RAM sinks on HDs. Yay? Nay?
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RAM sinks on HDs. Yay? Nay?
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?
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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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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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!
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!
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.
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.