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Zalman ZM-2HC2 Passive Heat Pipe HDD Cooler

post #1 of 22
1/20/12 at 4:09am
Thread Starter 
Has anyone used this cooler? http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=134 Not much in the way of reviews on the net.

It mounts to drive OK and the assembled unit mounts into the 5.25" bay OK. But double checking there really is very little metal to metal contact between the HDD sides and the machined aluminum rails of the cooler. Can see daylight through most of the mating area. The mounting screws are tight. I suspect the irregularities are in the HDD sides and I'm not about to re-machine those.

The installation specs just say "mount with the screws."

So should this be done with a thermal grease like a CPU cooler? Or maybe better a thermal tape like heatsinks on a RAM module? The tape would have to be near paper thin, there's not much play.

Thanks.
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post #2 of 22
1/20/12 at 2:23pm
You can probably put a tiny bit of TIM on the sides, but really something like this isn't of much use as there is little surface area for radiating heat. What was your purpose in buying this? HDDs don't run all that hot, and can function in pretty high temperatures. I looked it up once for WD Black drives, and WD says that the drives have an operational temperature of 60ºC.
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post #3 of 22
1/21/12 at 2:38am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zap View Post

You can probably put a tiny bit of TIM on the sides, but really something like this isn't of much use as there is little surface area for radiating heat. What was your purpose in buying this? HDDs don't run all that hot, and can function in pretty high temperatures. I looked it up once for WD Black drives, and WD says that the drives have an operational temperature of 60ºC.

Thanks for following up Zap. I was researching the general topic of passive cooling and found an article by an engineer who experimented with home made aluminum heat sinks (out of 1/2" U channel stock) attached to the sides of 3.5" HDDs in 5.25" bays. The drive sides are more or less 1/2" high as well. The attached heat sinks projected out the back of the bays into the airflow inside the case. And measured drive temps dropped... I think as much as 10 deg depending on how he tweaked the set up but I may be off on that recollection. So his experiment demonstrated that even that limited surface area on the HDD sides can be used to draw off heat.

So from there I looked for off-the-shelf HDD coolers and found these. They also serve as anti-vibration mounts so I figured what the heck. Can't hurt. They are mounted on two WD RE4s in two 5.25" bays. I'll put perforated covers on the bays and there should be draft over the heat pipes created by airflow inside the case.

Since first posting I dis-assembled the units and indeed the drive sides are not cast or machined flat and that prevents close mating. I'd assume it was the same in that engineer's experiment. I'll have to see if I can find it again. Anyway there's an easy, non-damaging way to get better heat transfer I'll do it, otherwise I'll just let them do what they do.
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Case. Addl. 140mm bottom intake fan Scythe Kaze Master Pro fan controller Probably Windows 7 Professional 64 bit 2 displays TBD  
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TBD Seasonic Platinum-860 860W CM ATCS 840 (minor mods) TBD 
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post #4 of 22
1/21/12 at 7:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Guy View Post

So his experiment demonstrated that even that limited surface area on the HDD sides can be used to draw off heat.

Normally the metal of the case that the HDD is attached to will act as a heatsink of sorts.

If you have airflow over the drives at all, there's probably nothing to worry about as far as temperatures.
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post #5 of 22
1/21/12 at 8:18am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zap View Post

Normally the metal of the case that the HDD is attached to will act as a heatsink of sorts.
If you have airflow over the drives at all, there's probably nothing to worry about as far as temperatures.

I think you're right. It's not a big deal. And if I'm using passive airflow over the drives the heat sinks should offset any difference from active airflow.

Thanks for following up.
Evolving Plan
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Intel Xeon W3680 Westmere-EP Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (Rev. 2) PNY (Nvidia) Quadro 2000 1GB Maybe add a card for 3rd display 
RAMHard DriveHard DriveHard Drive
Mushkin Silverline (6 x 4)=24 GB DDR3 1333 C(OS): 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 - MAX IOPS Edition, S... D(Data): two WD RE4 1TB 3.0Gb/s (RAID 1)  External backup: LaCie D2 Quadra 1TB e-SATA 3.0... 
Optical DriveCoolingCoolingCooling
Sony Optiarc AD-7261S-OB CPU Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B. w/Noctua 120... CM External GPU Duct & 120mm Ex. Fan HDDs Zalman ZM-2HC2 Heatpipe Coolers  
CoolingCoolingOSMonitor
Case. Addl. 140mm bottom intake fan Scythe Kaze Master Pro fan controller Probably Windows 7 Professional 64 bit 2 displays TBD  
KeyboardPowerCaseMouse
TBD Seasonic Platinum-860 860W CM ATCS 840 (minor mods) TBD 
AudioOtherOtherOther
Cyber Acoustics CA-1001WB 5.25" Drive Bay for now  Drive A: Internal FDD w/ card reader & 1 USB 2.0  USB 2.0. 7 port PCI Card 8GB Verbatim Flash Drive. Internal system docu... 
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CPUMotherboardGraphicsGraphics
Intel Xeon W3680 Westmere-EP Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (Rev. 2) PNY (Nvidia) Quadro 2000 1GB Maybe add a card for 3rd display 
RAMHard DriveHard DriveHard Drive
Mushkin Silverline (6 x 4)=24 GB DDR3 1333 C(OS): 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 - MAX IOPS Edition, S... D(Data): two WD RE4 1TB 3.0Gb/s (RAID 1)  External backup: LaCie D2 Quadra 1TB e-SATA 3.0... 
Optical DriveCoolingCoolingCooling
Sony Optiarc AD-7261S-OB CPU Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B. w/Noctua 120... CM External GPU Duct & 120mm Ex. Fan HDDs Zalman ZM-2HC2 Heatpipe Coolers  
CoolingCoolingOSMonitor
Case. Addl. 140mm bottom intake fan Scythe Kaze Master Pro fan controller Probably Windows 7 Professional 64 bit 2 displays TBD  
KeyboardPowerCaseMouse
TBD Seasonic Platinum-860 860W CM ATCS 840 (minor mods) TBD 
AudioOtherOtherOther
Cyber Acoustics CA-1001WB 5.25" Drive Bay for now  Drive A: Internal FDD w/ card reader & 1 USB 2.0  USB 2.0. 7 port PCI Card 8GB Verbatim Flash Drive. Internal system docu... 
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post #6 of 22
1/21/12 at 8:40am
You've got to be doing something seriously wrong in your case to be needing HDD coolers.
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post #7 of 22
1/30/12 at 3:28am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skrillex View Post

