Antec P180 overheat!!!

musicman53

musicman53

musicman53

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2 Feb 2006
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Location
Chepstow, Wales
Have two WD1600J SATA2 drives in my Antec P180.
Never had a problem with them overheating before the move to this case.
Anyway, had them in the bottom HD cage and it seems not enough cool air was gettin to them.
Psu is an Antec single 120mm fan job and it was not pullin any air thru the front of the case.
No room for the 120mm fan between that and the bottom drive cage because of the psu cables.
Have moved them to the middle 2 drive cage with a 120mm fan in front.
As my email and other stuff is on the second drive, everytime I tried to defrag or run virus checker it locked up because it was too hot...
Anyway, the P180 is a nice case but not good for air(lack of)to any hard drives at the bottom.
:(
 
Yep,
it was that causing the lockups.
Hdd1 temp was a lower than Hdd2.
Hdd1 was running at around 40c and hdd2 around 67c.
Has been over 80f in this room the last week or so but no lockups till yesterday.
Tried all ways to find what was wrong and even moving the mouse pointer over anything on Hdd2 caused lockups.
Trying to defrag hdd2 caused same.
Moving files from it caused same.
As soon as I put the drives in the middle cages where I have a 120mm fan the lockups went away.
If I put the drives back in the bottom where there is only the psu then it will lockup again.
No air flow at all in the bottom of the case(P180 has compartment at the bottom for hdd's and psu).
Could not fit the fan as the psu leads fed thru to the hdd's.
Hdd1 runs at around 37-38c(windows on and a few progs)
Hdd2 runs at around 34-40c(used more than hdd1, progs, email and music)
Would have thought Hdd1 would run hotter.
 
Last edited:
I run a couple of seagate barracuda's in raid in the lower hdd tray and have had no probs in around a years usage! You could always route the power cables from the psu out of the first slot and back down the second to the drives. Then you could fit a 120mm fan and cool them properly!

With the drives in the upper tray you lose a lot of potential air flow to the graphics card area so moving them down again would be best if you can?!

Yewen makes a good point with the hdd coolers - that'll also help a lot too if there's still no room for the 120 fan.

gt_junkie
 
I would suggest trying to get the drives into the bottom bays. Ive got 4 harddrives, including a raptor in the bottom bays, and none of them go above about 36-37 degrees, wit hthe bottom fan on 'medium'. Either use some clever cable management with the psu, or try and mount a slimmer fan at the bottom.
 
gt_junkie said:
I run a couple of seagate barracuda's in raid in the lower hdd tray and have had no probs in around a years usage! You could always route the power cables from the psu out of the first slot and back down the second to the drives. Then you could fit a 120mm fan and cool them properly!

With the drives in the upper tray you lose a lot of potential air flow to the graphics card area so moving them down again would be best if you can?!

Yewen makes a good point with the hdd coolers - that'll also help a lot too if there's still no room for the 120 fan.

gt_junkie
Click to expand...
Thats how the cables were...
up from the psu thru first slot and down second to hard drives.
Too many unused wires on the psu and nowhere to put them so had to take the bottom fan(between psu and drives)out.
IF there was a way to fit a fan in the case bottom in front of the drive cage and not between then no probs..
regarding loss of air flow from fan in the upper hd cage area,no probs as having or not having one there makes no diff to case temp or cooling for graphics card(passive coolin).
 
hmm without the VGA duct there loads of room for spare PSU wires, if you bunch and cable tie them up..., unless you are using all of your PCI slots?!?

I could comfortably fit a high end PSU and system in there whilst still using the lower 120mm chamber fan
 
AN8 Ultra board
Cannot use PCI slot one as anything in there would be too close to passive heatsink(long and big)on the MSI Nvidia 6600.
PCI slot two has the Creative X-Fi with heatsink in it(could not use slot 1)
PCI slot 3 empty but no room there for bunching up cables/wires.
Anyway, plenty of air goin thru from upper drive cage fan and that is cooling the hard drives down to where they are cold.
Have ordered an Antec NeoHE 500 so that I only plug in the cables/wires I need and also two Akasa HDD coolers.
Never used a fan on the front to pull in air(to cool inside of case) on any of my cases.
Only ever used one to cool hard drives.

HDD1 is now running at 35c or so and HDD2 at 31-32c after only moving them to upper(middle)hdd cage.
 
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