Passive HDD Coolers Compared from Scythe and Titan

Cooling/VGA & Other Cooling by jmke @ 2008-07-18

In this article we take a closer look at three solutions from Titan and Scythe which aim to cool your HDD without fans; two of these products, Titan TTC-HD90 and Scythe Himuro also help reduce noise. We combine them with a 10.000rpm Raptor to see if they can handle the heat and noise!

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Test Results & Conclusive Thoughts

Test Setup, Methodology and Results

We are using the NZXT Tempest as enclosure in our test, this is a high airflow case featuring 2x120mm fans at the front, 2x140mm fans at the top, 1x120mm exhaust at the rear and 1x120mm intake in the side panel. In short, with all the fans running at full speed any component placed inside will remain cool, no matter if it has extra heatsinks or not.

There is a 120mm fan in front of each HDD bay, but not active cooling for the 5.25” bays. We tested with the front fans running but also with these two turned off. The side panel fan was not used. The NZXT Tempest features two custom made HDD racks, each one fits up to four hard drives. We have installed 2xWD Raptor in the top HDD bay, the 3rd Raptor we used for the HDD cooling tests was installed in the lower part. When the Raptor was installed inside the Titan TTC-HD90 and Scythe Himuro it was placed in the 3rd 5.25” bay (counting from the top).

Here are our setup details:

Intel Test Setup
CPU Intel Core 2 E6400 @ 2.8Ghz (from CSMSA)
Cooling Coolermaster Hyper TX
Mainboard Intel 975X Bad Axe (Modded by Piotke)
Memory 2 * 1Gb PC6400 OCZ
Other
  • XFX Geforce 8800 GTX
  • Coolermaster Real Power M520 520W PSU
  • 3x Western Digital 74Gb Raptor SATA HDD


  • Room temperature was 22°C
  • Noise readings were done outside the case, with the HDD placed on a soft foam pad to prevent vibration noise, the dBA meter was set up at very close distance to be able to detect any changes in noise level. Ambient noise reading with everything turned off was 37.6dBA.

    Madshrimps (c)


    When we installed the 10.000rpm Raptor drive in front of the running 120mm in-take fan the temperature under load did not go higher than 29°C. When we disabled the in-take fan the temperature rose by 4°C up to 33°C. Still not very high.

    Adding the TTC-HD92 has a positive effect on the load temperatures, but by how much depends totally on your system case cooling; if you have a front in-take fan the difference will be quite small (1°C in our test), but in a lower airflow environment the extra heat dissipation area does pay off. In our test the Raptor equipped with the TTC-HD92 runs 3°C cooler without the front case fan.

    Between the two 5.25” cooling devices the difference is negligible, comparing the load temperatures to the standard there is a small improvement when you don’t have a front in-take fan.

    Last but not least are the noise readings which were measured with the HDD running idle, so no seek noises were included here. The results show no difference for the Raptor with/without the TTC-HD92 as this unit doesn’t feature any noise blocking. The TTC-HD90 does a bit better and reduces noise by ~1dBA, while the Himuro takes the lead here by the smallest of margins at 41.1dBA. Overall though the effectiveness of these devices to reduce operation noise depends on your case setup and what other components you are using. Both 5.25” devices will help reduce operation noise but by how much is very hard to estimate. The Scythe Himuro offers better anti-vibration which gives in the edge it the noise reduction department.


    Conclusive Thoughts

    We have come to the end of our evaluation, we have taken a look at the installation procedure as well as the performance, let’s check the retail prices:

  • Scythe Himuro starts at $22 (€17 in EU)
  • Titan TTC-HD90 begins at €27
  • Titan TTC-HD92 begins at €15

    The Scythe Himuro is very competitively priced, available at almost the same price as the Titan TTC-HD92. They definitely were able to reduce production cost if we compare this price with that of their first HDD cooler at €50.

    The TTC-HD90 is not extraordinary expensive at €27 but it will add up quickly if you want to cool multiple hard drives in your system.

    In our introduction we’ve already mentioned the lack of necessity for active HDD cooling as long as temperatures are below ~45°C. In our test setup our 10.000rpm Raptor never got hotter than 33°C even without in-take fans sitting in front of the disk. But there are PC cases which will definitely benefit from a well executed 5.25” HDD cooler.

    What might interest others is not the temperature reduction aspect, but the ability to block noise; here the Scythe Himuro proved to be best equipped to reduce vibration noise. While the Titan TTC-HD90 also managed to reduce the generated noise it has no means of preventing HDD vibration to reach the case.

    The TTC-HD92 while managing to reduce HDD temperatures might not really do anything positive for your HDD if you have it already running cool enough (<45°C). Its small size is a benefit if you are installing a HDD in a compact enclosure without a lot of airflow, its low price certainly shouldn’t bankrupt you to give it a shot.

    We thank Titan and Scythe for sending their products in for test, until next time!
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