Conclusion
by
Bill Lake
Even though both coolers take different design approaches to accomplishing the same task, their results were very similar. More important, they both do exactly what they advertise. There are some issues in operation—eliminating the temperature variance would improve their performance overall. They might redesign the coolers to force a little more air over the bottom. It seems that only a good case can provide the air flow required to minimize this variation.
The Good
- Work as advertised
- Easy to install
- Various styles to fit your needs
- Fan noise very low
- Fans on both units reversible
The Bad
- Price
- Temperature variation
- No easy way to disable the LEDs on KuFormula SHF-1
Either of these HDD coolers can be recommended for systems with limited airflow—they both work exceedingly well at reducing HDD temperatures.
In terms of choosing between them, each drive cooler has advantages and disadvantages.
| Feature | Vigor iSurf II Hard Disk Drive Cooling System | Masscool Sytrin KuFormula SHF-1 |
|---|---|---|
| Cooling | trails the Masscool by a hair | slightly more effective |
| Size | 25 mm smaller than competition | won’t fit some cases |
| Ease of install | exceedingly simple | slightly more involved, but still easy |
| Customization | Can disable LED | Face plates and extras for differentiation |
| Value | Tie | Tie |
In the end, this face-off comes down to personal choice.
7
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Very confusing and useless review to be honest...
Slow news day?
what's the point of hard drive coolers? get a good case such as Antec p182 and just forget about hard driver coolers or the need to suspend hard drives
I've got an ultraq hot 500gb HP enterprise drive (was external usb), gets too hot to touch! However I agree with wyx, a ton of case cooling would be much preferable to these.
mount a 120mm fan in front of the hard drives. Get temps in the 30's all day :-)
I've an Antec 900 case with already 6 drives and a dvd drivie installed and I've 2 x 500GB drives waiting to go in. I for one found this useful as an extra 120mm fan is not an option for me.
not everyone wants a case the size of an office block....
not everyone runs IDE... ever wonder why 15k rpm drives look like heatsyncs?
otherside of the coin though, if the hard drive can't take its normal operting temperature, what is it doing being released to market?