Although heat is an issue for many parts of a computer system, the hard drive is something a lot of people do not think about. Everyone knows it generates heat, especially when they began hitting 7200rpm a few years ago, but generally I would imagine most of us just stick it into our hard drive bays without much thought. If you're lucky, perhaps there will be an 80mm fan directed in the general direction of the drive, but that may be it.

Generally, this has always been enough for me. I've never been all that impressed with some drive coolers that resort to a measly 40mm fan, which is why I never used to use them. I never bothered with hard drive heatsinks either, as all my cases have large fans that blow air directly over the drives.

The Cooler Master Cool Drive 6 opened my eyes to how much my hard drives needed cooling when we looked at the unit last Summer. Along with the requisite drive cooling, the unit provided an abundance of system information (such as the drive's disk space and transfer speed) that can be quite useful to those who need ready access to said info. Apart from that, the cooling performance was quite good, and overall we were quite happy with the unit.

There are people who will be less concerned about the system information provided as that is something that can be done via software, and let's face it, that info can only be read from the Cool Drive 6 when the PC was on, so there's nothing wrong with choosing a Windows based program to view the same information. Cooler Master has recognized this, as they figure there will be some people who would like to improve their drive cooling, but would rather not pay for the LED information portion of the unit.

The Cooler Master Cool Drive Lite we'll be looking at today is identical to the Cool Drive 6 in every way minus the LED information. The dimension are the same, as are the cooling specifications. Will the performance match the Cool Drive 6? Well, it should, but let's examine that as we move through the rest of the review.

Specifications

Dimension	150 x 43 x 208 mm
Fan Dimension	4.4 cm
Temperature monitor range	10°C-90°C/ 50°F-122°F
Power Input	12V/ 1.5A +/- 5%; 5V/ 0.5A +/- 5%
Fan Output	<5V 12V/ 1.5A
Material	Aluminum

Cooler Master Cool Drive Lite

The unit arrived in a large rectangular box, wrapped in plastic and held in place by some foam inserts. Inside, we have the Cool Drive, installation screws, and a thermal pad. The purpose of the pad is to improve surface contact between the hard drive and the Cool Drive Lite.

The Cool Drive 6 measures approximately 6" wide, 1.5" high and 8.25" long, and is composed primarily of aluminum. Cooling is provided by a 44mm fan on the front of the unit (the black area above). The top and bottom of the Cool Drive have fins for heat dissipation. The top heat plate (which is in fact the hard drive tray) is secured by four small screws which can be removed to gain access to the interior.

Inside, you can see the Molex connection for the fan. While there is no need to remove the fan plate, we did so to show the placement of the fan. The design of the Cool Drive Lite allows the fan to draw air from the front and push it directly on to the hard drive itself.

You can use almost any 3.5" hard drive, from IDE to SCSI, as the rear of the Cool Drive Lite is open. What is nice about the tray are the rubber grommets that reduce the drive vibration, thus cutting down on some noise.

Six screws are used to install the hard drive, after which, four more are used to reinstall the to the main chassis.

Cooling Performance - Cool Drive Lite

The hard drive used for the test is a Maxtor 80GB 7200rpm hard drive. We'll be reading the temperatures during a disk defrag, system virus scan and a looping 3DMark05 benchmark, and recording results from the main chassis, cache memory, and the exterior of the drive motor.

We'll be comparing the Cool Drive Lite's performance with and without the fans on, as well as comparing the temperatures of the hard drive outside of the Cool Drive 6 (placed in a Cavalier 1 case with no fan cooling it). The first set of numbers will be the Lite's results, followed by comparison numbers of the Cool Drive 6 and asetek WaterChill HDD cooler. For all three test subjects, we'll be using thermal pads (provided by the manufacturer) to maximize performance. All temperatures are in °C.

	Cool Drive L (fans on)	Cool Drive L (fans off)	Bare HDD	80mm fan
Chassis	39	39	45	41
Cache Memory	41	42	47	45
Drive Motor	40	40	49	43

 

Cooling Performance - Cool Drive 6

	Cool Drive 6 (fans on)	Cool Drive 6 (fans off)	Bare HDD	80mm fan
Chassis	39	40	45	41
Cache Memory	44	44	47	45
Drive Motor	40	41	49	43

 

Cooling Performance - WaterChill HDD Cooler

	WaterChill HDD	Bare HDD	80mm fan
Chassis	34	45	41
Cache Memory	35	47	45
Drive Motor	36	49	43

Neither Cool Drive unit held any advantage over the other, and were more or less equal in performance throughout testing. Naturally, the water cooled hard drive cooler was the best performer of the bunch, but it is also the most expensive of the three based on the fact that you need to have a water cooling system setup for this. That being said, a lone hard drive without any cooling fared the worst and all three were better than one 80mm fan blowing across the hard drive.

Final Words

The Cool Drive Lite came across as advertised. It provided much better cooling than a typical 80mm fan and is certainly better than having no cooling at all. That's all the Cool Drive Lite does though, so if you're interested in a LED display of some sort, you're best to look into their Cool Drive 6 series. Keep in mind that not all setups will perform as our hard drives did without cooling or case fans. The case design plays a role, as well as how neatly your cables are bundled.

One thing I liked about the Cool Drive Lite is the fact that it's very solid and has completely flat edges. Normally, we test a lot of items here at VL, and I like to keep a spare drive handy just for benchmarking purposes. This drive gets moved around a lot, so it doesn't spend a lot of time installed in a case. Placed in the Cool Drive Lite, I do have some piece of mind that it is somewhat protected (at least more so than having an exposed drive sitting on my desk), and because the only wires needed are the power for the fan and hard drive and one SATA cable, it isn't as cumbersome to use as the Cool Drive 6.

Like we've noted in our Cool Drive 6 review, whether or not you need the Cool Drive Lite will depend on what your current setup is. If you're only interested in cooling, and your case already does an adequate job of keeping your hard drive cool, this is not a required purchase. On the other hand, the Cool Drive Lite does shield some of the hard drive noise, and the included fan is essentially silent so if you're building a silent PC, you might want to give the Cool Drive Lite some consideration.

Pros: Good cooling, attractive design. Well built and quiet.

Cons: Not required if you have decent cooling in place.

Bottom Line: If your hard drive cooling is inadequate, you'll definitely need to do something about it. If you're noise conscious, the Cool Drive Lite would be our recommended solution if you're more concerned about cooling and don't need the LED features of their higher-end model.

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