Thermaltake Hardcano 2

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

Temperatures: 

1.4GHz @ 1.89v

Conclusions:

The HardCano's temp probe on the bottom of the CPU was consistent with the other temperatures taken, no big surprises there. For hard drive cooling I got about a 2°C degree drop under load (which was about all I was expecting).

If you are planning on buying the HardCano 2 for the temp probes, then I don't think you will be disappointed. It will work for any AMD or Intel CPU, RAM, video card, etc. However, many motherboards already have an onboard temp probe for the CPU, some touch the bottom of the CPU, and some don't. It's up to you if you want to spend the extra money for this purpose. Monitoring your video card temps could be very useful, especially if you are overclocking it pretty hard. You could mount the temp probe either touching the side of the GPU, or on the back side of the video card.

If you are planning on buying the HardCano 2 for a hard drive cooler, you might want to look elsewhere. The single 5CFM fan barely makes a difference when cooling the hard drive.

Like I said before, being priced at $29.99 it makes it about $20 cheaper than a DigitalDoc 5, or $5 more expensive than a Dual CompuNurse w/Drive Bay Adapter. I think the biggest difference is the thermal probe wires, using the thinner gauge near the tip of the probe gives it an advantage to squeeze into smaller places and even place a probe under your CPU, definitely worth the extra $5 over the dual CompuNurse.

Currently Heatsink Factory has them in stock, along with lots of other goodies for your PC.

Pros:
  Extremely simple assembly & installation
  Fan is very quiet and uses very little power
  Aluminum housing
  Dual temp probes w/thin wires (a first that I have seen!)

Cons:
  Fan doesn't cool all that much
  Might not look too good in some cases

Rating:
  For the Normal User: 4 of 10
  For the Extreme Gamer: 6 of 10
  For the Extreme Overclocker: 8 of 10

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