Is 41 degrees C too hot?

[System Error Message]

If your drives arent slotted into slots designed to incase the drive itself such as trays where you put the drive on and and screw it from below you can use a hard drive heatsink on it as it will not stop vibrations and can give you better thermals.

Otherwise modify. I for example modified my CCR1036 to operate even more silent than the ubiquiti edgerouter pro. Thats 36 cores running even quieter than a dual core with reasonable thermals. I think mikrotik's cooling design is terrible because they focus on a good design on the CPU but the PSU doesnt have heatsink or fan so my CCR's PSU failed because it was under high internal ambient temperature for months. Even with the stock cooling the same thing would've happened. This is because there is no way for air to flow to cool the rest of the internals other than the CPU only. For my cooling mod all i used was some scythe fans, GC extreme thermal paste and some parcel tape.

Theres so much you can do when it comes to adding fans. You can get an IDE usb external hard drive adapter, attach the molex to some computer case fans you have laying around unused, tape them somewhere that would work best and it works. I also actually did this, as a makeshift cooling pad, i had a leftover circuit board that operated a flourascent light from a computer case, an external hard drive IDE adapter + case and some case fans and put them all together but with the lamp as well so i could use it as a table lamp or something else.

 

[RMerlin]

And if you have a NAS, see if they allow you to manually control the fan speed. If it's in a closet, running the fan at a higher speed might not be problematic noise-wise, as the cabinet would muffle the noise. See if that helps.

 

[Shabbir Rao]

Yes it is hot. You should keep them in a room where you can maintain a temperature not more than 15 to 20 degree Celsius if you do not want any disaster.

 

[ingeborgdot]

20c? That has got to be the craziest response I have ever seen. Who can afford to run their AC to keep a room at 20c (68F) or less. And who wants to be in a room that is that cold all the time. That is not practical and won't even be considered.

 

[System Error Message]

20c? That has got to be the craziest response I have ever seen. Who can afford to run their AC to keep a room at 20c (68F) or less. And who wants to be in a room that is that cold all the time. That is not practical and won't even be considered.

Sounds like you havent seen a datacenter. The room has to be colder because cooling systems performance have that delta between room temperature and device temperature. By lowering the room temperature by 10C you also lower your device temperature by 10C. Its not a matter of if the temperature is suitable for humans and datacenters do not set temperatures to 0C to avoid icing and condensation so a low temperature is chosen that is suitable for cooling and to avoid any increase in humidity.

You do not put beds in datacenter for people to live in so datacenters do not go in bedrooms and vice versa.

Lowering temperature of electronics also reduce their power use. CPUs use less power the colder they are thats why when overclocking people use liquid nitrogen because they can use more volts as the CPU is cold enough that it wont use too much power. For example the TileGX with 36 cores uses 10W more when it is 70C than when it is 50C and the 36core TileGX is a 70W TDP CPU.

 

[ingeborgdot]

Are you kidding me? I understand that stuff. That is not the real world SOHO though. I am talking a small little office room and not a data center. For a data center, that is understandable but for a SOHO, not.

 

[System Error Message]

Are you kidding me? I understand that stuff. That is not the real world SOHO though. I am talking a small little office room and not a data center. For a data center, that is understandable but for a SOHO, not.

for an office, 20C during the day is enjoyable. In summer things can get hot and your employees will thank you for 20C. 20C is actually only a bit cool and i know places that set their AC really cold below 20C.

 

[ingeborgdot]

There is no one in this office that wants it that cold. 72 is the lowest they want it. They actually like it a little warmer than that.

 

[TonyH]

So you guys are saying that the difference of 3 degrees makes a big difference.

I am always afraid of warm temperature and bad unstable power supplies. Ounce of prevention is better than pound of remedy. As a side note in my working days once I intentionally lowered the large computer room temperature down to near freezing. I swear system was running faster, lol!

