RAM sinks on HDs. Yay? Nay?

fanerman91 · Post by **fanerman91** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 3:41 pm

Should I try it? Will it help cooling? Right now I have a fan blowing on them... but if I try to change my drive cooling, the fan may end up blowing on the hard drive cage and not the hard drives directly. Should I try getting some RAM sinks?

flyingsherpa · Post by **flyingsherpa** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 4:12 pm

i wouldn't bother... if you already have a fan on there then your temps are most likely ok. even if you switch to having the fan blow on the cage, well the cage acts as a heatsink too so you should be fine.

gitto · Post by **gitto** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 6:13 pm

if the hard drives were suspended in a no-or-low airflow case, would it be worth it? ramsinks could be an easy mod to get more cooling in that situation

mathias · Post by **mathias** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 6:51 pm

I think the point of ram sinks on a hard drive is that they're just about the right size for the parts of the drive sticking out of the drive cage (I'm assuming something similar to thermaltake ramsinks). For a suspended drive, you'd need a lot of packs, and that would get overly expensive, so it would make more sense to use something else, like a cut up 10cmx10cm alpha heatsink (IIRC that's the biggest size), a nexus disktwin minus the rubber, or cut and/or bent aluminum plates.

Tephras · Post by **Tephras** » Fri Dec 17, 2004 7:14 pm

There was a post earlier on a heatsink for hard drives, IIRC it was called Tiger. It was supposed to be attached to the top of the HD.

dukla2000 · Post by **dukla2000** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 3:43 pm

If it looks good and keeps you happy then go right ahead.

But in reality a hdd is running about 10W, and has a perfectly adequate surface area to dissipate this heat given even a modicum of air movement!

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 5:04 pm

I used a HDD heatsink before, i cant say whether it was a really bad example or not.

But in this case, it was worse than useless, a reasonable space around, or above the drive is as good, and airflow without a sink is even better.

Also, most components dont like hot OR cold spots, or large temperature variations.

i.e. Cooling down half a drive is going to be worse than not cooling any of it, likewise a CPU will be happy running at 60 celcius for years, but wont like constantly jumping from 10 - 60.

I'm going to stick with good old fashioned moving air, even warm air thats moving is better in my opinion.

Regards Andy.

PS: If the drive fails under warranty, some of the sticky pads are almost impossible to get off without physical damage.

mathias · Post by **mathias** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 6:54 pm

andyb wrote:Also, most components dont like hot OR cold spots, or large temperature variations.

i.e. Cooling down half a drive is going to be worse than not cooling any of it, likewise a CPU will be happy running at 60 celcius for years, but wont like constantly jumping from 10 - 60.

I used to be worried that unevenly cooling a hard drive would be bad, but then I decided I was just being silly and paranoid. But since I'm not the only one that's worried about this, I think I better get some coolpacks to cool the bottom of my drives as well.

Jan Kivar · Post by **Jan Kivar** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 6:47 am

If You don't already have RAM sinks, Nexus offers DiskTwin.

Cheers,

Jan

freak_in_cage · Post by **freak_in_cage** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 3:30 am

there was a large chip on my maxtor 120 which used to get very hot. i cut in half an old heatsink from a pentium 2 and, with a bit of thermal paste, taped the heatsink onto the chip with some insulating tape! not very scientific but worked very well.

they say suspending hard drives causes their temp to increase bacuse they are no longer connected to the case, and so the heat cant radiate out via the HD screws to the case, so i see no reason why heatsinks on the sides of the drive while its suspended wont help a bit. do a little expt with dtemp and let us know if it works!

pangit · Post by **pangit** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 3:45 pm

Aluminium U channel is is cheaper and neater if you are thinking about attaching heatsinks to the sides of the drive (where they are the hottest) for a suspended set-up.

If however you already have them attached to a normal hard drive cage with reasonable air flow, I don't see that adding additional heatsinks is going to help very much.

greeef · Post by **greeef** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:00 pm

When i had a hard drive suspended in my 5.25 bay, i added heatsinks to it because my temperatures were in the 40s.

However, when i moved them lower down the case suspended in front of a 120mm fan, neither of them have gone above 30 degrees.

griff