Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware (
More info?)
Don Taylor <dont@agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> No One <aintnoway@blahblahblah.com> writes:
>>I've seen various harddrive fans and I wonder if they make a
>>difference. I see how the ones that go in front of a harddrive
>>could work, but the ones that attach below a harddrive don't
>>look like they would have enough room to move air. What's the
>>scoop?
> The ones that attach below, and I've got one of those, seem to
> be a fairly thick aluminum sheet and bolt directly to the frame
> of the drive. Then I'm guessing they are trying to act like a
> heat sink, conduct heat from the frame to the sheet and the fans
> the blow air between sheet and drive, cooling the sheet of
> aluminum, and thus the drive.
> See if you can measure the temperature of the metal case of your
> drive. THen consider that raising the temp every x degrees cuts
> the life of semiconductors, and probably motors, bearings, etc,
> by 1/2.
Every x degrees? From what starting point? I think you have about
25% of the equation there.
Manufacturers of common hard disk drives list the maximum ambient
temperature, the maximum temperature of the air around the drive.
Provided there is at least a small amount of clearance around the
disk, blowing room temperature air over the drive will keep it
cool.
Apparently similar to spodosaurus's case, the Antec SLK3700 has a
drive caddy right next to a large (120 mm) intake fan. I have no
more worries about hard disk drive temperature.
Have fun.