Is there a RAID controller in the house?
Posted in General, Storage Applications, Platforms, Storage Interconnects & RAID, Storage Management, Application Environments, Advisor - Neil by NeilExpensive RAID controllers used to be the domain of business. You just didn’t find powerful, expensive controllers and lots of noisy, hot, large disks in home machines.
However things seem to be changing. People are putting high-end RAID controllers into home machines, combining them with SSDs to produce massively fast machines which do not run incredibly hot or make lots of noise, making them suitable for home machines. They seem to be choosing the high-end controllers to match them up with the perceived high performance of their SSDs.
This poses a problem. All manufacturer’s RAID cards have traditionally been put in server system. They then rely on high-volume airflows within those machines to run air across the card’s heatsink to cool the card. Servers, especially rack-mount units, generally don’t have any problems with high air-flow volumes … but they have plenty of problems with noisy fans. You don’t generally find 2U rackmount servers in the family home.
With home machines the noise is a problem. There is traditionally not significant airflow at the card location within those chassis. If there are fans, they tend be aimed at the hard drives, not the expansion cards. So what are you doing to keep things cool? Do you have sufficient airflow across your card? What is the temperature of your card?
I’d be interested to know what’s happening out there.
April 19th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
I have a pretty large home server, and I have gone though a ton of iterations over the years. I started with external disks, to a software RAID, to a non-adaptec (sorry) 8 port RAID card on Win2k Server, to several different NAS’s all at once (I had 4 at one point). I currently have a FreeBSD home server with 6 TB of space (three 2 TB RAID5 arrays on 750 GB hard drives) on a Adaptec 31205 and one more NAS with is running a version of software RAID5.
I am in the process of migrating and combining all my space into one system, and in order to do that I picked up an adaptec 52445. I have a 4U 20 hot swap case, but to your point it is pretty loud.
I pulled some of the fans and replaced them with lower velocity higher CFM fans. I was very concerned about killing the 31205 card because the heatsinks get very hot very fast. To increase airflow, I bent up a bracket that attaches over the expansion card area and put a fan on it to cool the card. I wish that Adaptec made versions with fans for us home users so in low airflow cases the card would stay cool. Most users are not going to have a brake in their garage to bend up sheet metal.
April 19th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Evadman,
Fanned if we do, fanned if we don’t. When we originally released SAS RAID cards (what seems like an eternity ago … the 4800 SAS RAID card) it had a fan on the processor. You couldn’t hear the fan for the howls of derision coming from the industry - a fan on a RAID card - what were we thinking? !!!!!
Basically the problem is that if a cheap fan fails then the card will overheat and cause all manners of major dramas. Personally I don’t see anything wrong with a fan. If the card gets too hot it will inform you (you should have Storage Manager set up for this) and you can take appropriate action, but generally it’s regarded as best practice to have sufficient airflow across the card so that you don’t need an actual fan on the board.
The other problem with fans on cards is that they often don’t fit in the space requirements of the PCI(x,e etc) slots … it just makes the card too fat to fit next to the card beside it.
My recommendation is to put up with the noise and put the system fans back in your chassis. You will, of course, have to evaluate the running costs vs the nagging from the missus, but that’s a non-RAID issue I can’t help you with.
Regards,
Neil
April 20th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Well, usually the missus wins in these cases, heh.
The fans I put in move less air then the four 80mm fans that used to be there, but not by a lot. The original fans moved about 51 CFM each according the data sheets I could find, while the 2 replacement 120mm fans I used instead move 70 each. So I went from 204 CFM to 140. According to an infrared temp sensor, the heatsink on the 31205 was at 48c under the max load I could put it under. That was too close to the 55c maximum for me, so I put a 80mm 40 CFM fan directly above the card, which lowered the temp to 42c.
That is a great point in the PCIe space requirements. But what about video card manufacturers who build cards that take up 2 slots, one for the card itself and one for the heatsink/fan? Certainly not the best solution to meeting the specification, but it gets the job done. Another option could be creating 2 cards, one with a heatsink,one with active cooling. Though creating a separate part number where the only difference between 2 cards is the cooling solution is probably cost prohibitive, so having a “home user” and “enterprise user” part probably won’t work economicly.
