skubik

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Oct 13, 2001
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I'm preparing to upgrade my HD to a WD 7200rpm 100GB drive, but I want to get a relatively good cooling system on it to prolong its life.

Anyone have any recommendations? Moreso, what kinds of things should I be looking for when looking at HD coolers?

Thanx,

- skubik.
 

Lars_Coleman

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I would just get good case cooling, and just mount the drive in a place where it has good ventilation and it should be fine. As long as you have good case cooling you shouldn't need a Hard Drive cooler.
 

skubik

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Makes sense, only problem is, I'm VERY new to the world of cooling in general, so I don't even know whether my case is well ventilated/cooled anyway. Any tips on how I can find out how well ventilated my case is?

- skubik.
 

Lars_Coleman

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I actually only care about the temp of my processor, so I use Motherboard Monitor to monitor all my temp probes on my motherboard. The Hard Drives themselves are going to be warm, but it shouldn't cause problems. I just would give them enough room to breath. I have had my drives stacked one on top of the other and they get hot, but if I spread them out they are fairly warm to the touch. Then again I have two server tower cases, so I can do it that way.

I would just make sure you have equal intake as exahust. Other then that it should be fine. If you don't have to many places to put a fan then I would just go with the hard drive cooler for piece of mind. Check out <A HREF="http://www.plycon.com" target="_new"><font color=blue>Plycon</font color=blue></A>, <A HREF="http://www.pcmods.com" target="_new"><font color=blue>PCMods</font color=blue></A>, and <A HREF="http://www.frozencpu.com" target="_new"><font color=blue>Frozen CPU</font color=blue></A> and you might find a decent cooler there.
 

skubik

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Sweet. Thanks for the advice.

Unfortunately I only have a mini-tower with 3 5.25" bays, and two of those bays are currently being used by CD drives. I have my current 8.5GB drive, but I'd kinda like to keep it anyway, possibly for archiving or something... so with all that stuff in there, plus a Radeon 7500 I'll be getting soon... there's a LOT of heat in there, and I've done nothing previously to cool my system... so I guess I'll have to start looking at some ways to do that. :^)

If there's anything else you can think of that might help me out, that'd be great. :^)

- skubik.