You've got to be doing something seriously wrong in your case to be needing HDD coolers.

That's an interesting perspective. I'll attach a picture of my case. I have a stock 230mm front intake and an added 140mm bottom intake. Two 230mm top exhaust and 140mm rear exhaust. Additional 120mm external GPU exhaust. The drive bay behind the front intake has been left entirely empty so there is no disruption of airflow into the case where the real heat producers are. And cables have been managed to minimally disrupt airflow. Is there anything seriously wrong with that set up?

That moves the HDDs to the upper 5.25" bay as shown in the earlier photo. Some people seem to feel HDDs never need cooling or if they do can't transfer heat from their narrow sides. I suppose all the available HDD coolers could be useless and just people wanting to sell hardware. I don't know if my HDDs need coolers but since there will be less active air flow over them than if they were left in the lower bay, I've supposed that adding passive coolers can't hurt, might even improve performance or extend life.

403
Evolving Plan
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CPUMotherboardGraphicsGraphics
Intel Xeon W3680 Westmere-EP Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (Rev. 2) PNY (Nvidia) Quadro 2000 1GB Maybe add a card for 3rd display 
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Optical DriveCoolingCoolingCooling
Sony Optiarc AD-7261S-OB CPU Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B. w/Noctua 120... CM External GPU Duct & 120mm Ex. Fan HDDs Zalman ZM-2HC2 Heatpipe Coolers  
CoolingCoolingOSMonitor
Case. Addl. 140mm bottom intake fan Scythe Kaze Master Pro fan controller Probably Windows 7 Professional 64 bit 2 displays TBD  
KeyboardPowerCaseMouse
TBD Seasonic Platinum-860 860W CM ATCS 840 (minor mods) TBD 
AudioOtherOtherOther
Cyber Acoustics CA-1001WB 5.25" Drive Bay for now  Drive A: Internal FDD w/ card reader & 1 USB 2.0  USB 2.0. 7 port PCI Card 8GB Verbatim Flash Drive. Internal system docu... 
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(25 items)
  		  
CPUMotherboardGraphicsGraphics
Intel Xeon W3680 Westmere-EP Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (Rev. 2) PNY (Nvidia) Quadro 2000 1GB Maybe add a card for 3rd display 
RAMHard DriveHard DriveHard Drive
Mushkin Silverline (6 x 4)=24 GB DDR3 1333 C(OS): 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 - MAX IOPS Edition, S... D(Data): two WD RE4 1TB 3.0Gb/s (RAID 1)  External backup: LaCie D2 Quadra 1TB e-SATA 3.0... 
Optical DriveCoolingCoolingCooling
Sony Optiarc AD-7261S-OB CPU Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B. w/Noctua 120... CM External GPU Duct & 120mm Ex. Fan HDDs Zalman ZM-2HC2 Heatpipe Coolers  
CoolingCoolingOSMonitor
Case. Addl. 140mm bottom intake fan Scythe Kaze Master Pro fan controller Probably Windows 7 Professional 64 bit 2 displays TBD  
KeyboardPowerCaseMouse
TBD Seasonic Platinum-860 860W CM ATCS 840 (minor mods) TBD 
AudioOtherOtherOther
Cyber Acoustics CA-1001WB 5.25" Drive Bay for now  Drive A: Internal FDD w/ card reader & 1 USB 2.0  USB 2.0. 7 port PCI Card 8GB Verbatim Flash Drive. Internal system docu... 
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post #8 of 22
1/30/12 at 4:41am
I own one. I bought it more because I wanted to mount my 3.5 inch drive in a 5.25 inch bay and add some vibration reduction than for cooling purposes, but I figured the extra cooling couldn't hurt. I didn't even bother measuring temperature differences but I'm sure it cools it by a few degrees.
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post #9 of 22
1/30/12 at 4:41am
the best way to passively cool your HDD is to add mass. more mass it has, the more heat it takes to raise its temperature. and the more mass it has, the greater the surface area it would have to dissipate heat
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post #10 of 22
1/30/12 at 4:43am
Also harddrives are more likely to fail at cool temperatues and very high temperatures, so you want to keep them in a nice middle ground of 25-35c.
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