Hi Everyone, The short version of the questions is: How much does hard drive ventilation matter? The longer version and background is below if you can be bothered I am looking at purchasing (well ... requesting as a gift) a Lian Li PC-B25FW. I am not a huge fan of the window, but this is the only variant that has an interior finished in black. I love everything about this case, with the one small exception of ventilation. The case does not have mesh on the front and instead draws air through a grill arrangement on the front-side of the case. There are two fans in the normal position front-bottom, two large fans in the roof, and one at the top-back. There is a large HDD cage behind the front fans. This is obviously positioned so that air can come across the drives. I am considering removing this to avoid airflow obstruction across to the GPU, CPU, chipset, etc. This would mean that my SSDs would be mounted in some custom arrangement down the bottom of the case. I would place my two 1TB hard drives up in the optical drive area, in the appropriate caddy. They should have a small amount of air being drawn across from the front grille and up into the roof exhaust, but it's presumably a toastier arrangement than having air being pushed directly across them. How much does hard drive ventilation matter? I'm expecting that this arrangement will be fine, but thought I would see what everyone else thinks.
It would depend on if it's a low speed drive (5400rpm) or high speed (7200rpm). With the low speed drives a lot of airflow isn't really needed, with higher speed drives I would recommend placing a undervolted 80mm fan moving air toward the top fan
I've never had a HDD fail due to heat, they are pretty good for that. A small amount of airflow, like you mentioned, will be fine.
Cheers - as I suspected, but worth the question. I've had actively-cooled HDD trays for many years, so this is a bit of a new angle. It sure will open up the interior of this case.
congrats on the case mate you'll love it. as stated HD's dont need much air, but if it really worries you there are lian li 5.25 drive bays that come equipped with a 120mm fan. also make sure you pick up a drive bay cover if you're having an optical drive as they look much better. also the scythe kaze Q looks great in this case pics n benchies from my purchase http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=186231
There's also the Lian Li Cooler that fits 3 hard drives and uses a 80mm fan and takes up one less drive bay than those with the 120mm fan. You need to run the fan at about 5v as it's noisy at full speed http://www.vadim.co.uk/product41731/Lian+Li+EX-23NB+HDD-Rack+-
Thanks! Looking forward to it. I'll have a look for those optical covers. That's a great tip! That could sort out my 2 HDD plus my two SSDs that are mounted in a 3.5" bracket. Save me from having to mount the SSDs down the bottom somewhere. I'll have to think about how it will look with the mesh.
Here is a link to the Lian Li page that shows it installed in a case: http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/produc...dex=394&cl_index=2&sc_index=5&ss_index=71&g=f. I can only find the normal one in the UK: http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_3916.html. I think it looks good. They do a black one as well so it can be colour cordinated inside. It will have the addd bonus of blowing air across the HD's and directly towards the CPU fan, assuming you will mount it facing to the rear.
Yeah ... looks good I think! I will have this case for a while so it is worth getting it right. I am planning to keep the CPU cooler rear-facing right now, although I have seen some decent top-facing executions in this case too.
The only time you should worry is if the area around the HDD is very hot, like in a laptop. I'm sure the inside of the case should be around 30C, so you'll have nothing to worry about Modern drives don't get very hot, unless its a 10,00RPM drive, then they get very very hot
The drive bay that KustomPC stock is the hot swap one and a bit more expensive than the bog standard one. If you have difficulty getting hold of the basic one send me a pm as I have one spare that I've just checked and is cosmetically OK. I may have difficulty finding the screws for it but they're in the pile of bits somewhere, it'll just take me a while to find them.