 

[System Error Message]

There is no one in this office that wants it that cold. 72 is the lowest they want it. They actually like it a little warmer than that.

The other thing is in an office or even in a datacenter the rooms where the computers are are seperated from the rooms where they people are so the rooms can be kept colder without any one complaining.

 

[TonyH]

There is no one in this office that wants it that cold. 72 is the lowest they want it. They actually like it a little warmer than that.

You must be from a region near equator. I am a Canuck, Today it is 26C outside with full sun, TOO hot for me, even my dog keeps jumping into the icy cold river to cool off, LOL!

 

[sfx2000]

Sounds like you havent seen a datacenter. The room has to be colder because cooling systems performance have that delta between room temperature and device temperature. By lowering the room temperature by 10C you also lower your device temperature by 10C.

Not quite so simple - I used to have five DC's where my platforms where - ABQ, DEN, PHX, ORD, and IAD - ORD and IAD were the most recent, with flow-thru racks and all the cool stuff - so ambient between the racks was pretty comfortable - let's say 70F, whereas ABQ, DEN, and PHX were very old, and the racks were free-standing - and there, ambient was kept around 50F - definitely sweater weather there

One thing that's interesting is there isn't necessarily a one to one relationship between ambient and temp inside the box, and this is generally an engineered value for data center based servers...

For home based NAS boxes, what you suggest is generally applicable though - as they are free standing - one concern with them, and also free free-air data centers, and this is the key problem, is once you get to a certain point, you can't move enough air thru the box, and it runs away and escalates - and a heavily 2 socket Opteron/Xeon/Sparc with a handful of disks will run completely off the end of the pier once a certain temp is hit - and it will do it very quickly as it will not throttle on temp...

Here at the house with my small boxes - I generally tend to worry a bit when lm_sensors starts report temps around 60C - which here relates to ambient being around 95F/35C - I don't have AC, not because I'm cheap, but because I'm energy efficient

 

[TonyH]

Not quite so simple - I used to have five DC's where my platforms where - ABQ, DEN, PHX, ORD, and IAD - ORD and IAD were the most recent, with flow-thru racks and all the cool stuff - so ambient between the racks was pretty comfortable - let's say 70F, whereas ABQ, DEN, and PHX were very old, and the racks were free-standing - and there, ambient was kept around 50F - definitely sweater weather there

One thing that's interesting is there isn't necessarily a one to one relationship between ambient and temp inside the box, and this is generally an engineered value for data center based servers...

For home based NAS boxes, what you suggest is generally applicable though - as they are free standing - one concern with them, and also free free-air data centers, and this is the key problem, is once you get to a certain point, you can't move enough air thru the box, and it runs away and escalates - and a heavily 2 socket Opteron/Xeon/Sparc with a handful of disks will run completely off the end of the pier once a certain temp is hit - and it will do it very quickly as it will not throttle on temp...

Here at the house with my small boxes - I generally tend to worry a bit when lm_sensors starts report temps around 60C - which here relates to ambient being around 95F/35C - I don't have AC, not because I'm cheap, but because I'm energy efficient

More than 20 years ago, I had this little house built for the last time in my life, I could have a geothermal heat exchanger for the cost of ~25K with govt. subsidy. I still regret not taking the opportunity. Now my utility won't
install solar panels on my roof for lease to own deal. They say their contractor refuses to tread on my roof tiles.

 

[KenZ71]

More than 20 years ago, I had this little house built for the last time in my life, I could have a geothermal heat exchanger for the cost of ~25K with govt. subsidy. I still regret not taking the opportunity. Now my utility won't
install solar panels on my roof for lease to own deal. They say their contractor refuses to tread on my roof tiles.

So put the solar panels on elevated racks in your yard and have a nice shaded area / less grass to mow.

 

[TonyH]

So put the solar panels on elevated racks in your yard and have a nice shaded area / less grass to mow.

South facing small yard is organic flower/vege garden. Wife says not there. This is small suburb subdivision. No big yards.