Thermaltake Hardcano 2

Date Reviewed: April 30, 2002
Reviewed By: Jason
Cost: $29.99
Companies: Thermaltake

First Impressions:

Thermaltake strikes again with their new line of HardCano hard drive coolers! The really neat thing about these isn't their ability to cool a hard drive, but the integrated thermal probes. The HardCano 2 includes two separate temperature probes and LED readouts. Other models include replacing one of the LEDs with a 3 way power switch (to adjust your CPU fan speed for instance).

The HardCano 2 is priced at $29.99 which is about $20 cheaper than a Digital Doc 5, however it only has two temp probes where the DD5 has 8 probes (and can control 8 fans).

The HardCano 2 comes in a nice retail package and includes all the hardware you will need to mount a hard drive in it. Also included is some sticky tape and a 3pin-to-4pin power adapter. The unit comes unassembled, however you only have to put in one screw in each side to connect the drive rails to the main unit.

What makes the Hardcano really unique is the thermal probes. Thermaltake has taken the ends of the probes and used a thinner gauge wire that will allow you to mount the probe under your CPU, or you could always tape it to your RAM or even your video card.

The LED displays are battery powered, so they will always be on, even if your computer is turned off. This really shouldn't be that big of an issue, the display consumes very little power and should last for quite some time before needing a new battery.

The HardCano 2 uses a single fan to cool your hard drive. While this doesn't seem like much, even today's 7200 RPM IDE drives are meant to operate just fine without any active cooling. The 5CFM fan does circulate the air around the hard drive and helps prevent a hot pocket of air from forming. If you wanted to use this for a 10K or 15K RPM SCSI drive, you should probably look elsewhere for something a bit more powerful.

Here's some details on the fan: 

Continue On To Page 2 For Installation -->