Tower airflow and HDD placement

Technology Hardware
1

Looking for some recommendations on HDD placement and, or cooling for my newly repurposed tower.

Current build:

  • Fractal Define S tower
  • ASUS ROG MAXIMUS VIII HERO LGA1151
  • Intel i7-6700K (Noctua 140mm CPU cooler)
  • 500 GB SSD M.2
  • 3 x 10 TB HDD

I recently installed Unraid on my box and added 1 x 10 TB HDD to start and used the existing SSD as the cache drive. For Prime Day I grabbed 2 x 10 TB HDDs, and I am currently pre-clearing the drives and temps increased to about 55 degrees C at 10% into the first read. So I changed the fan configuration in the BIOS to up the intake 3-pin fans to “Turbo” which keeps them around 75% speed on DC. They are hovering around 45 degrees C while pre-clearing now.

I am hoping for some recommendations on either moving the HDDs, changing the fans, or getting a new case all together if needed. The intended drive placement seems least desirable, but I’m not sure if there are better options out there for this case. I originally water-cooled the system which is why I have it. I wouldn’t mind grabbing three 140mm Noctua fans or something like that if anyone thought that would be a good solution. Fractal also makes a HDD cage accessory, but I’m not sure if it’s compatible or mod-able to fit my case.

I’ve included a couple of potato-quality pictures to help visualize.

HDD_Placement - 1
HDD_Placement - 1376Ă—640 285 KB
HDD_Placement - 2
HDD_Placement - 2429Ă—640 267 KB

2

Yeah unfortunately, like you said, it’s a water cooling case. But I think you might be able to get a 4-8x drive cage from amazon or something and use the water pump mounting holes at the bottom or worst case drill some hole to accommodate the cage.

3

Appreciate the reply. I ended up ordering a Fractal Design Define 7 with a solid side panel. The storage configuration should be what I need to keep it cool. Cheers!

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