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Hard Drive Coolers?

Wex

Member
Do HD coolers work better than just 80mm fans blowing air onto them? I was thinking of getting a Vantec Vortex. .. Opinions?
 
imo, only necessary on HOT drives, 10k, 15k, wd 7k drives, mostly for looks and temp monitors tho. if your serious about hdd cooling, just aim a fan at em and take away the pannel in front of them, dotn go for the small 40mm fans, go geta 120 lol.
 
I'd say they are only necessary on the extremely high performance 10k and 15k drives (Ultra320 SCSI). You might seem some benefit if you have a pair (or more) of WD Raptors, but probably not enough to notice. Especially if you have decent cooling in your system (or decent air flow in it). Also, on all the HD coolers I've seen (ones that you put the drive into, eating up 5-1/4" bays) they blow air over the drives front to rear. It MIGHT help with cooling the rest of your system, but chances are you'll see more benefit from installing a blow hole fan in your case. The fans that attach to under the drives are pretty much useless in my opinion. They don't draw in any outside air, so you're just moving the air around the drive a bit more. You'd be better served by having the drives in line with a case fan pulling in outside/cooler air.
 
Review of hard drive coolers.


Note that the PC Power and Cooling unit comes out on top. I have one of these on my 15k SCSI....but I see that you can buy the same thing at Fry's for $10. $20 if you want a three-fan model!
 
Hmm I just got done setting up a pair of Seagate 120GB in RAID 1... the drives were situated right on top of each other and that was too hot for comfort so I ditched the 3.5" floppy to give them some breathing space. At this point I think they are okay, HOWEVER... I'm soon to be setting up 2x WD Raptors 360GD in RAID 1... I'm gonna get a 120mm fan and blow on them as my "hard drive cooler".
 
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