I've had 2 of
these kicking around for a while, and finally last weekend installed them into a full tower case with some much appreciated help from Sonic. The case move was a bit of a pain in the arse, mainly due to a couple of weird issues with fans and the power switch that the motherboard requires, but otherwise was an overall success.
There are a lot of reviews of the Coolermaster 3 on various sites. Mine were purchased from overclockers.co.nz, and their online shop contains 3 links to product reviews.
The initial reason I bought these units was to enable me to mount my 2 drives in 5 1/4 inch bays, so they could be in an area as far away from other heat generating devices as possible. I could have got a standard set of mounting brackets, but thought I should take the opportunity to introduce some more cooling into my system if possible.
There are quite a few products out there for hard drives, and it is worth stating that there are 2 very different reasons to use them for:
- Hard drive cooling
- Hard drive noise reduction
..and for some people..
- Making your case l00k ub3r l33t!!!!!!!!
Very rarely will a product do both of the first 2 list items. The manufacturers page for the Cooldrive 3 implies it will improve your cooling, and reduce your hard drive noise, but fails to mention that due to it having its own fan it will actually increase overall system noise. The fan of the Cooldrive 3 has a rated noise level of 29 dBA (Fan Dimensions 40 x 40 x 20 mm), but due to the small size of the fan it is a very high pitched noise, and will definately be a noticeable increase to most rigs.
Installing drives into the unit is very straight forward. I've read a few other reviews that seem to imply they found screwing the drive into the unit in a bit awkward - I'm assuming these people had some kind of dexterity related muscular dysfunction, because it's pretty straight forward. Screw the screws through the holes, into the drive - and you're done.
So, important things first - how does it look? Very nice. The full tower has 5 5 1/4 inch bays, and in my current setup they are all used - my Thermaltake CPU Fan knob is up top, followed by the 2 Cooldrive units (with my 2 CDR/DVD drives underneath), and the brushed aluminium combined with the blue LEDs makes a nice addition to the case (even though it's not a fully aluminium one). I'll definately agree with the comment made by many other reviews, that it would have been a nice touch to link the blue LED to the hdd activity, and have it flash, even if this was optional.
My main problem with this so far is the noise. The high pitched whine is already starting to get to me. My system is noticably cooler overall, but I don't know whether that is due to moving everything into a much larger case, adding some rounded IDE cables, and a large amount of cable ties. My serial ATA drive always seemed damned hot, so I'm sure this has been reduced, but I don't have a proper way to measure this. Other hdd coolers do have a temperature guage, but again, I'm not sure how useful this would be without a baseline measurement. At some point, I'm going to test unplugging the fan and seeing if the aluminium case is actually supposed to act as a large heatsink for the drives, but before that happens I'll be buying one of those point and read temperature monitor thingies (fairly sure thats not quite the correct technical name for them, but I'm sure you know what I mean).
In summary, the Cooldrive 3 is a nice looking option for those with hot running hard drives, or anyone who wants to mount some 3" drives in a 5" bay with a bit of style. If you have 2 or 3 of them mounted next to each other, then it will definately make a nice visual addition to your case, however you should be aware of the noise increase, as you will notice it.