Harddisk coolers - floppy bay

[ikonia]

hello all,

I'm looking at hardisk cooling for my system

I've say Vantec do some good kit that is just a big heat sync over the harddisk with fans, they look the favourite so far, however I thought as I'm doing all this modding crap, lets see what I can do.

I was looking at the Coolermaster CoolDrive 4 HDD Cooling Rack which looked pretty cool and did the job, however because I have a nice 4 line LCD display taking up 2 5.25'' bays a DDS tape device and CD drive I'm fresh out of bays

for 2 of my harddisks this is no problem as I'll just use the heat sync style coolers mentioned above, however I was wondering if any of you have ever seen a cooler with a little display unit for the floppy drive bay (I only have 1 floppy) - or if any of you electronics - soldering wizards fancy having a little play with me in making one, so I can either a.) Dispay the primary hard disks temp off a display in the floppy bay - or try to be clever and make it scroll all 3 hard disk temperatures ???

Its a tough product, and I doubt one exists, I think it would be a good challange to make one, if anyone fancies lending a hand.

Matt.

[r1zeek]

Don't think one exist, i've only seen a 5.25 HDD cooler. Sounds like an interesting mod, had a search on the web to see if anyone else has done it?

[SilentDeath]

ikonia - Akasa make hdd coolers which consist of 2 45mm fans blowing down (or up) onto the hdd. It works well. Hdds dont output too much heat and have a big surface area, they dont need ubercooling.

If you want an lcd get one that can be controled from software using seriel usb or parrelell port. You can set up mbm5 to get hdd temps and pass it to the lcd app.

[ikonia]

excellent this is the attitude
r1zeek - I searched the net, didn't find a product and didn't notice anyone who had done this, you up for the challange ?
SilentDeath - yup I found the devices that sit on top/ underneith the hard disk and cool it, the tough thing is finding a display that will fit neatly and professionally into the floppy drive bay, interface with the LCD in someway keeping in mind that I already have a display plugged into the internal USB port and display the temperature.

I'm waiting for my larger display to turn up so I can run some tests, once I have that working I'll try to find a small screen, make a professional mount for it which will be tough because its so small.

If anyone has ideas/comments or wants to contribute, let em know.

[ikonia]

I spent a bit of time thinking about this last night and had a few basic ideas, however getting in the car this morning I sat down and noticed that my car had a stack display, with an small LCD display until it it, telling me the oil pressure, the water temp, my fuel level my miles and my tipometer. Now the display was possible a little small - but more than usable if it can display all that info cleanly it should be able to do the trick, so I've mailed stack asking which LCD supplier they use.

Once I get that I have to figure out how to connect this to the PC and how to make it monitor and display the temp for 2 or even 3 hardisks, I'm a bit more convinced this is do-able though.

[r1zeek]

Hmm. I would be up for the challenge accept im pretty poor at electronics so i'd be no help. You always use one of those LCD Thermometers or a comp style one (like the ones Lian-Li do)
I'm sure you could use a cooler and a thermometer and it'd look fine

[Moby-Dick]

mmm Stack displays

what about passive heatsinking ? use frag tape to fix a few old heatsinks to the hot side of the drive , or failing that you can get WC blocks for hard drives if you fancy being just a little extreeme

[ikonia]

excellent, this is the type of input I wanted.

Moby stack displays are not all that cool. It was just funny how I got in the car this morning, on the way to work noticed it had the LCD display and it just hit me

as soon as I get a response back from stack I'll get one in a nice floppy surround and mount it, then figure out how to attatch it to the PC - as if I just attatch it the harddisk heatsync what do I use to drive the LCD display to display the info nice.

[ikonia]

ok, got my lcd screen on order for the floppy bay.

next step, mod a floppy blanking pannel to house it

[ikonia]

Hmmm looks like I may have to re-think this.

the only screens that appear to fit, will fit in the floppy bay, but the circuit board won't fit in. The other problem is that they appear to all be external serial connections which I'm trying to avoid, and the only way around this is to solder it onto the motherboard and override the serial port which I'm not %100 sure I want to do.

Back to the drawing board.

[phil1965]

yes, i wouldnt bother matey