What about a user definable solution? CPU’s (and video cards for that matter) have user replaceable heatsink combinations, while the Adaptec unified RAID cards do not. What about making the heatsink itself replacable with a low profile heatsink/fan combination, or even a water block?
I can change the software setup of my RAID card, why not my hardware too? As a home user, I would gladly pay $30-50 for a cooling solution that will keep my server quiet.
April 20th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Evadman,
While I can’t promise anything I’ll certainly take your suggestions to engineering … I quite like the idea of a liquid-cooled RAID card.
Thanks
Neil
September 1st, 2009 at 9:04 am
Hi all,
I have been trying to get better cooling for my raid card ever since I got it (I have a 5805 in my workstation) since it does get quite hot, even though I haven’t measured temps. Right now I have a 120mm blowing air directly towards it, and a pci fan sucking air out to the back of the case. Problem is that I have to keep the case open as well as the fact the it doesn’t really work well!
My initial intention was to create a duct blowing directly on the heatsink using a tube that has a fan somewhere on the face of the case. Then I noticed some nice chipset coolers (like those from thermalright) that could be used…
However the mounting on the card doesn’t seem to be compatible with any chipset that I know of (or vga).
The card has 2 3mm holes 46mm apart on the axis of the processor (most chipsets have mounting holes either diagonal or on the four corners)…on top of that the heatsink is glued on the processor, and I am a little reluctant to take it off in fear I might destroy something…..
It would be really nice to be able to simply take off the stock heatsink and use custom ones.
regards,
Stratis
September 1st, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Stratis,
Don’t pull the heatsink off the card … that would only end up in tears. Load Storage Manager for your particular OS and look at the actual temperature the card is reporting.
The card won’t get upset until 100 degrees C. I know our data sheets say 55 deg C as the limit but that’s ambient temperature (measured 2.5cm above the processor).
All this leads to a great deal of confusion (every time I do a presentation I get asked about this one), but marketing refuse to change their tune on this one … the datasheet says 55C and ASM says 100C. Since I trust our programmers and hardware developers more than our marketing team (I know they don’t read this so I’m reasonably safe here) … put the lid on the case and see what temperature the system runs at.
Cooling generally works better with the lid on because then the air is forced to flow past whatever it is you are trying to cool rather than just drifting off into the ether.
Try not (if possible) to have a card directly next to the raid card and ensure that air is flowing across the heatsink, not just hitting the back of the card etc.
Let me know if this doesn’t work.
Ciao
Neil
September 7th, 2009 at 5:19 am
Neil,
I had to do some homework, but I do have some results:
Open case no fans just after turning on, idle 61C
Open case no fans idle 70C
Open case no fans load 96C
PCI slot fan that sucks air out the back of the case, almost directly over the cards heatsink: open case pci fan idle 70C (as good as no fan)
80mm fan blowing directly across the card’s heatsink, (from front to back…)
Closed case fan blowing directly idle 52C
Closed case fan blowing directly load 53C
I haven’t got any other cards next to the raid card, but I didn’t really have any air flow there because the exhaust fan is not close at all. So I chose to put a fan right next to the card. Duct to the front of the case to be realised soon!
So results look much better, but I still think that 52 idle is quite hot!
Storage manager does report temps, although it is not refreshing as often as I would like it to do.
I have taken your advice and for the time beeing I will not remove the heatsink. I do have a couple of old PCI vga’s laying around though, and I will try to remove their heatsinks, to see what my success rate is (heatsink glued on the chip). I will let you know!
Thanks,
Stratis
September 7th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Stratis,
So … with airflow directly across the card you are working in the 52-53C range. That is absolutely fine. It might sound hot to you but that is right smack in the middle of the ball park for us.
Leave the heatsink alone. If you feel you must go and break something then do some work on the car!
Ciao
Neil
September 15th, 2009 at 2:30 am
Do the cards have some sort of thermal protection in case of a fan failure?
