Hi,

I am contemplating getting one of these raptor drives now. I have noticed a lot of reviews mentioning drive cooling. Is it really necessary? I was contemplating getting a small 36GB drive and using my current hard disk for storage space (since I dont need that much space anyway). How much do these drive coolers cost anyway, cos I am on a limited budget?

Cheers,

Depending on the case setup you have.
You may not need one .
If your case draws the fresh air in thru the drive slots you should be ok.

In Most cases that I have added a raptor to that didn't draw thru the drive cage
The Only change I made was to add a standard case fan to the drive slot in front of the two drives.
Pulling in fresh air and cooling both drives at once

I only have experience with my one Raptor and I have exactlt the setup Rick describes--large airy case with one of the fans in front of the Raptor. Zalman makes a $20 HDD heatpipe that provides silent cooling and vibration dampening. I bought that but had to return it because it was incompatible with my case. You could look at that if you wanted.

I have two Raptors in a RAID and like the others just in a large airy case. I have always thought them (by touch) to actually feel cooler than a 7200 IDE drive that sits just beside them.