JustCooler HD-100 & HD-600
Jan 5th, 2001 | By Archive
JustCooler HD-100 & HD-600
Date
: 01/5/01 – 02:57:41 PM
Author
:
Category
: Cooling
Manufactor:
window'>JustCooler
Price HD-100: N/A
Price HD-600: N/A
Thanks to MPL for
supplying us with the HD-100 & HD-600!
Introduction
Alright, let’s start our introduction. Geert from
target='resource window'>MPL has again sent us some cooling products for a
href='/index.php?page=articles&num=41'
target=resource
window'>two GlobalWIN fans (the CAF12 & CBF32) over for a review last week,
year, century, … whatever you like, I thought it was about time to take a look at
some JustCooler products, the HD-100 5.25′ Bay Cooler & the HD-600 HDD Anti-Dust
Cover Cooler. These hard drive coolers may look useless to many of you, but bare in
mind that a hard drive is an essential part of the computer, and should not be
forgotten! Especially the latest 7200RPM, 10000RPM and 15000RPM drives generate a
lot of heat which is dumped in the case resulting in a higher case temperature,
causing hardware instability and so on. The worst case scenario for a hard drive in
this situation can be ‘hard drive failure’ which means you lose all your precious
data. I experienced this myself earlier this week (even with good hard drive cooling
installed!)
Well, this looks like the perfect job for these JustCoolers! Let’s have a
look…
Specifications
target='resource window'>
align=center>
target='resource window'>
align=center>
width=550>
| HD-100 | HD-600 | |
|
Oper
ation Voltage |
DC 12V |
DC
12V |
| Power | 1.92W | 1.44W |
|
Rated
Current |
0.16A | 0.12A |
| Bearing System | Sleeve Bearing | Sleeve Bearing |
| Fan Speed | 4500 RPM | 3500 RPM |
| Air Delivery | 10CFM | 18CFM |
|
Noise
Level |
24Dba | Unknown |
|
Static
Pressure |
0.14′-H2O | 0.09′-H20 |
| MTBF(life) | 20000 hours | 20000 hours |
| Dimension |
148mm x
42mm x 58mm |
115mm x 100mm x 11mm |
| Material | SPCC | SPCC |
| Total Weight | 310g | 260g |
I like to note that the JustCooler HD-100 hard drive cooler is shipped in a
solid box together with all the necessary screws and connectors you need for a
proper installation. The HD-600 package, however, doesn’t include any screws to
mount the cooler onto the hard drive. :(
My First Impressions
HD-100
The JustCooler HD-100 uses two 40mm fans that push around 5CFM each @ 2500RPM.
That gives us a total airflow of something around 10CFM. The fans are mounted behind
a plastic grill with a dustcover (filter) underneath. This dustcover prevents dust
from entering your case while the fans are working. Mounting the HD-100 shouldn’t
give you any troubles at all; you just have to take off a free 5.25′ face plate.
Then you simply slide the HD-100 into the selected slot and screw down both sides of
the cooler to the case chasis. The HD-100 fans have to be powered by an ordinary
molex connector. Plain simple, huh! With its 24Dba, the JustCooler is a very silent
cooler, so your Quake 3-concentration won’t be disturbed by the noise of this
cooler.
target='resource window'>
align=center>
target='resource window'>
align=center>
HD-600
The JustCooler HD-600 uses just one 55mm fan @ 3500RPM to create an 18CFM air
delivery. The HD-600 is even more silent than the HD-100, probably just because of
the fan’s lower RPM.(I can’t give you an exact Dba number because JustCooler hasn’t
put it on the specs part of their site) Mounting the HD-600 is also very easy; if
you can open a case, you can certainly mount this HD-600 onto your hard drive. You
just have to take your hard drive out of your case and put it on a table with the
bottom faced up. This way you can put the HD-600 onto the hard drive and screw it
down with 4 bolts. That’s all; now just reinstall the hard drive along with the
cooler into your case. Just like the HD-100, the HD-600 fan is also powered by molex
connector.
target='resource window'>
align=center>
That’s about it for the specs, let’s head over to the tests…
Testing
System setup
- AOpen HQ45 case
- Asus CUV4X motherboard
- Intel P3-700E @ 1008Mhz (7x144MHz)
- 128MB pc133 RAM (cas 3-3-3-5)
- Western Digital UDMA100 7200rpm 20GB
- Creative Geforce DDR @ 150/350
- Win2k (SP1)
- Directx 8 final + Detonator 6.47 + VIA 4.25a
The Results
The first cooler in this test is the JustCooler HD-100. Before I installed
this one in front of my Western Digital 20Gb hard drive (more specs above), I almost
couldn’t touch the hard drive because of the instense heat. OK, maybe I’m
exaggerating a little here, but I believe you get the picture, right? After I
installed the HD-100, the hard drive didn’t become warm anymore; not even a bit.
Another great thing about the HD-100 cooler is that it sucks fresh air into you
case. This resulted in dropping my case temperature by about 2C (temperature
measured with the Asus PC PROBE).
The second cooler I tried, was the JustCooler HD-600. This cooler clearly
performed a lot worse than the HD-100. The HD-600 only cools down the bottom of the
hard drive instead of blowing air over the entire hard drive (like the HD-100 does).
Another bad thing is that the HD-600 uses the (hot) air inside the case to cool down
the hard drive instead of sucking fresh air into the case (again, like the HD-100
does). All this resulted in the hard drive still being warm at the top even when the
HD-600 had been working for a couple of hours.
JustCooler HD-100
Good
- Great performance
- Value for money
- sucks fresh air into the case
- Easy mounting
Bad
- Loss of a bay
JustCooler HD-600
Good
- Easy mounting
- Doesn’t take up a bay
Bad
- Very poor performance
- Uses (hot) air from inside the case
Conclusion
Although these two coolers are made by the same manufactor ‘JustCooler’, they
are both very different! The HD-100 is a very efficient hard drive cooler, which can
take good care of your precious MP3z and nude pictures and it’ll even lower your
case temperature by a couple degrees. Then we have the HD-600, this cooler (if we
even dare to call it a ‘cooler’?) is the worst hard drive cooler I’ve ever seen in
my entire life! Oh man, if you’re desperate to buy a JustCooler hard drive cooler, I
suggest you go for the HD-100. If the manufactor doesn’t have to be ‘JustCooler’,
I’d say you better check out the
href='/index.php?page=articles&num=19'
target='resource window'>I-Storm II cooler from Globalwin.