Building new rig and considering a raptor hdd

biohazard420420

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As the subject says I am considering a raptor hard drive for my new pc strictly to run the os from. I am looking at the 36 gb version and I have read alot of people recommend active cooling as they tend to get hot. I am buying a TT Armor series full tower case which has a case fan in the front which I believe is in front of the hard drive cage in the lower front of the case. Do you think that the 120mm fan (its speed is 1,300 rpm no mention of cfm) that is mounted there would be enough to cool the raptor? I plan on mount 2 other hdds in the front as well but plan, if I get the raptor that is, to leave a space above the raptor for air flow. Or would I be better off buying a 5.25" drive bay hdd cooler?
 

choirbass

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well, any amount of active cooling on a hdd will suffice, raptors also come with a built in heatsink to help dissipate heat from it, because of how warm they run, just as long as youre not cramming the drives all right next to each other, heat generally wont be a real problem... as far as using the top 5.25" drive bays, that would be a better option IMO as the hdd will be isolated from all other heat, but it isnt at all necessary to do either
 

Zorg

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No need for the 5.25 bay, put it in the HD cage and don't worry.

Edit: Spend the money you would waste on the 5.25" cooler and upgrade to the 74GB Raptor.
 

Brawly44

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I currently have a TT Tai Chi, but if I'm not mistaken the HDD front mounted cage is similar to the Armor series chassis. My HDD config is WD Raptor 80GB, Maxtor Diamondmax 10 80GB and Maxtor Diamondmax 10 120GB - all sata. At idle my systems ambient temp is around 28C. I have one 120mm cooling fan mounted to the front of the HDD cage. Because of the case you have and if you use the 120mm fan, you should not have any problem. I have Vista Home Premium Edition installed on the WD Raptor. There is some improvement in boot time, and the Raptor does improve application launch time (although in my opinion it is negligible). All in all I do like the WD Raptor, it has never presented me a problem and appears to be very reliable and Vista seems to love it. My only criticizm would be the level of noise it makes. It is definitely louder than the other drives. I have had it for more than 6 months and have become accustomed to the sound, so it doesn't bother me.
 

biohazard420420

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Well since I wanted to use it only for the os since it is quite small would it even be worth it? I know it will speed up booting and program access (if they are on the raptor) a bit but since I am getting the smallest one they have and might only put 1 or 2 programs on there that I use often would I be better off just ditching the Raptor all together and sticking with the 2 other hdds I am buying? Price isnt really a concern but I wouldn't buy one of the larger raptor drive and have no plans on running raid.
 

choirbass

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well... if you are only using it for the OS, and just putting a few applications on it, that would actually be the perfectly ideal reason to buy it, in all honesty. its as fast as the 74 and 150GB ADFD versions, so performance isnt really in question. (this assuming its not the older 36GB GD version from 4 years ago)

its only the situations where you might not have hundreds of gigabytes of storage available, that you might otherwise want, that it usually becomes a problem, and then a raptor isnt seriously considered.

edit: the issue of vista also comes up... if you plan on installing vista on it, it would probably be too small, as vista alone will take up over a third of it
 

biohazard420420

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Yeah I almost wish I could force myself to go with some cheaper less powerful parts on my new rig to get 2 500 gb drives instead of the 160 and the 500 I already have picked. I already own a 160gb external hdd that I will move to the new pc since I want to keep the one I am on now (7years old with upgraded vid card) for seti@home and probally as a torrent downloader. Heck I got the 160gb external as a christmas present year before last and it was almost full in 8 months so I had to slow down on my music collection. In 6 months to a year when prices come down as 1tb drives become more popular I will snap up another 500gb drive on the cheap. As I said I am a music nut and I can never get enough its kind of funny considering I have probally close to 17,000 songs and I only listen to maybe .5% of it and I could just burn it all off on a bunch of dvds and free up tons of space but I don't want to hunt through 80 discs to find that one song I want I am just stubborn I guess. lol
 

sailer

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I have to say that I'm doing something similar in that I bought a Thermaltake Eureka case and am using a Raptor 150 gig hard drive. I think the 120mm fan will cool it well enough, along with a 250 gig hard drive that will store my data. I plan on putting not only the OS on the Raptor, but some games and office applications, so I'll be putting the room on the Raptor to good use.