3 ms·

How good is the CS381 case? Do you have any problems cooling the hard disks?

• alias_neo 2y ago
  I'm very happy with it overall; the only potential issue I have with the case is the short clearance between the CPU socket and the HDD cage above, means you need a very low profile CPU cooler; I use a Noctua cooler, don't recall the name, but it's a very flat one, with a 10mm depth fan on top, all in the cooler is no more than about 40mm deep. I've never had an issue cooling the HDDs, I swapped out the fans it came with for the back of the case for some Noctua Redux PWM fans (I think those rear ones are 120mm) and I let the motherboard control them, the HDD backplanes also have a connector for a fan for each side of 4 bays. Not sure if they're always on, never used them, but looking at my drive temps, the HGST 10kRPM helium drives average 41C, and Seagate IronWolfs averaging 34C. I also have an HBA, Quad-Intel GbE NIC and a Tesla P4 in there all putting out a tonne of heat. I've down-specced the CPU to 64W for longevity and power savings, but I've not seen any temperatures I'd be concerned about yet, other than the passively cooled P4 which I printed a bracket for and strapped a high-static-pressure fan to push air through it and out the back, but that's GPUs for you. EDIT: For the record, I bought it in 2020, and it has been running 24/7 since, with regular HDD swaps, and the Tesla was added just recently.