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08/08/2004 |
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Antec HD Cooler Iain Laskey examines Antec’s answer to Hard Drive overheating
Modern PCs are getting warmer inside. Faster processors and graphics cards all mean a lot more heat being generated. To add insult to injury, hard drives are also getting faster and hotter. The bad news is, hard drives don’t much like being too hot. If you want to ensure your data remains safe and sound, you may want to consider some extra cooling just for your hard drive(s). Enter the new Antec HD Cooler. Installation The Antec HD Cooler consists of a well made aluminium jacket which holds the drive and a front panel which contains two fans and a temperature display. The package also consists of a pair of thermal probes, one for the drive and one for the case, some screws and 4 pieces of thermal tape. A switch lets you select between Celsius and Fahrenheit display modes. We recommend you set this before fitting the drive unless you have very nimble fingers.
Once side of the aluminium case can be loosened by undoing two screws. The drive is then inserted and the side tightened up again. One thermal probe is connected to the drive and the other to anywhere else in the PC’s case where it can be stuck down. You can also leave this one just hanging in the air if you wish. A standard connector provides power for the display and probes so you’ll need a spare one of those unless you add a power splitter. The whole thing then fits nicely in to the case in one of the front bays. We did find fitting it a little fiddly but overall it wasn’t too bad and despite being aluminium, there were no sharp edges. Once the PC starts up, the front panel alternates between showing the temperature of the drive and the case along with a small pair of LEDs to show which temperature is being displayed. Unfortunately, the instructions don’t tell you which is which so you have to guess. The front panel contains 2 40mm fans. These start at 4500rpm and increase to 5500 RPM linearly as the temperature rises above 30 degrees C. In Use The Antec HD Cooler was extremely quiet, you’d
barely know it had any fans at all. The display on our test PC
showed a case temperature of 43 degrees C with the drive running at
33 degrees C so clearly, the aluminium jacket and twin fans were
working well. It was also useful to have a constant reminder of how
warm the machine is, giving plenty of warning if things did start to
warm up, perhaps on a hot summer’s day.
A less obvious side effect of using something like the Antec HD Cooler is that it provides a new bay for your hard drive and for those who have a machine stuffed full of drives, this is a major bonus. Our test machine has all its drive cages filled and the drive tested here used to sit on the floor of the case, hardly ideal. Now it has its own cooled bay. Conclusion The Antec HD Cooler looks very attractive, is well made and works nicely. At just £19 it is very good value for money given the high level of finish. If you feel you need to add some extra cooling for your hard drives then the Antec HD Cooler comes highly recommended.
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