Silverstone DS380 thread?


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On 4/24/2017 at 7:48 PM, dmacias said:


Great case still. No problems other than the air flow through hard drives which was easily solved with a plastic partition separating the intake fans from the motherboard and forcing the air through the drive cage.

do you have examples / post on what exactly you all did to this case to get it so it didn't bake the drives?  I tried a setup of this only to have it do all sorts of complaining about overheated drives (1tb wd greens)  the drives I've all handed out to friends in trade for machine building labor at this point.  I ran into the same issue with my LSI cards too.  But this might be a right off as over the time we've tried various things we've broken the bottom two SATA connections.  unless you all know someone at silverstone that will help.

 

@TinkerToyTech

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Danioj did a great job of "skirting" the drive cage so airflow is forced through the hard drives (without the "skirt" it can bypass the drives and go directly to the motherboard area.    I can't find his detailed description of this mod, but did find a later post where he provided the detailed dimensions of the "skirts" he used:

 

If you want more detail, I suspect if you send him a PM he'll provide a link to his original thread on his backup server where he outlined the modification in more detail  [If so, please post the link here so I can add it to my bookmarks and won't have to search for it again the next time somebody asks :)]

 

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do you have examples / post on what exactly you all did to this case to get it so it didn't bake the drives?  I tried a setup of this only to have it do all sorts of complaining about overheated drives (1tb wd greens)  the drives I've all handed out to friends in trade for machine building labor at this point.  I ran into the same issue with my LSI cards too.  But this might be a right off as over the time we've tried various things we've broken the bottom two SATA connections.  unless you all know someone at silverstone that will help.   [mention=70005]TinkerToyTech[/mention] 

 

 

All credit for the "skirt" goes to danioj. He's the skirt master. You can use a thin piece of cardboard, plastic or some other pliable material. I used plastic for durability and longevity. I just cut a piece that was as long as the drive cage and a little wider than the distance from the drive cage to the side intake fans. Then I just wedged it into the case. It fits in between the motherboard and two side intake fans perpendicular to both and rests against the bottom of the drive cage.

 

 

Depending on your settings for fans this may not be enough. This isn't a fault of the case but if you have your fans set with a smart fan value too low they may not spin up fast enough to cool the hard drives or the motherboard and other components. This is due to the fact that the smart fan is usually cpu dependent. So if your cpu never gets hot enough everything else may cook under load.

 

You could try raising the smart fan thresholds, set them to a fixed value or I fixed this problem with an ipmi plugin I created. The ipmi plugin's fancontrol is only useful for Asrock boards right now. Although I just set up a backup supermicro server. So soon I'll add support for supermicro. It allows you to control individual fans based on separate temperatures. So you could control the front two fans based on hard drive temps and control the rear fan based on motherboard temps, also even the cpu fan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Power Consumption != TDP.

 

TDP - Thermal Design Power.  Not power consumption.

 

The low-power chips are only useful in really thermally constrained machines.  My i5-6500T came out of an Ultra Small Form Factor Dell machine, which has a really tiny heat sink on it, almost the sort of heat sink you'd see on a 486.   It works out fine for me, as my NAS is basically passively cooled (Arctic Alpine 11 passive cooler, passive cooled PSU, single 140mm Noctua fan running at 400-600rpm).  Although, the i3-6100 worked just fine in that machine, too.

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8 hours ago, kifysara said:

Do we know if any of the unRAID-compatible HBA cards are shorter than 6'', so that they can fit into the DS380 without sacrificing one drive slot?

Most LSI cards and clones I've looked up are 6.6'', so probably too long to fit.

 

The plastic piece on the back of the drive bay (the piece that can be removed to make room for a video card) can be notched very easily.  A few guys have done it here, myself included.  I used a dremel and a razor blade, literally took less than a minute and wasn't very difficult.  I have an LSI card in my DS380, and with the notch cut, it fits perfectly.

 

RE: fans.  Cooling is the biggest problem in this case; the thousands of posts in the hundreds of threads spanned across the web, along with product reviews on various vendor sites, will confirm that.  I added two additional fans on the opposite side of the case to blast air crossflow across the drives, and then have the fans in the stock locations doing evac duty.  Even with this setup I have heat issues, although my server is in a cabinet (a cabinet that is vented with fans, but still an enclosed space).  In open air I have no heat issues whatsoever, so I can't blame the case 100% on this.

 

I am relegating this case to backup server duty.  My main system is moving to a larger case with better cooling.  My DS380 will sit in my garage with Nidec and Sunon fans where fan noise won't bother me, and will come on once a month to do an rsync with my main server, and then automatically shut down.

 

Its a fantastic little case that requires some modification to make it better.

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  • 2 weeks later...

ok, so you are taking a side to side airflow, now I see.  ok,  maybe I'll hack that in a few months, have to get my audio server up 100% and them the video, Plex, Windows VM

 machine going after, yes, you get it, I'm juggling far too many projects w/o any in person assistance.  Ah well.  I've accomplished much today, thought I'd scan the forums

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  • 2 years later...

Hi everyone, just bringing up an old thread as I'm set on the DS380 due to the hot-swappable bay. I understand the carboard mod makes a difference to temps but I'm looking to order Noctua fans alongside the case. I will be using an LSI card so would appreciate advice on shorter SATA cables?

And would I be right in saying three NF-A12x25 are the ones to go for now? And should these be run off the motherboard (Asus RS X470i) with a fan splitter instead of the hard drive back plate?

Edited by unraid20
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14 minutes ago, unraid20 said:

And would I be right in saying three NF-A12x25 are the ones to go for now? And should these be run off the motherboard (Asus RS X470i) with a fan splitter instead of the hard drive back plate?

I used the NF-F12 fans on the drive bay as they have a high static pressure.  I used the Y-splitter to connect both to a motherboard PWM header.  The NF-A12 look like they could be a good option as well.

 

I have the CS380 not the DS380 but it is the same hotswap bay.  I know the DS380 is smaller, but, perhaps some of the mods documented in this thread about the CS380 will apply in the DS380 as well.

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1 hour ago, Hoopster said:

I used the NF-F12 fans on the drive bay as they have a high static pressure.  I used the Y-splitter to connect both to a motherboard PWM header.  The NF-A12 look like they could be a good option as well.

 

I have the CS380 not the DS380 but it is the same hotswap bay.  I know the DS380 is smaller, but, perhaps some of the mods documented in this thread about the CS380 will apply in the DS380 as well.

Have you replaced the rear exhaust or is it still stock? And what are your temps like?

Btw, that thread looks useful thank you!

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2 minutes ago, unraid20 said:

Have you replaced the rear exhaust or is it still stock? And what are your temps like?

Btw, that thread looks useful thank you!

I replaced the rear exhaust fan (with a Be Quiet! 120mm non-PWM fan) and added another intake fan on the bottom between the PSU (I use an SFX PSU) and the drive bay.  This is not an option in the DS380, I assume.

 

My drive temps are around 32-37C when in use over a period of time.  The three that are active right now, including parity are all showing 34C.

 

During a parity check, my 7200RPM parity drive can get up to 44C.  My parity checks take about 16.5 hours.

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4 hours ago, Hoopster said:

I replaced the rear exhaust fan (with a Be Quiet! 120mm non-PWM fan) and added another intake fan on the bottom between the PSU (I use an SFX PSU) and the drive bay.  This is not an option in the DS380, I assume.

 

My drive temps are around 32-37C when in use over a period of time.  The three that are active right now, including parity are all showing 34C.

 

During a parity check, my 7200RPM parity drive can get up to 44C.  My parity checks take about 16.5 hours.

No the extra fan is not possible on this one. Those temps are good but I'm wondering how much of that owes to the larger case.

All this modding has got me thinking whether I can sacrifice the hotswapping and just go for the Node 804 instead!

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22 minutes ago, unraid20 said:

All this modding has got me thinking whether I can sacrifice the hotswapping and just go for the Node 804 instead!

