Written: 10/18/99
Written by: Moto Racer®
Coolers Supplied by: AMK Services

Introduction

A roundup of hard drive coolers? Why on Earth would you need to cool your hard drive? If you have a normal IDE hard drive that spin at 5,400 RPM or below, then most likely you don't need a drive cooler. However, with the new wave of 7200 RPM and 10,000 RPM SCSI hard drives hitting the market, the time has come to take a look at hard drive coolers.

While a hard drive cooler won't make your hard drive go any faster, it will help to keep it running cool. Heat not only kills CPUs, it can kill any other component in your computer. As hard drives gets faster and faster, they run hotter and hotter. Hence the need to look at ways of keeping them cool.

The Tech Zone tested 5 of the top drive coolers to find the best one you should use to keep your high speed drive cool. The units tested were:

• Global Win King Kong Cooler (center)  $27.00

• Just Cooler CO-HD35 (upper left) $12.95

• Just Cooler HD200 (lower left) $17.00

• Super Cooler E2C (upper right) $40.50

• AMK HD-3 (lower right) $23.50

All the coolers but the CO-HD35 and Super Cooler E2C use three fans to cool the hard drive. All but the Global Win King Kong cooler use rails to attach the hard drive to the 5.25 drive bay. The price of these coolers range from $12.95 to $40.50.

Next Page: Test setup

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