Self made drive bracket upgrade of my Gen8

[Homer-S 18]

Hello all,

inspired by the youtube videos of Joe_Miner and the pinned threat of the G8 drive bracket I decided to use my engineering skills to do something similar.

I wanted to show you some pictures of my work. It was not really difficulty because all brain work was done before by schoondoggy.

I have mounted a low speed 4cm fan which should pull warm air from the HDDs but it seems to be to less airflow.
One drive is running on 56°C and the other one on 53°C. I guess it is a little high. What do you think?
Update: After writing this post they reduced by 4°C each. With increased cooling setting in BIOS they are running on ~47°C



drives mounted and bracket fixation tabs



front view, do not take too much attention on gap parallelism would not fly for a German car



plate from the back; not so nice but working



drives with plugs



this single screw is for mounting the fan



ready to install; view from the back



close up with running fan



final status





Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.

[schoondoggy 895]

Nicely done!

The fan mount is a nice touch.

[Joe_Miner 254]

Excellent +1

[Homer-S 18]

One question from my side.

 

All temperatures are looking good except the additional HDDs. One is at ~52° and the other 48°C.

I installed additional to the setup above an additional fan without any additional effect. If I am turning in BIOS the fan level to advanced it looks mcuh better but the noise is a little too loud.

 

Difference between these BIOS settings is about 20% of Fan speed. My question is now. Can I go somewhere in between? 19% is too slow and I have the 52°C and 40% is loud and the HDD is running at 43°C.

 

I would like to bring it to 30% but I have no idea if it is possible and how?

 

One more thought, if my additional Raid controller would be smart array compatible would it be contribute to the fan speed control unit and automatically increase fan speed?

 

Thanks

[schoondoggy 895]

If you use a HP P222 RAID it will help with fan speed. The P222 is supported by iLo and iLo controls the internal fan. As for the temp of the drives on the bracket, you need to increase air flow. Blower fans are the best way to move air. Check some of JM's videos on cooling.

[Homer-S 18]

is it the same for P212 and P410?

[schoondoggy 895]

No, unfortunately the P222 is the only controller recognized by iLo on the microsever gen8.

[Joe_Miner 254]

you can see details of the blower fan in:

 

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn2DhE-6J02RpMF4bJDh-m-y8GlDi1WOO

 

as well as:

 

http://homeservershow.com/schoondoggy-gen8-drive-mount-hp-proliant-gen8-microserver-first-look.html

http://homeservershow.com/sgdm-sdm-pre-production-review-hp-proliant-gen8-microserver.html

 

Edited November 22, 2014 by Joe_Miner

[Homer-S 18]

I found on in an online shop but the db noise value is quite high ...

Do you know silent ones? Max 20db?

[Homer-S 18]

Hello again,

 

after a drive break down I decided to improve my setup a little. I bought an external Icy Dock case and added there two 1TB Seagates to do additional drive backups.

 

I think it looks quite good with this additional modding.

I could now go up to 12 drives

- 4 original installed in Gen8

- 2 on self made bracket

- 1 USB3 drive on top

- DVD in ODD

- 4 in ecternal Icy Dock

with a new raid controller.

 

My LSI has only 4i ports.

 

Since my Server is banned into lumber-room fans can run on advanced settings and I had never issues with to high drive temperature.

 

Here some pictures: