Best Hard drive Cooler

[MrBubba]

I did not see this covered in any of the public service announcements, so I will ask here. What is the best hard drive cooler? I need to order two, one for my 10k rpm SCSI hd and one for my new 7200 rpm 120 GB WD hd. My main concern is if the hd cooler will counteract the power supply's exhaust. Both the Thermaltake Hardcano 5 and the Coolermaster DCD-4002 look very nice. Anyone have any experiance with either? I do not require removable drive bays.

A lot of the solutions mentioned here look pretty nice, but my case only has 5.25" bays, so it would be cool if the cooling system also made the drive fit. Can I still use those cheap heatsink/fan things if I put rails on the drive?

Thanks,

MrBubba

 

[Evadman]

I use the cheapest ones I can find. Coolers are not needed, but they can help extend the life of the drive. I use this one from nexfan. i toss them in every system I build, just for insurance reasons. Cost is about $3. and they reduce the temp from so hot you cant touch it, to a little above room temp.

 

[MrThompson]

PC Power & Cooling Bay Cooler 3. I have three 15000 RPM Cheetahs in mine. If you want to quiet it down a bunch, cut out the hidden fan grill and replace it with a wire grill.

 

[Lars]

Originally posted by: Evadman
I use the cheapest ones I can find. Coolers are not needed, but they can help extend the life of the drive. I use this one from nexfan. i toss them in every system I build, just for insurance reasons. Cost is about $3. and they reduce the temp from so hot you cant touch it, to a little above room temp.

I use the same cooler for my 120GB IBM drive. The cooler is $2.99 here. Works very nice in my system; before the HDD was HOT now it is just a little warm.

 

[dannybin1742]

i found out that that fan only moves 15cfm, if you want real air flow, take a 80mm fan and replace the one that comes on it, i have one like that now puts 25cfm@22dba, and the drive according to temp probes runs almost 5C cooler

 

[mechBgon]

My hard-drive cooler is the fan-cooled HDD holder on my Antec SX1000 case. It manages a Cheetah X15-36LP and an Atlas 10k just fine with a Panaflo L1A fan... the drives are cool to the touch.

The PC Power & Cooling unit is a nice solution if you want something to go in existing 5.25" bays, of course. Another almost-forgotten high-powered HDD cooler is the GlobalWin I-Storm: look at the bottom of the page. It uses a crossflow fan that moves 35cfm (!) and reportedly runs very quietly. This thing sticks out the front of the case to scoop air in, probably the reason it's not popular.

 

[RDMustang1]

I used to use a Bay Cooler 3, but the front faceplace slides back and forth and personally I think it looked tacky (I needed it to put 3 hdds in 2 5.25" bays).. It worked well though, I'll probably use mine again some day.

Now I use cheap antec bay coolers with the vantec underneath cooler. I know this is overkill but I like it. I use this setup to cool 4 drives in my file server. The other 6 drives are cooled using the 80mm fans that install in the hdd bays in my Antec SX1200 case. All drives stay very cool and have all lasted a long time

 

[txgixer]

I use (2) 80mm Panaflo fans to cool my (4) IDE drives. It works.

 

[MrThompson]

Txgixer ? Good point. When I ran a RAID array with four 75GXPs, one 92mm fan in a blowhole, focused on the HD cage keep them nice and cool. Unfortunately two of the Deathstars still died?

 

[txgixer]

Originally posted by: MrThompson
Txgixer ? Good point. When I ran a RAID array with four 75GXPs, one 92mm fan in a blowhole, focused on the HD cage keep them nice and cool. Unfortunately two of the Deathstars still died?

Thanks!

I am running (4) Maxtor 7200rpm drives RAID0. I thought that keeping them cool since the machine is on 24x7 was a good idea. I hate dead drives.