Thank you!

  The case that these are going into has 8 5.25" bays, a couple of 3.5" bays
(not externally accessible) and two power supplies.  I found it in a surplus
shop, with a couple of bay coolers and a couple of removable-drive bays
(that match the ones I've been using) still installed, but no drives,
motherboard, etc.  My plan is to move my existing dual-CPU SCSI-based
system, plus the new drives, into there, and rebuild their current tower
with an Athlon XP and some UDMA drives with 8MB buffers.  (I recently got a
couple of Maxtor 160GB drives, on sale for $70 apiece.)

  This is the first significant PC-building I've done in a couple of years,
and so it may generate a few additional questions over the coming months....

Dave Gillett


On 2 Sep 2004 at 13:58, Bill Cohane wrote:

> At 06:35 09/02/04, David Gillett wrote:
> >None of my local component stores seem to carry bay coolers
> >any more....
>
> The best bay coolers that I've found are
>
> "SanMAX Baycooler Metal 3 Fan Hard Disk Cooler, Model "B300-M3B" -RETAIL"
> http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-888-702&depa=0
> $14.95 each. They come with either black or beige grills.
>
> These "SanMAX Baycooler Metal 3 Fan Hard Disk Cooler" have
> filters between the front grill and the fans that are very
> easy to remove for cleaning. (You could slide the front
> grill off even while the drive and fans are spinning, and
> remove the filter.) Or you can just brush off the dust with
> an old hair brush or use a vacuum cleaner on the front
> without removing the grill.
>
> They work best with "slim profile" drives (1" high or less).
> You might have trouble getting the side mounting screws to
> line up with some full height (1.6" high) 3.5" drives.
>
> I've bought 31 of these (over two years) for several home
> computers. I really like them.
>
> If you want to save a few dollars, you can buy the 2 fan version
> for $8.99 and mount a third fan yourself. The cutout and screws
> are there, all you need is the 40mm fan and two small nuts (for
> the screws that hold the fans).
> "Inclose (Sanmax) BC300-M2B Bay Cooler II Hard Drive Fan"
> http://shop4.outpost.com/product/2522511
>
> I'd stay away from the original Inclose "Bay Cooler I" which
> was all plastic, cheaply made, and didn't fit well in some
> drive bays.
>
> ***
>
> I should also mention the deluxe "Bay-Cool III" drive cooler
> from PC Power & Cooling. It has one 80mm ball bearing fan
> and will hold up to three low profile drives in two adjacent
> 3.5" drive slots. (One 80mm fan creates over three times the
> air flow of three 40mm fans. See [**] below.)
>
> http://www.pcpowercooling.com/products/cooling/drive/index.htm
>
> I'm not sure I like the idea of having three drives packed
> so close together.
>
> If I was very worried about cooling and had plenty of available
> drive bays, I think I'd stack several Bay-Cool III on top of
> each other. I'd alternate one drive (in one Bay-Cool III) then
> two drives (in the next Bay-Cool III) then one then two (etc.).
> For example, you could have six drives in eight 3.5" slots,
> which would result in plenty of space between drives...allowing
> great air flow over the drives.
>
> PCP&C prices are high. Their two 40mm fan "Bay-Cool" is $39.
> This is virtually identical to the two fan "BayCooler 2" which
> is $8.95 from Outpost/Fry's. The two bay (with 80mm fan)
> Bay-Cool III costs $45.
>
>   [**] One 80mm fan does 30 cfm (cubic feet per meter) whereas
>        one 40mm fan does only 3.2 cfm.
>
> Regards,
> Bill
>
>

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