Performance

Cooling Efficiency Tests

Let’s check out the diagram with the temperature readings for the test HDD inside all of the cooling boxes as well as for a single HDD installed into a default case chassis cooled by a 120 mm fan or without any fans at all:

The first thing that comes to mind after looking at these results is: why would I need to cool my hard drive at all? I have to remind you that we tested a contemporary fast HDD from one of the performance leaders, but nevertheless, its temperature didn’t go past 42°C even after two consecutive stress-test cycles. But if you are still concerned with the thermal performance of your HDD, then you won’t really need to go for a cooling chassis, but just have to install a quiet 120 mm fan and forget about this “problem” once and for all. Note that only when the HDD was cooled with a 120 mm fan, its temperature under heavy load didn’t change by a single degree.

Quite predictably, GlacialTech IceCrown 1000 wins among the today’s testing participants. Among the box-type coolers Scythe Himuro is the best, but its advantage over Scythe Quiet Drive and Xilence HD Cooler CL is only 1°C. HDD without any additional cooling as well as Tuniq Sanctum and Xilencer XTOR lose another 1°C to the latter two, which is difficult to call a defeat, really.