Easy Evening Modding: Hard Drive Cooler

Here's a brief departure from my HTPC Project. I've run in to a bit of a problem recently - it's been so hot the last few weeks that, should I leave the AC off in my office, my server overheats and occasionally shuts down while I'm at work. Something needed to be done.

What I did was build a hard drive rack with twin 120mm fans out of scraps and spare parts. This is a project that doesn't require a lot of effort, and should be able to be accomplished in one evening (hence the title.) It technically took me two evenings, but that's mainly because of a planning "oopsie" that I made.

What you will need for this project are the following:

• Two CD drive housings
• Two 120mm Fans; one LED, one standard
• Sheet of 3mm styrene
• Aluminum angle stock
• fan screws
• Rubber fan grommets
• Gorilla glue and rivets

No picture, but I took apart two CD drives. I have a pile of old drives that I will never use again (since everthing is on DVDs these days anyway.) These will form the top and bottom of the cage.

I have an old server case frame (the rest of the case is used in my HTPC mod) that I use as a test rack. It's great for making sure that test-fits work, etc. Therefore, I mounted the two housings in the frame:

This way, I could make sure that they were spaced properly to fit the three spare 5.25 bays that I have in my server case. The next step was to slide the two pieces back on their rails until I could fit the two fans in front, but still be flush with the front, like so:

A quick check to make sure that we're square and on I go...

...to the part where I screwed up and wasted time.

My brilliant plan was to cut the vertical pieces out of some plexi and mark out the holes for the mounting screws.

Here I used another cage to mark it out, and here it is:

Well, once I drilled them out and started working with it, I realized that i didn't have any screws long enough to make it through the plexi to the drives. Doh.

Thankfully, I had some 3mm styrene handy...so I pretty much just copied the pieces over. (Unfortunately, this wasted a lot of time.)

Test fit with the drives to make sure that the holes lined up:

The next step was to cut some aluminum angle stock. I swear, next to pop rivets, this stuff is my favorite supply for modding. I love it.

This was attached to the styrene and the housings with a combination of gorilla glue and pop-rivets. Please note that G-glue does a passable job with metal, but is not very load-bearing.

Afterwards, I needed to trim down the housing pieces so that I can access the screws when the drives come in and out. That was a simple matter of trimming it with my trusty Dremmel.

Here, I appologize, but my camera went wonky and I lost a few pics. Thankfully, it was just a matter of drilling holes for the fans, widening them to a 1/4" and popping in the rubber grommets. That accomplished, and we have this:

Okay, we're cranking now. Here is the patient:

Drives in, and a test fit:

Everything fits, everything seems ready to go.

Here's the big test: The power button. Here, it's either going to work, or everything is going to go FZZZZT.

Guess what - it works. Here's another shot with the flash off. Again, I appologize - it appears that without the flash, my camera doesn't like to focus on moving objects like fans. I took four pics. They all looked like this:

So there you have it: Quick and dirty, and one evening of work. The main differences with mine over the commercial version are that A.) It fits two fans flush with the case so that it's ready for the popular turbine mod, and B.) I built it. (The second one is the important one, because it's why we do what we do.)

At some point I will do the cosmetic work on the outside, but that may wait until my planned server case build that I probably won't get to until the winter.

Thanks for stopping by!

Nice job, quick, smart and functional !!!
+rep

That was pretty much my mission statement, right there. :D

Glad you liked it!

whats the popular turbine mod? :think:

Do you realize that stacking the fans like that slows them down and makes them push less air? You'll get better performance with just one fan.

Nice job on the mod!

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Originally Posted by SXRguyinMA

whats the popular turbine mod? :think:

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Quote:

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Do you realize that stacking the fans like that slows them down and makes them push less air?

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The answer to the second question is because I'm setting up another part of a mod. Which is what the first question is about:

Here's a link to one of the mods in these forums that has it ( there are a good number in the completed mods section.)

And you can find a tutorial here.

Essentially, it is an unlit fan with a nose-cone ganged together with a lit one behind it. Yes, technically it moves less air than one fan by itself, but the open nature of it without a grill, plus the duct work makes it more efficiant...so it's kind of a push. Plus it looks good. :)

Love the 8GB Seagate Xbox drive you used to test out the spacing. I use mine for similar purposes since I pulled it out and put in some bigger drives. +rep for the effective design and doing it yourself = true spirit of modding:up:

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Originally Posted by The_Crippler

The answer to the second question is because I'm setting up another part of a mod. Which is what the first question is about:

Here's a link to one of the mods in these forums that has it ( there are a good number in the completed mods section.)

And you can find a tutorial here.

Essentially, it is an unlit fan with a nose-cone ganged together with a lit one behind it. Yes, technically it moves less air than one fan by itself, but the open nature of it without a grill, plus the duct work makes it more efficiant...so it's kind of a push. Plus it looks good. :)

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awesome thanks for the info! :up:

I see your case that you're using for night of the living dead in the background in your pics.

LOL. I have the same thing in my Server. But I had it from an old CMStacker case I had. Link. Yours is better. Probably a helluva lot lighter too.

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Originally Posted by gntlkilr

LOL. I have the same thing in my Server. But I had it from an old CMStacker case I had. Link. Yours is better. Probably a helluva lot lighter too.

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Cheaper, too - let's not forget that...:rolleyes:

I must not be getting email notifications any more or something....I was just scanning down the forums list and saw this topic name and was like, "Hey! That's me!"

It's a handy little mod. I'm glad you like it.

That... is actually kind of awesome! Wish I would of thought of doing that when I still had my tower. lol

By the way, you could probably use those bay shields as a cover for the fan if you poke some holes in it or something like that.

On another hand, you might be able to put some slots in on the side of the front panel and just leave the bay shields in. But that wouldn't look nearly as cool as it does now unless you had it painted or something.

Either way, nice mod! ^_^

I like that, its a nice looking mod, yet its functional.
Good job.