Cooling the unsung hero of your PC, with bling!

I had a Shuttle XPC with a 3GHz Northwood P4. The two hard disks were approaching 55C, the manufacturers spec' maximum. I added a 80mm fan to the side of the case, held up with string. This knocked about 5C off the drive temperatures, bringing them well within spec'.

Is there really a need for a product like this? The drive's case is already metal, just increasing the airflow would help no? This product uses a 5.25" slot, mounting the 3.5" disk in the 5.25" slot with normal brackets could also help, increasing the airflow.

Magnets do lose ther magnetic qualities when they get really hot. But other things would be melting by then.

I think the google article says it all. I've only added extra fans to my file server (G4 PowerMac) because with 14 drives in there it would get too hot for other components (no CPU fan, so inside air temp. affects CPU cooling).

I think some kind of extreme shock absorbing mounting would be of more use, and from my experience would save a lot more drives, especially in computers that travel to LAN parties. They could even be made from fluorescent silicon rubber and have UV cold cathodes (WooOOOooo!).

From that google article:

"In fact, there is a clear trend showing that lower temperatures are associated with higher failure rates."

So spending money on a cooler for your hdd will just make it fail faster, which seems kind of stupid, really 8O

I think they are speaking of below "standard" operating temperatures. Probably a very well A/C'd room. I think if your drive is pushing the upper limits of the "standard" operating temperature a solution to cool it is necessary. Otherwise, no need.

Yeah hard drive coolers just aren't any use. I'm all for vibration absorption though, lord knows I could use a product like this that does that really well.

From the article:

"Nobody wants to unnecessarily stress their hard disk, so cooling it seems like a good way to extend the life of your drive. With this in mind, the SHF1 seems to be an excellent product, demonstrating a nine degree Celsius decrease under load."

They fail to point out what the graph shows, under load, in stock position the HDD reaches 39C up from 37C idle. Which is hardly warm for a HDD in the first place. HDDs are designed to run warm, just like anything with moving parts. I wouldn't even worry with 40C +

In retrospect maybe they should have used a hard drive that got hotter both under idle and load, but they did not. So we can can just imagine how much heat this thing could remove from a hard drive that loads up to 52°C such as the 500 GB Hitachi Deskstar.

Off topic of that, I wonder if the thermal interface material can be easily removed if the hard drive needs to be sent back due to RMA.

One 120mm fan cools 4 drives in my system to as low as 16 degrees. On a warm day, sometimes they might hit 30 under heavy load. I don't see hard drive coolers as having any use unless they're really, really cheap.

Very easily, it's not sticky or anything.

I don't like installing 3.5" drives in 5.25" bays because it's simply a big waste of space, unless I have plenty of that space.

But if I am going to be using that method, I want a hard drive enclosure that not only helps cool the drive well, but also cuts down on drive noise. There's a lot of gear out there that can cool, but it's tough finding one that will lower your temps and cut down noise, while still looking good.

While I'm assuming this cooler was designd for enthusiast use, it would have been good to run the tests with a 15krpm server drive, since those tend to be rather loud and hot.

It's nice that the 40mm fans are quiet, though. It would have been good to measure drive noise as well.

When is this thing gonna be available cause I want one?!?