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Evercool H.D.D Air Condition


Date
: 11/9/05 – 10:03:59 PM

Author
:

Category
: Cooling

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer:
EVERCOOL Thermal Co.

Price:
$N/A

Located in Taiwan with their own factory that produces over 2 million pieces a month, Evercool has been making cooling products since 1992. There may be more than one reader that has not heard of Evercool, but a fair bit of us have. This is the first review of an Evercool product here at Overclockers Online and it is about time. The main focus of Evercool is CPU and water cooling, but they don't stop there. Evercool has a number of DC fans, heat pipe products, and what we will be looking at today; hard drive coolers.

The HDAC, as Everest refers to it, is a hard drive cooler designed to mount in a free 5.25" slot piggy-backed on the hard drive it is meant to cool. The aluminum body combined with the turbine fan in the front provide the cooling for the hard drive in a quiet and efficient manor. The camera is ready and a phillips head screwdriver within reach, so it is time to have a look at the Evercool HDAC.

Page 2 : Package

A hard drive cooler is not an elaborate device and Evercool has not gone over the top in presenting us with their retail package for the HDAC.

The package the hard drive cooler comes in does have a shiny finish to it instead of a dull flat finish. The color scheme is black which appears to match the majority of the cooler inside based on this front photo.

The rear of the box is where Evercool explains what the HDAC is all about. A brief list of features and specifications are listed here as well as a pair of photos that appear to be the installation instructions. I guess I shouldn't expect any inside. We also find a link to the Evercool web site in the bottom left.

With the front and the back looked at, there isn't really much else to the package. The front lip panel has Evercool printed on it, but the other three sides are just black with nothing to show.

As we can see from the photo and the labeling Evercool has done, the HDAC comes with a LED light that automatically shuts off and displays the temperature and the fan speed. The fan used is highlighted on the left with the inset photo. It appears that it uses a dual ball bearing turbine due to the space limitations. It will be interesting to see how the turbine fan sounds, as opposed to two tiny little fans jammed into the front. Lets now take a look at the specifications for the HDAC.

Page 3 : Specifications

There is not a lot of info to go over being a hard drive cooler but these are the features taken from the Evercool web site and found on the rear of the package:

Here is the list of specifications, pulled as well, from the Evercool web site:

Page 4 : Package Contents

When we first open the box, all we can see is the hard drive cooler itself.

It is interesting to see the 'Ice Storm' logo seen here on the top of the unit. This would have been a good name for the cooler instead of 'HDAC' that Evercool seems to refer to this model as. Either way, the cooler sits snugly in place in the box and is protected quite well.

Here is that mounting hardware spread out. There are two brackets, various screws to mount the hard drive to those brackets, the brackets to the cooler, and finally the cooler to the case. There is also a single piece of 3M two sided tape, for what? That I am unsure. There is no installation manual inside but there are instructions on the Evercool web site which don't actually show the two sided tape being used.

When we flip the HDAC over, we see that there is actually a thermal probe that comes with it. I am assuming this is what feeds the temperature to the LCD display on the front. The cable is extremely long so it can be mounted anywhere on the hard drive without issue.

The front panel is pretty nice looking. I would prefer to see an all black unit or at least a beige one as there are far fewer silver cases out there but that said, the silver does look good on its own. The buttons and fan dial is easy to get at and located right where they should be for easy use. The LCD display is not big and it doesn't really need to be. The fan intake is nice because it hides the turbine fan behind it while still allowing air to pass through.

At the back, we can see that the power connection is built in to the unit, where it will be easily connected to a molex cable, and the top plate actually has channels running from the front to the back. This aluminum top plate will be in contact with a good portion of the hard drive and these channels will allow air from the turbine fan to blow the heat that is being drawn out of the hard drive out the rear.

The top plate has a slightly raised strip right down the middle that will be in contact with the hard drive. This strip will draw heat directly from the top of the hard drive. By being slightly raised, it will also allow air to flow directly over the hard drive to help remove heat. The whole cooler, aside from the front panel, is aluminum and should do a good job cooling the hard drive, the design is quite well thought out.

Having not seen a turbine fan before incorporated into a piece of computer hardware, I figured I should at least pull the front panel off and have a look. The idea is pretty basic, the motor rotates the fins and they introduce airflow into the unit both above and below the top plate. It looks like it is time to put this cooler back together and install a hard drive.

