SUMMARY: Those who think about Thermaltake normally think about heatsinks for processors, but there is so much more. Come join Mike "Darthtanion" Wright as he takes a look at one of their newest offerings, the HardCano II. It is being marketed as a hard drive cooler, but it also includes two thermal probes that are mounted right on the front of your case. Can it serve both purposes in a satisfactory manner? Let's find out.
When you open up the plastic cover of the HardCano, you will notice that everything is included to take care of business. You get the cooler/dual monitor unit, two rails for mounting the hard drive, a 3-pin to 4-pin converter (in case you don’t have a spare motherboard header available), some two-sided sticky tape for mounting the probes, and enough screws to mount the rails and the drive as well. It’s a nice change of pace not having to scrounge around for extra screws and such when you start working with this kit.
The Fan
As stated earlier, one of the purposes of this kit is to help keep cool your hard drive. To do this function, Thermaltake has added one of their smaller fans that is mounted right behind the faceplate. It takes the cool air from the front of your case and blows it back over the hard drive.
The fan itself measures in at 40mm x 40mm x 20mm, spins at 5000 RPM, and cranks out an airflow rating of 5.1-CFM. All this and it only sounds off at a mild 23 dBA. While this isn’t the same as having a huge 80mm monster blowing over your hard drive, it does manage to cool off the drive when it’s operating. And with so many hard drives today spinning at faster speeds, cooling is becoming more essential than ever!
The Probes
The thermal probes used in the HardCano are similar to that used in a CompuNurse. It’s nothing outrageously fancy, but it does do the job of giving reliable results; and that’s what we’re after, isn’t it?
The probe itself is mounted into the aluminum housing of the HardCano unit. It is made of plastic, has an LCD display, and runs off a common watch battery. Since these watch batteries are inexpensive, you won’t have any worries about the probes not working any longer when they die out. Just remove the plastic screw cap (shown in the bottom picture), and replace the battery. That’s it. About the only thing that would have made this better would be if they had included some sort of On/Off switch for the probes.
One nice addition to this probe system was the addition of separated wires close to the probe. This will allow you to actually install this probe on the bottom of your processor! The wires are thin enough that they can go between the pins of the processor when you mount it into the socket. There isn’t any problem with pin contact at all.
The tip of the probe is pretty common fare. It has the actual probe encased in plastic so that it is protected from any thermal compounds that may be close to where you’re wanting temperatures taken from. Just use some of the double-sided sticky tape and you’re set.
