HDD Coolers

[waheed]

WOW. These really make a huge difference in cooling.

My raptor would reach temperatures of excess of 50 degrees Centigrade. I purchased a Akasa HDD Cooler and temperatures doesn't exceed 40 degrees. Thats a 10 degree difference.

How many other peole here use HDD Cooling.

[Soopafresh]

At home, I placed a 80mm fan in between two drives, and it lowered temps by 15 degrees C

At work, I mounted every server drive into a zalman passive heatpipe cooler, then placed a 120mm fan in front of them.

Cooling is really important, and often overlooked. I read that 10c drop in temp will double the life of a device. If that's the case, it makes the minor cost easily worth it.

[waheed]

Definately agree with you Soopafresh. Especially when you have an expensive drive, like the Raptor which cost me £115.

I own a Thermaltake XaserIII towercase so I already have two 80mm fans in front of the drive for cooling. Now an additional HDD Cooler. I guess without these two, HD temp would be like 60 degrees as Raptors spin at 10,000 RPM.

Now my temp maxs out at 42 degrees.

[rallynavvie]

First of all my Raptor runs at 33°C idle, peaks at under 40°C when loaded with 25°C ambient temps. I would look at the overall cooling efficiency of your case before attaching active cooling to everything. But if you can't fix your case a migrate to a new one I suppose they're not that bad an idea.

Second: **** 'em. My Cheetahs at work have been running full tilt pretty much 24/7 for going on 5 years and not one of them has failed. They cook along at just under 70°C in that cramped IBM server case. Maybe heat isn't as bad as we think it is.

[waheed]

My case temp is an idle 25 degrees. I have 7 internal fans for cooling (fans supplied with the towercase).

My raptor starts from a 20 degress temperature, and without cooling, max is 50 degrees, with HD cooler at 40 degrees max. I guess this is pretty much normal conditions.

[ktnwin]

Hmm... keeping the HDD cooler makes the drive last longer ???
I don't know about that.
Certainly, when any component in the PC get too hot to the touch, we will feel uncomfortable about it. But the HDD are designed to run at hot with a long life too.

[redwudz]

I put together my new machine and didn't have a long enough cable to attach my 80mm fan that sits in front of my HD's. Ran the computer for about 20 minutes. I was surprised that the surface temps of the drives read over 125 F. (Three 80G Maxtors) Attached the fan after a little soldering and shrink tube. Amazing difference of 30 F lower. I'm sold on at least a fan in front of the HD's.

[rallynavvie]

Most ATX cases are designed to do that anyway these days. My Lian Li has 2 80mm fans in front of the 5-drive HDD cage and my new Antec has a single 120mm fan in front of the 4-drive HDD brackets. Unfortunately a lot of OEMs disregard proper cooling in their cases.

[Skith]

Hmm... keeping the HDD cooler makes the drive last longer ???
I don't know about that.
Certainly, when any component in the PC get too hot to the touch, we will feel uncomfortable about it. But the HDD are designed to run at hot with a long life too.

Heat is the #1 killer of hard drives. I lack the engineering knowledge to explain it properly. It has something to do with maintaing stability with the magnetic forces. Yes, new drives are made to withstand higher temps, but poor cooling can kill a drive. I had a 160GB WD drive in an older case, and the power cord to the HD cooler fan came loose (I had been redoing cable ties). My system shut down and would not boot into windows. I touched the drive, and it was painfully hot.

[edit] forgot to mention, I use PC Power & Cooling Bay Cooler II drive coolers. Not cheap at ~$45, but very reliable (5 year warranty). I have been running two for almost 5 years, non-stop. They have outlived their HD counter parts.

[ViRaL1]

I'd think SCSI drives (and probably Raptors) are designed to be able to accommodate higher temperatures because they'll more than likely be used in arrays and will encounter a lower percentage of idle time than the average IDE drive. Also factor in that most 10k and 15k drives have a smaller surface area inside the casing because your platters are only 2.5" instead of the normal 3.5" for most IDE drives.

[greymalkin]

I have dual 36gb raptors in Raid0 and 1 200gb maxtor all lined up in my case with 2 80mm fans. One is attached to the front of the HD's across all 3 of them at the front of the PC case blowing air across them. The other, more powerful 80mm is attached to the side of the HD's sucking the air away from them. I use very sophisticated double sided mounting tape to secure the fans to the hard drive. It keeps them all cool to the touch. :P