Water Tank with integrated HDD cooling
 

Hi

I'm thinking of building a watertank that has the cooling for 2 HDDs integrated. It should be as large as 2 5 1/4" Drives.

Do you think this thing will work?
Here is a rendering of how it should look like
The golden parts should be made of copper (not very thick ~2mm) an the other parts of plexi.

so there should be two holes in the back of the tank where you can put the HDDs in, and that's it.

Ok it might be tricky to seal it, but it should work with epoxy and Silicon, or not?

That's actually a good idea! A bit voluminous, but a good idea nonetheless!

The only disadvantage is that if you want to solidly attach the heatsinks (aka copper plate) to the sides of the HDD, where it would be most effective, you'd have to design the box-slot with very tight tolerances, and you won't have much clamping force on it, if any.

Another disadvantage is that if you wanted to cool some of the hot components on the PCB of these HDDs, and they happen to be recessed under the top, you'd have to shim them up.


Check out the HDD block thread in my sig.

Creative idea, but probably more troublesome than what it solves. I remember seeing an article on building a HDD cooler. Just solder some pipe to a copper plate which [i]doesn't wrap around the whole disk.

What if we seal the drive up with thin plastic, like cling-wrap and just have them submerged in the res tank?

heat will cause the plastic to melt...let your imagination take it from there :eek: ;)

HDDs have cables, and need some breathing air.

yea, we would seal the plastic arround the cables.

Breathing air? For what?

hard drives have vents that say somthing like "Dont Dare Cover Me"

i guess they are to equalize the pressure inside and outside the drive

I have never seen a hard drive with "vents"

And the "inside" of hard drives is sealed to keep contaminants from killing the platters. I'm pretty sure its at or near a vacuum inside.

Well, all of them do.

It's not a "vent" per say....but you will see a little rubber spot somewhere on the drive. It will have a tiny hole in the center, and will have "do not cover" or something to the effect next to it.
(I'm SURE my IBM has this set up because I can look at it.)

Do a search on submersing HDDs on this or any other board. It has come up more than once...and I think some peeps even got manufacturer responses about the venting.

i dont se it on any of my maxtors, seagate, or WDs

But they are all old. Ill check on my raptor, next time I open my case.

Even if old or new...they have em.

Linkies for examples:
All easily found by searching company web sites.

Western Digital
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....cGFnZT0x&p_li=

Seagate
One with picture (see section 3.3 Drive Mounting for picture):
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...omentus_pm.pdf

IBM (now Hitachi owned):
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/06613/06613mec.htm

Couldn't find anything with a simple search on Maxtor's site....but considaring how HDD's work...I'm sure if you call em, they will tell you where their vents are.

Moral of the story: DON'T SUBMERGE YOUR HDD!

Heres an addition to the idea that expands on your original concept:

How about you shift the Hard Drvives up so they are at the top/bottom (the vent grommet the right way up natch.) and remove part of the perspex so you can have access to the sides

The res can be full height at the front of the case (shaded grey)

with the fill inlet above the water line so it can be used to bleed the system somewhat.

PAINT JOBBY (below):

I hope it puts across my idea better then I conveyed it there.

Is the black part the res?
So there are 2 res's, in essence?

Or am i totally not getting it?

Maybe I should jhave explained it a bit better - TWO Hard drives and the res/cooler between.

I immediatly liked your idea, but remember that only the sides on the hd make much heat, so this is what i thought of
(green should be the color of copper ;-) )

Actually, the sides don't make much heat, and the best spot to cool the drives is probably above and below if you could make a suitable block. The sides are just much easier to cool.

heres my hdd watercooler
 

I just flattened out 1/2 " copper and soldered on a 3/8 u-loop.
I sandwich this between the 2 hdd and wrap in sound proofing.:)

Re: heres my hdd watercooler
 

Ah. So you make like a sandwich, where the drives are like the silky-soft pieces of wonder bread, and that "block" you showed is like the 3-month-old balgna?

This construction discussion about HDD blocks has been done before. I believe there are two links here and here.

The second thread has examples of water blocks.

I've found that the major source of heat on a HDD is the MOTOR... not the sizes or the base itself... but the MOTOR part of the main casing. This is where a MAJOR part of the heat from the drive seems to be focused.

Some of the ICs on the controller board can get warm ... but I've never seen major heat from them.

Hmm, good to know.

The problem with your version would be, that the water tank wouldn't be filled with water alltogehter. There will be some Air in it too, and as for that the HDD above wouldn't be cooled as well as the one below, am I right?

But it is an idea worth considering with some changes....

I have a nice "3D" model of my idea (got bored in Photoshop ;P) where I was trying to explain it better is on my computer at home. But I'll have no chance of actually posting it up as my computer has a blown monitior and I can't see what I'm doing :( be next week sometime before I get round to it.

In short though the res at the front/back of the contration will be the "full height" so that is wher the air will be trapped, NOT in the cooler part.

~ Boli

EDIT: Hey I'm an Ubber Geek :D.

a 3d model would be nice....Maybe we could put our ideas together an find a working solution.

Proportions wrong, I know - but a Perspex res is attached to a pair of rectangular copper tubes (in/out). The Hard drives are bolted onto the top/bottom of the copper and by use of the brackets hopefully transfer their heat to the water.