Are modern cases cold enough for HDDs?

I want to build a PC with a 16 TB hdd for storing simulation results. I don’t know yet if for postprocessing I will be copying datasets to an SSD or I will be able to do postprocessing directly from an HDD. I don’t think that writing data during a simulation will be heavy (around 100—1000GB per day), but I expect reading for postprocessing to be at HDDs limit for a continuous 2-12 hours each weekend.

What I noticed is that modern cases have HDDs in a tray fully covered by PSU cover with no airflow. Could it be a problem in such a scenario? For case example, see Fractal’s Pop Air (Pop Air — Fractal Design).

Many cases with those kind of flat front panel allow you to move around the fans and play with the position a bit. That particular Fractal case does not, but others like the XPG Starker air do. There are some more premium cases that have optional mounts for HDDs that can be fitted in the front behind the front intake fans, like the Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2 and Eclipse P600S.

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All 3 front 140mm Noctua P14 are spinning at around 1.18k RPM. Drives do not spin down.

Ambient currently at 25.4°C,
Drive 1 (Air filled WD 10TB): 37°C
Drive 2 (Helium filled WD 10TB): 33°C
Drive 3 (Helium filled WD 8TB): 38°C

On a hot day (ambient ~30°C), add 5°C to 8°C to the idle temps.
When under load, drive 3 can hit 48°C, but I’ve never seen it exceed 49°C.

Case is a Fractal Meshify 2 XL.

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Same here with my 16 TB Toshiba drives. Airflow isn’t that great here. And sandwiched and densly packed drives are always a bit warmer than the rest. As long as it doesn’t hit 50+, it’s ok for me. But I see mostly high 30s to low 40s. Scrub or resilver, where drives are on full load for hours is where I see ~47-49.

35-50 is normal. No airflow+ gapless stacking of drives is usually where HDDs get too hot, but “some” amount of breathing (space) is plenty. And when talking about a single HDD in a non hermetically sealed case…don’t worry.

Nothing too special.

my expierence is that helium filled drives seems to be cooler as normal drives. didnt benchmarked it or took longterm test. i see that i didnt configured the hdd temp plugin for telegraf.

normal desktop cases dont have that much airflow for hdd. how many drives you plan to put into it? if its only one, i think any case will perfom the same.


copied about ~9tb, full zfs snapshot to other “dirty” pool, mixed hdd.

got a sharkoon vs4 cheapo case, 2 bequiet pure fans at low rpm. there are all toshiba mg07 drives, aswell as hdwr21c. the target pool was in a icy box 5x 3.5 bay, fan was set to auto and low(?) fan mode?, cant remember atm. 2x toshiba x300 4tb and 1x 8tb wd internal whatever drive.

Something to consider:
The higher the temperature of a helium filled hard drive, the faster the rate of helium “leak” (really it’s more like helium diffusion) the hard drive experiences.

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