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Hardcano2 Hard Drive Cooler
Review Date: July 21, 2002
Reviewed by: Dwayne Sessom
Sponsored by: 2cooltek.com
Thanks to Ian at 2CoolTek for supplying the Hardcano2. He is the original MOD Master in my own humble opinion. He has been catering to the overclocking community for years. If you haven't heard of 2CoolTek, you probably aren't a hardcore modder. Thermaltake has been has been making quality cooling components for a while now as well. The first Thermaltake product I remember buying was a Golden Orb for my PIII 700 that I overclocked to 933Mhz, and I found that they worked well for a while, but the fans in them tended to freeze up after only a few months of use. But anyway, lets see what the Hardcano2 can do...
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The Hardcano2 comes in a hard plastic container that must be sealed with super glue. I had to use a pair of industrial scissors to get it open, and almost sliced my finger off in the process. Couldn't they just put it in cardboard box, sealed in a anti-static bag?
After removing the unit and assembling it, this is what you have. The face is made of cast aluminum, and there are 2 LCD temp displays with really long leads on them (about 4 feet) so they should reach anything inside your case, and then some. Right between the LCD displays, there is a single 40mm fan.
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The LCD displays are powered with Lithium Ion watch batteries, but the fan is powered via 3-pin mini molex connector. Most modern motherboards should have 2 or 3 extra fan headers to plug the 3 pin molex into. In addition the temperature probes being rather long, the ends are also made in such a way that you can loop them around objects like your GPU heatsink.
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Although the Hardcano2 is advertised as a hard drive cooler, it really doesnt do much to cool your hard drive because of the single small fan, and lack of any type of heatsink. This is the backside of the unit, minus the hard drive brackets. You can see that most of the Hardcano2 consists of LCDs, not fans. If Thermaltake included a heatsink, it might work to cool you hard drive, but even then it would probably be only minimal cooling since the single 40mm fan can only move 5CFM.
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The Hardcano2 does have one redeeming quality. It may not cool well, but it looks damned cool installed in your PC, and the LCDs are really nice looking as well. It is an attention getter at LAN parties, and would look excellent in an aluminum case like a Lian Li.
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Since the hard drive cooling was negligable (less than -1*c), I decided to use the 2 temperature probes for displaying CPU and GPU temps. For this purpose, the Hardcano2 works quite well. And did I mention it looks really cool?
Conclusion.
Well the Hardcano2 fails at being a hard drive cooler, but with the addition of a heatsink it might serve to cool a hard drive a little bit. If you are looking for a kickass dual LCD temperature display, then the Hardcano2 is just what you are looking for. For this purpose, its the best solution I have seen.
Rating:
If Thermaltake would add a better fan and include a heatsink for the hard drive, this would be an outstanding product. But as it is, the Hardcano2 is only good for it's looks and dual LCD temp displays. PCExtreme gives the Thermaltake Hardcano2 3x's.
For more info, go here.
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