[geeks] Dell T105 drive bay fan

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Apr 24, 2008, at 19:00 , Lionel Peterson wrote:

> On Apr 24, 2008, at 11:34 AM, Shannon Hendrix  
> <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
>
>> Dell is finally selling the drive bay fans for the T105 server.
>>
>> They are dirt cheap too, at only $38 each... :)
>>
>> I think I need to get into the spare parts business.
>>
>> Anyway, I went ahead and ordered because this is a machine I use  
>> for home and business, and I currently don't have time to build a  
>> fan and shroud.
>>
>> If you add up the craft parts and my time, it would cost me 3 times  
>> as much to make it myself.
>>
>> But wow... that's an expensive fan.
>>
>
> And the self-made fan/shroud at three-times the cost is what???

...is whatever I manage to cobble together, which will probably not be  
very pretty or work as well as the Dell part.

About all I could do is make something out of cardboard and hope it  
functioned.  Cost of fan and cable is $20 for a POS, and that's only  
because I managed to find some nice PWM fans for $10.  Normally the  
nice ones are around $15-20 each.

> I think the fan shroud is an OK value, I'll probably get one - it's  
> much cheaper than a replacement drive (or two).

That's my thinking as well.  The lower drive gets fairly hot without it.

I did a quick test with a low speed 80mm fan, no shroud, and just  
placing it near the drive bay cut the temperature on the lower drive  
by 10C.

It really doesn't take much moving air to make a good bit of difference.

Without the fan, the lower drive bay has no wind moving by it at all.

Dell should be shipping the fan with SATA and SAS, not just SAS.


-- 
Shannon Hendrix
shannon at widomaker.com