Why cooling hardrives 2

[147369]

Hello

This sound a bit stuppid, but why should you cool your hard drive. Mine is never to hot, I think.

Thanks,

 

[Grenage]

Faster drives in constant use can and do get pretty warm. I imagine they could get to a point where they were unstable due to heat, although I have never personally reached that point (that I am aware).

 

[cdogg]

Hard drives can get really hot, but are built to withstand extreme temperatures. However, the heat given off can present a danger to the rest of your system if it's not controlled. This is one of the main reasons why custom PC cases have blowholes in the side or the top of the case, usually near the hard drive (2nd largest source for heat next to the CPU).

If your hard drive was only an IDE 5400 RPM drive for example, then you might not notice the extra heat depending on the brand and quality. But as you move into the SCSI market with drives running at 10,000 or 15,000 RPM, heat becomes a big issue.




~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[147369]

Thanks granage end cdogg for your reply

My harddrive is an maxtor 40G 7200rpm placed in a desktop PC witch is pretty full.
There's a heatsink and cooler on my CPU, a cooler/heatsink on my ati radeon 9100, a cooler on the inside of the power supply and I'm going to place a system cooler(witch sucks the air out of the case) in my only free VGA slot on the back.

Do you guys think it's necessery to place a HDDcooler?

Thanks for your reply

 

[pmonett]

Necessary might not be the term, if your system is already stable.
If you add another system cooler, it can only improve the case temperature, so the HDD should be even better off.
I use a HDD cooler, but only because my primary disk is in a drawer and I do not trust the poor drawer fan very much.

 

[Grenage]

I've never needed one myself but I imagine in a small case with a high powered machine it could be required.

I would add one IF I had problems with overheating, but otherwise no.

 

[147369]

My system is stable till now.

But can I bring damage to my HDD or graphics accelerator when overheating the system.
I think a Pentium4 2Ghz is secure for overheating?

Thanks

 

[Grenage]

It's hard to say without seeing your case, but I imagine it could happen.

Does your BIOS have any temperature monitors, where you can see the temperature in your case ?

 

[pmonett]

The CPU itself is supposed to be secure, since it will throttle its own performance if the temperature gets too hot.
Yet, the video card nor the HDD have this technology, so you still have to ensure the case has adequate airflow.
This does not necessarily imply the need of a case fan, but they generally do not hurt. Since they are also rather cheap, there isn't much of an argument against using them.

 

[147369]

I will tell you a little bit more about my case.

So it is an Compaq EVO D510 SmallFormFactor. See the link also;

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11349_na/11349_na.HTML

Then I placed an Club 3d Ati radeon 9100 64DDR LP.
Link:

http://www.club-3d.com

then products then 9100 Low Profile.
The bracket of the card I've changed a little but so now the VGA connector is in one of my PCI/ISA slots, and I made a shorter bracket for DVI/TV Because the AGP slot is a vertically one.

Now I want to install a slot cooler. The vantec PCSC-100.
Link:

http://www.vantec.com.tw/fancard.html

I've also a CD-recordable built in.

Hope to hear from you
Thanks,

 

[pmonett]

I am confused, you want a slot cooler to eject hot air from the graphics card outside the case ? Because that slot thingy is not going to cool down the HDD directly.
Yet, I couldn't agree more, except for one thing : can you guarantee that the fan on the card blows air away from the card, on onto the card ?
This is an issue, because if the card fan blows away, then the slot cooler will be very efficient.
If the card fan sucks air onto the chip, then your slot cooler will be a hindrance, and a dangerous one at that.

 

[147369]

Well it is confusing but I will try to explain. For my graphicscard I'm using two slots one "vertical" AGP slot where the main card is in and one PCI slot witch only holds my VGA connector, this is because my desktop PC is so low it can't fit a full size vertical bracket. So I made a shorter bracket and attached it to the graphic card. Then I made a longer flatcable from the graphicscard to a VGA connector and placed the VGA connector in a bracket where usually stands a PCI card. Now I have one bracket left. In this bracket I want to insert a slot cooler.

I think my cooler on the radeon blows air on the heatsink.
But I think it doesn't matter if the cooler blows or sucks air. Because the underpressure will produce air flow in the case. My case has on the left front an air gate,on the left and also the power supply has one.

Thanks Pmonett for your fast reply!

 

[pmonett]

I think it will matter if the slot fan is next to the card.
If the card fan blows onto the chip, and the slot fan sucks from the card, you will have the risk of starving the fan for air while the cooler sucks up everything away from the card.
Unless you plan putting the slot fan two, or even three slots away from the vid card.
By the way, sounds like a nifty setup you have there.

 

[147369]

What your saying is true.
But the graphics card and the slot fan will not be placed along each other. I've made a drawing of the setup but I think there's no option to attach a picture to these reply's.
I can't e-mail right now but tonight I can e-mail it to you.

Thanks

 

[cdogg]

I don't know if this would help, but I've used this cooler on several high-end PC's I've built in the past:

http://www.2coolpc.com/Cooling_Solutions/index.html

It takes up the space that's not in use at the bottom of the case. The pictures might not show it, but one side of this fan is pretty slim so that it won't get in the way. It does add a little noise, but also adds a tremendous amount of air flow.




~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein