|
Closer Inspection:
Opening the Cooldrive3 box reveals the hard drive enclosure along with a small bag of screws and a quick and to the point installation manual. The enclosure is primarily made of aluminum to help dissipate heat off the hard drive. We'll start off by examining the top portion of the enclosure.
The faceplate comes off with a little wiggle revealing the 29 dB(A) 40mm fan that is rated at 9.21CFM. The fan is positioned directly in the middle of the enclosure with a blue LED to its left and right. The faceplate itself has a built in filter grill which is a nice feature. The problem with the filter is the size of its holes - its just too big to really filter out anything. However, making the holes smaller would greatly restrict air flow so I guess it's better than nothing. At least it's a step in the right direction.
Looking from the back of the unit, you can see that the top's design is very similar to a basic heatsink design. This will definitely come in handy cooling the hard drive off as the fan in the front pushes fresh air through. A closer look at the inside of the top reveals a thermal pad to aid the transfer of heat between the hard drive and the heatsink-like top of the enclosure.
Installation:
The installation of the hard drive into the enclosure is fairly straight forward. All you have to do is mount your hard drive onto the bottom rack portion of the enclosure using 4 of the provided screws. After that, the bottom portion should slide easily into place to match its top counterpart. From there on, you use another 4 screws to mount the bottom rack to the top. To finish off, just plug in the 4-pin power pass through plug which powers the fan and LED's and install the enclosure into an available 5.25" slot in your case using the remaining 4 screws. At this point, you can now enjoy the cool looking blue LED's in front of your case courtesy of the Cooldrive3. One thing to note is the LED's on the Cooldrive3 isn't quite as bright as that of the fan controller in the case.
Let's get on to the real fun and see how this baby performs.
< Next Page >
< Previous Page >