I have a Node 304 for my backup server.  It's the smaller sibling of the 804.  Although the design is an efficient use of space, the disk hangers make adding and swapping drives a real pain.  My disks get hotter in the 304 than in the CS380, but, that may have to do with only one intake fan and one exhaust fan in the 304.  The node 804 will give you more space and more fans I suppose, but, the disks are still packed tight in those disk hangers and I  hope you don't plan on changing them often.

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Just a totally unrelated side note about the Silverstone DS380 (maybe applies to the CS380 as well)

When you look up many older builds, pictures, reviews, videos etc. it shows the backplane being powered by 2x Molex connectors. (for the 8 HDDs) I believe this has somewhat recently and quietly changed to 1x Molex and 2x SATA Power.

 

I am considering this case with a Corsair SF450 PSU which has one cable with Molex-only and one with SATA-only. The good thing with this change is that power for the 3,5" HDDs can now easily be split between two cables from the PSU without any adapters - which is a good idea - however getting power to the four 2,5" Slots is more awkward. Likely will use a Molex to 4xSata splitter, that looks like it uses crimped connectors and will be fine for the lower power needs of SSDs and 2,5" HDDs. (DeLock 60142)

 

I have no idea if there may be old stock around or when this change has actually happened. Maybe order your case first and check before getting any additional or custom cables.

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4 hours ago, TobiRh said:

Just a totally unrelated side note about the Silverstone DS380 (maybe applies to the CS380 as well)

When you look up many older builds, pictures, reviews, videos etc. it shows the backplane being powered by 2x Molex connectors. (for the 8 HDDs) I believe this has somewhat recently and quietly changed to 1x Molex and 2x SATA Power.

 

I am considering this case with a Corsair SF450 PSU which has one cable with Molex-only and one with SATA-only. The good thing with this change is that power for the 3,5" HDDs can now easily be split between two cables from the PSU without any adapters - which is a good idea - however getting power to the four 2,5" Slots is more awkward. Likely will use a Molex to 4xSata splitter, that looks like it uses crimped connectors and will be fine for the lower power needs of SSDs and 2,5" HDDs. (DeLock 60142)

 

I have no idea if there may be old stock around or when this change has actually happened. Maybe order your case first and check before getting any additional or custom cables.

Ah that's interesting certainly changes perspective on the cabling, thank you. (Btw, this is a DS380 thread so not totally unrelated after all!)

I'm awaiting delivery of the case now so will update once I know. I've ordered a fan splitter but still need to order HBA breakout cables, etc.

Is this cable similar to the DeLock? https://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=383&area=en

Edited by unraid20
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  • 1 month later...

I bought a replacement backplane in November 2018 for $25 + $6 shipping to WA after I managed to rip my top SATA connector off replacing my AsRock C2750D4i after it died. That replacement backplane has the 2 molex power connectors. So the modification to the backplane power connectors happened after that or I got old stock. The C2750D4i died under warranty so I got it RMA'd and only had to wait a month for the replacement. The replacement came with the latest BIOS and BMC. My build was using the SilverStone 450W ST45SF-G and worked great until it didn't. In May 2019, it stopped working in my NAS. There are threads here that mention the ST45SF-G has issues with the backplane. Sure enough, disconnect the backplane and the system boots. I replaced it with a SilverStone 500W SX500-G. The ST45SF-G was NOT on their approved list. The SX500-G was. While I was in there, I added another 16GB of ECC RAM for a total of 32GB; cleaned up the SATA cables to the backplane (I wish the backplane had SAS connectors instead of SATA to make cable management easier); and added some plastic cooling dams that attach to the side fans I bought on Tindie (they came with mounting screws.) With the infamous danioj skirt, I've seen the drive temps drop from the 40's to the 30's with the stock SilverStone fans. The AsRock C2750D4i has an insane number of fan connectors. 2 CPU fans (the board is passively cooled), 2 rear fans, and 2 front fans. All 4 pin connectors that will work with 3 pin fans too.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi,

 

Just curious has anyone managed to get a 1650 Super graphics card inside the DS380 without having to sacrifice a drive bay ??

 

I'm doing a new Ryzen build with this case and am looking at getting a MSI GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER AERO ITX OC 4GB Graphics Card for Transcoding, but want to triple check it will fit without loosing a bay ?

 

Cheers

 

Dan

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