DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

I keep mine proped on the power block.  This also seems to quiet the fan down.

Last edited by TheWalt (2007-10-31 21:12:30)

I'm interested in seeing some pictures.  Please post them.

Thanks,
Quang

When I first fired up my DSM-G600, I was surprised such a small fan could make so much noise.  Upon inspecting the fan's mounting and surroundings, it seems like D-Link tried to make the thing as noisy as possible.  The metal bracket lets the fan vibrate against the plastic, the drive's power connector is only a few millimeters from the fan blades, the air gets squeezed out through a thick plastic grill, and the only intakes are a few tiny little holes around the case, probably totalling less than 2 square cm.  I decided I could fix all of those problems.

Mounting the fan outside the case solves two of those issues:  the power connector is now a good 2 cm from the fan's blades, so that produces far less noise, and it's now screwed directly to the plastic, which allows far less vibration.  Removing the plastic grill opens up a lot more area for airflow and also lets that air flow much more smoothly.  Here's what a few minutes' work with a Dremel did to the back of the case:

Hey, I didn't say it was pretty.

The entire grill has been removed, holes for two screws have been cut, and the upper-right corner and lower edge have had some plastic removed to allow the fan to sit flush to the wall.  Note that this removes a lot of structural strength from this section of the case, so don't play football with it after you do this.  I only used two mounting screws, because the middle section of the case (the vertical walls) isn't as tall as the fan, and the lower screws would have to bite into both the upper and lower plastic parts, which would just force them apart.  Be careful cutting the screw holes -- there isn't much plastic left between the main opening and the screws.

Though I wasn't smart enough to do this myself, you could probably use the metal mounting bracket as a template to mark the case before drilling and cutting.

All of this work was done with a 1/8" drill bit (that came with the Dremel) and a cutting bit something like this one

The inadequacy of the intake openings can be helped by cutting the little cross-pieces off from the holes in the base and lid.  This has almost no affect on the appearance, and makes those holes much more useful for allowing air to pass.  I didn't even use the dremel for that, just a pair of diagonal cutters.  I forgot to take any pictures to show that part, but I think you can figure it out.

I then remounted the fan, blowing in instead of out.  This reduces the noise a bit (since it's sucking in a nice smooth stream of air, there's very little of that siren effect) and moves a lot of cool air right past the power supply electronics on the circuit board.  Here's what the fan looks like:

Outside:  (not so ugly when the fan is mounted, right?)


Inside:


Showing better clearance between the fan and internal components, particularly the power connector:


If you look carefully enough at that "Inside" view, you'll notice the fan connector isn't plugged in, and there are a couple wires sticking out of the HDD power connector on the board.  That's because with all that extra space for air to move, you don't need to run the fan quite so fast.  I connected the ground leads with a random bit of wire, and ran the 12V from the HDD connector through 60 ohms of resistors. (4 15-ohm 1/2W resistors in series.  There's no particular reason for that value; it's just what I had handy.)  That slows it down a bit, but I still think it's running faster than necessary.  I think my next modification will be to stick a 200 ohm (or something like that) potentiometer in the fan's power lead, so I can adjust the speed as I see fit.

You might be asking why I didn't just run the fan on 7 volts, with 12V to the red lead and 5V to the black.  Well, one of my hopes for this thing is to get hdparm working*, so that it'll spin the drive down when it's not busy.  If the drive's not spinning and nothing's eating 5V, I'm not sure what the on-board power supply would think of the fan trying to push current the wrong way down the 5V line.  It might be fine with it, but it might not.  Until hpdarm works, though, the 7V approach should work just fine.

One last thing:  If any of the D-Link engineers happen to find this forum, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!  Make the Got-damn case half an inch longer (or just mount the drive further forward), provide some holes big enough for air to actually move through, and fire the dipshit who came up with that bracket idea!    People are buying things like this so that they don't have to leave a loud-ass computer on all the time to get at their data, so wouldn't it make sense to make the NAS box quieter than the computer?  Find whoever decided that making the box look shiny and pretty was more important than making a good product, and kick him in the nuts for me.  Hard.

*I'm using a really old drive at the moment, so it might be my fault that hdparm doesn't work.  How's everybody else doing with that?

Last edited by Bunsen (2006-10-07 06:03:13)

I just figured the fans they use (mine had Sunon) sucked so I bought new fans, Evercool 40 x 40 x 10mm (1.57 x 1.57 x 0.39 inch) DC 12V Ball Bearing Fan (5000 RPM), from buyextras.com for $2.95 each. They are 3 wire fans and all you have to do is switch the red and black leads around and the correct pins line up in the DSM-G600 perfectly with the third (yellow lead) unconnected/not necessary.

This particular model uses comparible volt/amp as the stock Sunon.

VERY quiet. Working great.

Easy fix if you care to shell out a few bucks.

thanks for the information.

redeyedog wrote:

I just figured the fans they use (mine had Sunon) sucked so I bought new fans, Evercool 40 x 40 x 10mm (1.57 x 1.57 x 0.39 inch) DC 12V Ball Bearing Fan (5000 RPM), from buyextras.com for $2.95 each. They are 3 wire fans and all you have to do is switch the red and black leads around and the correct pins line up in the DSM-G600 perfectly with the third (yellow lead) unconnected/not necessary.

This particular model uses comparible volt/amp as the stock Sunon.

VERY quiet. Working great.

Easy fix if you care to shell out a few bucks.