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Globalwin I-Storm II hdd cooler


Date
: 11/11/00 – 11:45:19 AM

Author
:

Category
: Cooling

Manufactor: Globalwin

Price: $32.95

Thanks to Coolerguys for supplying us with the I-Storm II.

Introduction

Cooling has always been a part of overclocking. Without good cooling, overclocking is not advised because temperature will rise a lot and might damage your components.

That’s why a lot of companies have started manufactoring several cooling solutions. Unfortunately most cooling devices will void your warranty because they have to be glued, bolted, … to your components.

A component that is forgotten most of the time, is the hard drive. Altough a hard drive is an essential part of the computer, most people don’t pay any attention to it. Especially the newest 7.200 rpm drives and even more the 10.000 and 15.000 rpm SCSI drives. These new drives run so fast they can generate a lot of heat … and all that heat is dumped into your case resulting is a higher case temperature which is never any good.

This can result in hard drive failure which means you lose all your prescious data (read mp3z, prOn, …).

This is where Globalwin comes into the scene with their hard drive cooler: the I-Storm II.

Specifications

* Special lateral cross-flow fan has a lower rotational speed, which ensures lower noise and vibration levels.

* Effective air flow enables Istorm2 to cool more than one hard drive.

* The cover is easily removed, allowing access to its wire-mesh filter for cleaning.

* Equipped with Alarm + LED

Most of the hard drive coolers are made out of a filter with behind it 3 40mm case fans sucking air into the case. The Globalwin unit does not use this kind of cooling. Instead they have chosen to use a lateral cross-flow fan. This means you won’t hear it spin at all.

The side-effect of this kind of fan, is that you have a part of the cooler sticking out of your case. Some people will find this very cool, others will think it’s plain stupid.

Off course the cover is removable so you can clean the wire-mesh filter. If you open it up after a few weeks you will be astonished by the amout of dust, hair, … and other stuff you don’t want to find in you computer case!

Furthermore the I-Storm II cooler is equipped with an alarm to warn you when the fan in failing. This will come in handy as you can’t hear the fan spinning.

Installation

Installing the I-Storm II cooler is a piece of cake. Simply mount the extension brackets that come with the cooler on your hard drive, then install the hard drive in a 5.25′ slot and mount the cooler in front of it. That’s it!

Because of the design, you can not put two I-Storm II coolers above each other. This means the cooler won’t be suited for server use where there are several hard drives on top of each other.
Another annoying part is that you will not be able to get to your cdrom easily if you install the cooler above it, because the cooler sticks out of your case about 4.5cm.

Luckily most people have enough slots available so you can mout the cooler in the bottom slot where it won’t do any harm at all.

The results

I installed the I-Storm II in front of my Quantum Atlas IV 7.200 rpm UW SCSI drive (what a sentence!). This drive gets pretty hot and dumps a decent amout of heat in my case. The drive was very warm when you put your finger on it and since heat is never any good, I had found a nice victim to test this cooler on.

After installing the cooler, the drive was barely warm! The case temp also dropped from 32 degrees celcius to 29.5 degrees celcius. These are pretty fine results for a very silent hard drive cooelr if you ask me.

Conclusion

The I-Storm II is a very efficient hard drive cooler, which will take care of your prescous data for a long time to come. And it will also lower your case temperature by several degrees which is always a good thing. So if you’re looking for a good hard drive cooler at a fair price, you’d better check out the I-Storm II cooler from Globalwin.