HDD Killers

So I dropped some more stuff into my media centre PC over the weekend, you know, just the usual, a Creative Audigy 2 ZS and two 150GB Raptor X’s.

Here are a couple of shots of the new stuff in the PC, you can’t really see the HDD’s (bottom right) because there’s a metal plate in the way (holding the HDD’s in), and the sound card is kinda two dimensional, so you can’t really see much of that either, but you can see the blue Western Digital Secure Connect cables, so that’s something… Anyway, two shots, one with the computer off, one with it on, click to enbiggenify.

In a (futile) attempt to get a better look at the HDD’s, I snapped this shot. The close proximity to lots of shiny metal made the flash from the camera result in huge glare, but you can still see the black of the HDD and the platter inside.

This weekend was HOT, at least, hot for the UK. The temperature inside was ~24 C, and with the new stuff in the PC, that meant it was ideal weather to check the temps of the system to see if it’s liable to melt when used. So test it I did, the case was closed back up and Prime 95 ravaged both cores for a few hours. Here’s what everest reported. As you can see, the pooter held up quite well, the Zalman CPU cooler is running far slower than full speed (to keep it quiet), and still the CPU temps are quite manageable.

Then though, the real test came, the computer was slid back into it’s cupboard, and the doors closed. Blocked in on all sides (including the top, there’s a shelf immediately above it) how would it fare? Well, it survived, but it’s not something I’d care to repeat. On average, the temperature of all the componants in the system went up by 20 C. Ouch.

I am quite happy with that though, full load in a confined space and the system lives to tell about it. It means that there’s quite a bit of overhead for when more things get added to the system at a later date.

I was also concerned about noise too, since the Raptors aren’t known as the quietest drives in the world. But due to the anti-vibration mounts in the case, the noise from them was all but eliminated. The only time when it was noticeable was when defragmenting them, the clicking of the read head could be heard a bit. In normal use though, it’s very unlikely that I’d be watching something while defragmenting, so it’s not an issue. In the case that that does happen though, the noise from the speakers would completely drown it out.

As per usual, if you want to see the full size pics, I have uploaded those too and they can be found here:

• Case open, computer off.
• Case open, computer on.
• HDD shot, glare at no extra cost.