On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 03:30:03 -0700, John Corliss
<jcorliss@fake.invalid> wrote:

>But back to the hard drives, I'd like to find something that will mount
>so as to suck the hot air right off of the hard drives and out of the
>case. I would prefer not to use something that will suck the heat off of
>the hard drives and distribute it into the case, but maybe that
>additional fan in the 5.25" empty bay will render that concern of no
>consequence. Any recommendations?
>
>TIA

Yeah Ive noticed 7200 drives get pretty hot. Thats why I always leave
some space between them. That seems like the minimum you should do.
Most of the people I know as Ive mentioned and on my systems --- HDs
hardly ever fail physically that is. But Ive been using cooling and
spacing them apart and most of PCs from people I know their systems
are modest so they only have one HD so there arent two or 3 of them
all crammed into a small space.

There are probablly all kinds of cooling systems but Ive only seen 3
main ones around here. One is particular to my style of Antec case.
Antec and maybe some others have 3.5 inch drive cages where you can
stick a standard 80mm fan in the front of the removable cage. So its
easy to face it in or out - blowing in or out. Ive only seen it on the
full tower Antec cases.

The others are the belly pan with two dinky fans. All these are 10
bucks or less at COMPUSA and many other places. I think they blow air
in though Im not 100% sure. You might be able to mount them in the
other direction. I cant remember how they are mounted but I assume
they are with screws. The problem with the belly pan is they take up
space. On my system if I use the HDs in the 5.25 slots the belly pans
take up a fair amount of vertical space so that I cant space them the
way I normally do and it reduces the amount of drives I can install.

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...662&pfp=BROWSE

The other popular one is the 5.25 slot faceplate that has two tiny
fans built in. I assume you can remount the fans outward to blow out
but I dont know. You can find those everywhere even Compusa.
http://www.casecooler.com/514slothardr.html

I havent tried the bellypan on the 3.5 inch but obviously it should
fit as its the same size as the HD it just takes up verical space so
there might be the spacing problem again. I use the 80mm case fan in
the 3,5 cage as I mentioned they have for Antecs.

There are lots of variations Im sure - ones with heatsinks too that
cost way more and jackets with fan cooling etc. Theres those pull out
cases for the 5.25 slots like this with fan cooling

http://www.circotech.com/rm-133w.html



If you are a noise freak then Zalman makes one for the HD thats
noiseless but have no idea if it works.

http://www.casecooler.com/zahehadrco.html


Heres another interesting one that takes up one whole drive slot

http://www.casecooler.com/lahadidrco.html