SSD or HHD: Which has better heat tolerance?

Imacflier

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Jan 19, 2014
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The title is the question.

Background: I am building in a 2" thick chassis, so I am fan size limited to 50mm fans better suited to making noise than moving air.

I expect internal temps to be rather warm. In placing my drive cages I will have one directly in the airstream from a fan, the other is not so easy.

SO, do I put the HHD's or the SSD's in front of an intake fan?
 

giantbucket

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you mean 2" high, as in just over 1U rack-mount high? or 2" thick as in bulletproof solid steel?

an SSD produces little heat, and a 2.5" HDD makes a bit more, and a 3.5" probably produces even more. if it's a 2" high chassis, can you use a 2.5" drive and attach a small heatsink to the top to help dissipate the heat? if it's a 2"-thick metal wall, can you use the case as a heatsink somwhow?
 
HHD and SSDs both fail with temp. HDDs fail at a higher rate and the internet claims HDDs react even more poorly to temps than SSDs, so pamper the HDD. Either way make sure your backup strategy (including the "I don't care strategy") is set up correctly.
 

Imacflier

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Jan 19, 2014
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Thank you all, very, very much.

Just to be clear: I am building in a 1 1/3U server case that measures 2 1/4 x 14 x 16. Think set top box size rather than rack mount server size.

It accepts an mATX motherboard. I am using a Z87 chipset Gigabyte motherboard - G1.SNIPER M5, with an I5-4670k, and initially a GTX750ti.

Ventilation is just plain bad: 4 @50mm fans. Two fans on each side of the chassis. The power supply that came with the case is excellent: a Seasonic SS300-1MU Gold certified for 300 Watts. That will be marginally enough since the power calculator comes up with 305 Watts. That power supply comes with a tiny 40mm fan.

All in all this sounds like a recipe for cooking a computer!

To mitigate the heat problem I have punched the case for two more fans for a total of six 50mm fans and am adding a 120mm exhaust fan pointing straight up in the center of the top cover. Well actually on top of the cover.

Cooling the CPU was a problem due to the lack of overhead space. I finally decided to go with a custom Swiftech loop mounting the radiator and pump in an external cooling tower with a 200mm radiator. The GPU is on its own. Somewhere down the road I hope to find a single slot watercooled GTX970 GPU solution. That, of course, with require adding an external power supply.....and so it goes.

Anyway, thanks again to all who contributed. It was greatly appreciate.