function on my Supermicro P4SCT+II to make copies of all HDD's, and if I have a failure, I just swap a drive with minimal downtime. He also demo'd a simulated HDD failure to show me that the myth of RAID in the audio world is uneeded during a live gig. Even the RAID 5, and NetCell RAID 3 set-ups still have an audible glitch when there is a failure. I opted to have a 5 second glitch rather than a 1 second glitch and pay 600 USD less for this feature. But the RAID cage has fast little fans, and has heat transferred out of the front of the cage, along with the noise of the drives. But I still want to build a DAW that sits in a studio with modded windows, and water cooling someday. Maybe when they come up with a water cooled/silent P.S.U. I will secure the funds. That would be sweet, low power, low noise, and never have to move it.
To Us, And Those Like Us,
in the head. Afterall this is a mobile live/studio rig and my builder talked me out of several ideas I had. Koolance had the same rackmount case that I used w/ water cooling included, and of course a fancy LCD. I loved the idea but went with 4 raptors @ 10k rpm in 3Ware SATA RAID cage. They are far from cool, but Giga really works over HDD's. My rig has run 4 several hours everyday since last June w/o incident. I used the RAID 1 function on my Supermicro P4SCT+II to make copies of all HDD's, and if I have a failure, I just swap a drive with minimal downtime. He also demo'd a simulated HDD failure to show me that the myth of RAID in the audio world is uneeded during a live gig. Even the RAID 5, and NetCell RAID 3 set-ups still have an audible glitch when there is a failure. I opted to have a 5 second glitch rather than a 1 second glitch and pay 600 USD less for this feature. But the RAID cage has fast little fans, and has heat transferred out of the front of the cage, along with the noise of the drives. But I still want to build a DAW that sits in a studio with modded windows, and water cooling someday. Maybe when they come up with a water cooled/silent P.S.U. I will secure the funds. That would be sweet, low power, low noise, and never have to move it.
To Us, And Those Like Us,