September 17th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Kizaki,
Good question. Depending on exactly which card we are talking about here yes, we monitor the temperature. We’ll send you a message when things get too hot so you can take appropriate action.
Ciao
Neil
December 10th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Any feedback from engineering on the idea of a water block for cooling on your RAID cards?
December 14th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Phil,
Plenty, and none of it is printable
Sorry but it’s not going to happen.
If your raid card is overheating suggest (a) moving to Alaska, (b) providing more airflow or (c) drowning a few cold ones so you at least cool down.
Seriously … airflow is the answer, and the only answer we have, at this point in time.
Ciao
Neil
January 14th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Neil-
An interesting post. When I think of 1 and 2U server chassis I immediately think of the loud hum of air blowing parallel to the main board and expansion boards- all thanks to as many as 10 fans spinning at light speeds. I am looking for a SAS HBA for my WSS08 box, and I believe that the 31205 is the ticket. It will be the storage for my home Hyper-V lab…as such, it will be in a standard case.
Just by looking at a rack server vs. a standard desktop case, it is clear that the server is completely optimized for air flow- and these cards take advantage of that. Clearly, air flow in the standard case example needs to be well thought out. It would never happen, but I can just imagine one of these cards with a 2 slot monster video card cooler on top to keep it cool!
While I don’t have the 31205 quite yet, I’m a bit miffed that it looks as though the back plate is not vented as some of the other Adaptec cards (i.e. - the 5405) are. I am wondering if this, combined with a few carefully placed fans, would help alleviate some heat…
Cheers!
Jake
January 14th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Jake,
I’d recommend the 51245 if you need that many drives. The 31205 is a good card, but the 51245 is much faster for not much more money. The extra speed of the card will help with day-to-day running and improve rebuild times dramatically.
The 3 series cards are of a different architecture to the 5 series cards and it has been determined by engineering that the ventilated endplate is not required, hence it is only found on some 5 series cards.
Whatever card you use just make sure there is fan blowing across the card, and that it’s not stuck at the bottom of the chassis with no way of air moving across the heatsink.
BTW … that’s a serious home machine
Ciao
Neil
January 23rd, 2010 at 10:09 am
I’ve been running a 3805 for about a year now in a tower case and noticed on installing it that the temps were getting to around 70c or so.
I’ve now got a slow 80mm fan strapped directly to the heat sync with some zip-ties (so it can be removed without damage to the card) and temps have now dropped back to around 44c.
Personally I’d have liked to see some sort of clip you could use to attach the a fan to the card come with it. It wouldn’t cost much to add and would give consumers the option of adding a fan in situations where airflow is limited.
January 29th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
Norf,
Good suggestion and one I’ll take to the marketing team. Note however that you really need airflow “through” the box. It’s important that air is drawn in from one side of the box and goes out through the other.
Either way, 44c is in fact quite a low running temperature so you must have hit the nail on the head.
Ciao
Neil
February 21st, 2010 at 10:53 pm
been having problems with 3805 and I’m pretty sure its a temperature issue. Unfortunately, living in Australia gives me an outside temp of 30+ deg for 1/2 the year. I had my raid card completely hang the other day (room was quite hot) all the drive leds and diag leds were on solid and rebooting the system the card was not detected in bios. Turned the AC on in the room and let the room temp get nice n cold. Card is now working fine but dont want to leave it on 24/7.
Will be getting some higher airflow fans for it but I’m definately liking the idea of alternate (quiet) cooling solutions for the home or small business user. I have quite a few corp clients with servers sitting under a desk in someones office that would greatly benefit from a quieter system.
February 22nd, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Daniel,
You must be living in one of the “cooler” parts of Australia at the moment because where I am 30 degrees is paradise
Airflow, airflow and more airflow. Did I mention airflow? Yes, it’s important. However what is more important is to find out if this is exactly what the problem is. Install Storage Manager then look at the properties of your RAID card … what temperature is it running at?
This would possibly be more helpful than just guessing that temperature is the real culprit here (though it sounds like it is).
Ciao
Neil