Enclosure for Pi plus disk plus fan?

Does anybody know of a fan-cooled enclosure for a Pi4 that includes space for a 2.5 inch hard drive? The wiring needn't be integral, cables sticking out from a standard usb-serial adapter are fine.

It's pretty clear that a Pi4 needs cooling, it wouldn't hurt to cool the disk while at it. All that's asked of the enclosure is to prevent accidental electrical contact and direct air flow.

I've been trying to think up a homebrew scheme but nothing clever comes to mind.

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska

Sorry don't know of such a case.

Might need cooling but that doesn't necessarily mean a fan. I'm running a Pi4 8Gb as a desktop with passive cooling ("Aluminium Armour") running off a 2.5in spinning disk. All running fine and not getting up to silly temperatures.

Good luck with the search for a case.

Hello Bob,

im not sure where you are located, but i have this [1] in use with my RaspberryPi

best regards Juergen

Am 23.08.20 um 20:00 schrieb bob prohaska:

Its been a while since I last looked, but I don't remember seeing anything I wanted.

Would any of the cases sold for iTX motherboards work for you or they all too big?

For a more homebrewed approach, you could always build a case from 0.8mm or 1.5mm epoxyboard. If you're not familiar with epoxyboard, here's an eBay reference for the stuff:

Its easy to work with: very strong, easy to cut with a small hand saw or a cutting disk on a Dremel and equally easy to stick together with two pack epoxy glue - (Araldite or JB Weld) and readily available online from good hobby stores or eBay. 1.5mm thick may seem like overkill, but its very easy to assemble because the material is thick enough for the sides to stay upright while you assemble the bits and hold them in place with masking tape while the glue sets and with enough meat to let you round the corners after assembly.

I'll be using epoxyboard an epoxy to build a case for a portable system I'm about to assemble using a Pimoroni 4" TFT touch screen and a Pi 2.

In message , bob prohaska writes

Have you thought of a 3D printed case ? There might be something suitable on thingiverse.com.

e.g.

If you don't have a printer, you might know someone who has.

Adrian

That's getting kind of elaborate, I was hoping for something along the lines of a repurposed Tupperware container 8-) I'm hoping to keep the case cheap compared to the Pi and other parts.

Well, maybe not quite that crude. But, a small food stoarge container with spacers to support the disk and Pi and a few holes for cable access might come close to what's needed. A fan mounted on a hole in the box with vents to guide air across the Pi and disk complete the package. One of the harder problems seems to be making it assemble-able.

It's true that a big passive heatsink avoids a fan, but from what I've seen a 2.5" disk gets warm when it's busy, with no passive heat sink practical. Seems simpler to just use the fan to cool both.

Thanks to everyone for replying, I'll keep thinking for a while yet.

bob prohaska

In message , bob prohaska writes

I haven't looked at that one in detail, but I would be surprised if the print costs are more than ?1.

I've got a couple of Pis with 1TB 2.5" SSDs attached, neither of which are in cool places. Using smartctl, I check the disk temperature every

Adrian

You could try a Pi 4 case, and add pillars from the Pi screw holes pointing downwards. Then take a 2.5" drive enclosure with a removable lid, eg:

and drill some holes in the lid to match. Screw the lid into the bottom of the Pi, and mount the lid on top of the HDD. Result is a Pi case resting on top of the HDD case.

You'd also need a short USB cable to loop from the port on the HDD to the Pi's USB port. You could skip the pillars if you didn't have any, and just use long bolts and nuts.

I'd probably look for a two-part metal HDD case for better cooling.

Theo

My experience is only with 2.5in spinners, but I've run "silent" systems for nearly 20 years, no fans, and 2.5in disks 'cos the slower ones are quieter and use less energy. Never ever had a problem with them overheating.

As a general question to folks out there - do SSD's overheat? I'm going to be changing some disks to SSD's soon - probably not very large ones.

cheers Jim

Hello All!

Am 23.08.20 um 15:58 schrieb Henri Derksen:

UUUPS ... I have overseen that the OP was talking about a PI 4! Sorry for that!

best regards Juergen

The slower ones are designed for laptops, and are generally located in an area which does not benefit from any active cooling.

They can certainly get warm under heavy use, but I've never had one which has exceeded its limits in smart data. When idle they take next to no power unlike normal HDs, so unless you are continually thrashing it, it wont be a problem.

---druck

reassuring - thanks.

M.2 drives come in a small form factor and the NVMe variants work a lot harder than SATA drives. They can burn 5W in a package the size of a USB stick, and so they do get hot. Frequently motherboards and enclosures come with heatsinks for the NVMe stick. They will throttle if needed.

SATA drives in 2.5" form factor are slow and the casing is mostly empty anyway, so the thermal density isn't usually a problem.

Theo