The Magic of Upgrading PC Fans

This is a picture heavy story about upgrading fans.

I load up a couple drives to fill out my node 804 (great home server case). I stare at my drive temperatures, watching one drive going off the walls - a new one - on the cusp of triggering heat warnings. I think to myself, is this defective out of the box?

I contact my friend who works in SMB IT management, thinking he must deal with defective drives all the time. I ask him "You ever heard of a drive idling above 50C?"

He response simply with "What type of cooling do you have in the case?"

Duh, A fully loaded case with default fans. This drive is probably sitting right on a heat souce that isn't get the heat dispersed.

The Starting Point

Here we are, I have yet to install the fans in the machine. This is a live blog! These are the metrics of the server at writing.

Disk 5, the culprit, you can see the nice yellow 53C right beside it. Having said that, you can see the interesting array of temperatures amongst the drives. If you are famililar with the case, or you did look at the design. The eight drives - which are all holding drives - are in two four drive stacks side by side.

There is an 18C swing between the coolest drive (which we can assume is idle) and the hottest drive, which is idle (I have seen the temperature when it is not).

Let's fix it.

The Solution

I know this post is titled "The Magic of Upgrading PC Fans". I also haven't installed them yet, so, I am sure you are asking "how do you know this will work?".

Easy, I have used these fans and I have confidence in them.

I bought four Noctua NF-P12 Redux-1700 PWM (amazon.ca link, not a referral link). They run for ~$18 CAD a piece; in total ~$75-80 CAD after taxes. A minor price for the potential longevity of the drives.

The Inspection

Ugh. Cables. Dust. This is why I hate upgrades.

The Install

The case is divided into two bays. One for the - let's call it - motherboard side and they other for the PSU and drive bays. I will only be added fans to the drive bay side.

Immediately, I am second guessing my choice of four fans for it. I envisioned two fans on the front blowing out (consistent with the other side's one fan) and two fans on the top blowing out.

Nope.

I settled on replacing the back fan with an upgrade and putting the two fans at the front.

But, wait.

It is never that simple. The fan controller with the case only accepts three pin fans.

Now what?

Time to MacGyver something for now. I scope the motherboard for any chasis fan pins. There are two. One is in use for the case fan on the motherboard side. Sorry, fan, not for you any more. Since, I didn't want to go back to the drive side, I simply plug this fan into the optional CPU fan pins. I plug the rear fan and one of the two front fans into the two chasis fan pins.

Boot it up!

12... 24... 72 Hours Later...

I had gotten side tracked and ordered a fan controller. I ordered the Thermalright Fan HUB Controller REV. A (still not using referral links) for $15 CAD. Let's call the total just under $100 for this computer's life changing upgrade.

Here are the results after a week.

Not good enough. Now I have a warning on a new drive. Moving wires haves probably dampened the airflow.

Updated plan: Let's install the fan controller, get the three Noctua fans running on the hard drive side. Place the fourth Noctua fan on the motherboard side as the "rear" fan and put the two original Fractal fans at the front of the motherboard side.

Updated Plan Numbers

Here's the initial boot...

Also, updated cost. The cost of stupidity. I left the USB in the side of the case when I flipped the case. I put some weight on the top of the case and pushed the port into the case. Fortunately, it is still functioning. The USB is just submuerged into the case a little too far. Dodged one there.

12 Hours Later...

There you have it! This is what we can expect for numbers.

The cables are a mess. I nearly (actually did) broke my USB port; which is also my boot drive for Unraid. BUT, Mission Accomplished!

Moral of the Story / tldr;

1. Fans are worth it.
2. If you can afford it, max out the machines off the bad; including fans.
3. Upgrading a machine adds years to it's life, but, probably takes more off of yours (alluding to the frustration).
4. Cable management does matter for airflow.
5. Dust sucks as well; actually it clogs. Get rid of it.

In seriousness, this $100 should have been spent while I built the machine. Cost was the biggest factor back that. I also - ignorantly - thought this was going to remain a smaller server and wouldn't need the extra wind power. Things changed.

A happy computer is a cool computer.