jmroberts70
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2002
- Messages
- 2,953
I recently purchased an external eSATA 4-drive enclosure from Fry's and almost immediately noticed the drives weren't adequately cooled one bit. From these "before" shots (sorry, I didn't take any before I started chopping it up)...
I'm sure you can see the problems: rear fan has very little intake area to draw fresh, cool air over the drives other than the small perforations at the sides of the case. There's also a plastic cover over the electronics below (including the onboard PSU) so no air flow will ever make through this area (and it was getting quite toasty down there)...
So, first I removed the inadequate fan from the rear of the case and ran an extender of the onboard fan power to the front of the case to hook up with a 120mm variable speed adjustable fan...
I left just enough plastic on the front cover to allow remounting with the tabs on the bottom and the thumb screws above. It's almost like they intended to use a fan like this!
The fit is just perfect!
Naturally I had to dress up some of the internal wiring while I was there!
Finally, I added a small black handle to the top of the case and made sure a drive would fit below it with the screws there.
All in all, a great little box (for the price) that I have currently 2 500GB drives running a RAID0 striping array with room for another 2 drives (coming soon). I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. The drives and PSU still warm up a little but not by much. I like the fact that the fan has it's own switch (as it came out of the box) so I can leave the fan off when starting up so I don't tax the PSU too much while spooling up the drives.
I'm sure you can see the problems: rear fan has very little intake area to draw fresh, cool air over the drives other than the small perforations at the sides of the case. There's also a plastic cover over the electronics below (including the onboard PSU) so no air flow will ever make through this area (and it was getting quite toasty down there)...
So, first I removed the inadequate fan from the rear of the case and ran an extender of the onboard fan power to the front of the case to hook up with a 120mm variable speed adjustable fan...
I left just enough plastic on the front cover to allow remounting with the tabs on the bottom and the thumb screws above. It's almost like they intended to use a fan like this!
The fit is just perfect!
Naturally I had to dress up some of the internal wiring while I was there!
Finally, I added a small black handle to the top of the case and made sure a drive would fit below it with the screws there.
All in all, a great little box (for the price) that I have currently 2 500GB drives running a RAID0 striping array with room for another 2 drives (coming soon). I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. The drives and PSU still warm up a little but not by much. I like the fact that the fan has it's own switch (as it came out of the box) so I can leave the fan off when starting up so I don't tax the PSU too much while spooling up the drives.