Page 5 : Installation

The installation of a hard drive in the Evercool HDAC begins with mounting the brackets to the hard drive that will then be secured to the cooler.

Four screws are provided by Evercool to accomplish this task and there is only the one spot where the holes will line up at the rear of the hard drive, so it is not really hard to figure out. The bracket has to sit so that it is the width of the hard drive and has the 'feet' portion of the L brakcets at the top of the drive to mount to the cooler.

With brackets secured on both sides, I could now secure the hard drive to the HDAC. Again, screws are supplied by Evercool and they actually provide an extra one for both of these jobs in case you lose one. These brackets will keep the hard drive nice and tight to that middle strip I mentioned earlier.

Here is a close up of the that middle strip that sits flush with the top of the drive while still allowing some air to flow over the top of the hard drive near the outside edges from the turbine fan at the front. This should give a good overall cooling ability being able to draw heat directly out as well as washing it away with air.

I mentioned the temperature probe earlier and have un-wound it here. As you can see the wire is extremely long and will reach a good ways into the case, I really don't think Evercool supplied this probe with the intent of mounting it to the hard drive. I will be using SpeedFan for monitoring the temperature of the hard drive during testing so the probe will not be used.

Up to this point, the installation has gone extremely smoothly without so much as a screw not threading correctly but, when I went to mount the drive in the optical drive cage of the Take 4, I ran into a snag. The front mounting hole would not line up with the provided holes in the cage when the front of the cooler is flush with the CD drive below.

In order to get the front and rear screws secured, the cooler has to stick out slightly further than I could get the CD drive. This might just be an issue with the mounting holes in the Take 4, but as you can see, the CD drive below mounts flush and the holes line up perfectly. I have also had a couple different DVD drives in this cage and all the holes line up without issue.

With the HDAC mounted in the cage, I could put the drive cage in the case. The front panel fills the 5.25" slot perfectly, aside form the mounting issue where it protrudes the slightest bit.

Page 6 : Testing

To test the thermal abilities of the Evercool HDAC I will be using the following components:

This is how the hard drive will be situated for the testing:

To get the hard drive working and warmed up, I simply transferred 30GB of little 50-150KB image files from the Maxtor drive to the WD Raptor on the system and then transferred them back right after it finished receiving them. The total time the hard drive was under stress for was 2 hours for each setting. During testing room temperature remained a constant 23°C as measured by the thermostat and thermo probe on the HDAC.

Here are the results:

The Evercool HDAC and results with an 80mm fan really stand out. The temperatures with the 80mm fan at 3100RPM actually seems to cool better but the HDAC at the highest the fan would run is pretty much identical. The reason I choose to post results of the fan at 2300RPM is because this is the speed at which the fan is pretty much silent. Once the RPMs cross 2300, the turbine fan starts to sound like a turbine emitting a whirring noise. The noise is not devastatingly loud but you definitely cann't miss it at 3400RPM. Keep in mind these results are on an open desk with a fairly cool ambient temperature.

The temperature probe seemed to be bang on reading the same temperature as the thermostat throughout testing. The blue light makes it easy to read at night and the ability to jump back and forth from Celsius to Fahrenheit is nice. The light goes out after a minute or so and comes back with the push of either button. That about covers the testing and functionality of the Evercool HDAC. My wrap-up can be found on the next and final page.

Page 7 : Conclusion

The Evercool HDAC is a very straight forward hard drive cooler that mounts in an open 5.25" drive bay. The aluminum body is solid and does a good job drawing heat out of the hard drive and the turbine fan performs very well and nearly silent at lower RPMs. In a tightly packed case or one with no front fans, this hard drive cooler can really help keep the hard drive with all your precious data nice and cool. This will extend the life of the drive and help prevent an early failure.

We saw the results vs. having an 80mm fan directly in front of the drive running at 3100RPM and they come up pretty much the same. Some may prefer having an 80 mm fan as it will introduce more fresh air not only to the hard drive but the whole case, but if your case doesn't have that ability to mount an 80mm fan at the front then the Evercool HDAC is a good alternative to keep things cool.

Advantages:

• Very easy installation
• Aluminum body cools well
• Quiet fan at low RPMs

  Disadvantages:

• Equal to having an 80mm front fan
• Higher RPMs introduce unwanted fan noise

  Overclockers Online would like to thank Evercool for providing this test sample.