What is Koolance's "Thermal Encapsulate Material" exactly?

[Szech]

Since I'm re-doing my watercooling setup anyway, I want to add my hard drive to the list of water cooled components. I'm a competent machinist (not amateur, not expert, smack dab in the middle), and I can make the hard drive-sized waterblock myself, but my concern is the air gap between the hard drive and the block. As we all know, air gaps are bad, hence Arctic Silver, Arctic Alumina, Nanotherm Blue, etc. Well, Koolance sells "Thermal Encapsulate Material with their hard drive coolers to fill that gap, and it seems like a damn good solution. Problem is, they sell it with their hard drive coolers.

So... um. Anyone have any idea what's in that stuff? I think the review I read off Tom's said that it would just peel off after it dried, yet transfered heat pretty well. I would just mix some rubber cement with some radio shack white grease, but I don't feel too adventerous when we're talking about all my archived work...

My friend who graduated Mechanical Engineering said that though the air gap isn't the best at transferring heat, the block would still absorb it, and that it would find an equillibrium temperature based on how fast that absorbtion took place. It makes sense. If you attatch a heatsink/fan with no thermal grease, your processor doesn't die. Runs a lot hotter than it has to, but doesn't die. But I'm not sure I'm comfortable with where that equilibrium temperature will fall.

So... um. Anyone have any idea what's in that stuff?

[Navvie]

Originally posted by Szech
... um. Anyone have any idea what's in that stuff?

How do you run your harddrive now? Without cooling, right? So if it works without cooling, with any sort of cooling - air gaps or not, it'll still work, right?

Ok, maybe I'm missing something about cooling harddrives, apart from maybe helping to lower case temps, i don't really see the point?

As for all your work, back it up, hard drives die its a fact of life, if all your data is only on your harddrive you are asking for trouble...

[ButcherUK]

Originally posted by Navvie


Ok, maybe I'm missing something about cooling harddrives, apart from maybe helping to lower case temps, i don't really see the point?

Only advantage I see it that you can get a load of sound proofing foam and put the HDD in that if it;s water cooled, without starting a fire :)

[Stephen Castles]

i was gonna get a seagate barracuda ATA IV. These run hot by nature, but where would the HD cooler be most effective, on bottom where the PCB is or on top to take away the heat generated by the platters ?

[Intraveinous]

On the bottom... You get most of the heat from the Spindle motor, plus the heat from the chips on the circuit board... I'm sorry I don't have an answer to the original question, though I'd be interested to find out as well.
Peace
John

[Stephen Castles]

it looks as if they want you to cool 2 hard drives with 1 cooler, 1 HD right side up and 1 up side down to contact the PCB side. you can get 2nd HD kits which looks like just the "themal incapsulate material" for sale, $15 is a bit pricey but if it works......

:D

[Stroked_S-10]

I'm not sure exactly what it is or who they (Koolance) gets it from but I'm sure someone could find a much better price for a similar product.
I've been doing some searching on the net to find some. I did find a few sites that list such products.
It'd be sweet to find it in a one part, not two part, in something like a calk tube, it would be much easier to control that way that with a spoon or popsicle stick.
I bought it from newegg for $12.99 + $4.00 shipping http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-155-996&depa=0 but if I could buy some other product that will do the same thing for less, why not.
I don't know if what I got was old stock or not but the stuff was THICK.
I don't think the idea of mixing rubber cement with some radio shack white grease would work very well.

urethane or silicone
thermal conductivity, dielectric strength, flexible compound
Potting, Casting, Encapsulation

http://www.pottingsolutions.com/
http://www.fielco.com/electable.htm
http://www.rhenatech.com/edocs/pt009.html
http://www.edenoutsource.com/thermo_spec.htm
http://www.star-technology.com/table1.html

[hafa]

Originally posted by Stephen Castles
it looks as if they want you to cool 2 hard drives with 1 cooler, 1 HD right side up and 1 up side down to contact the PCB side. you can get 2nd HD kits which looks like just the "themal incapsulate material" for sale, $15 is a bit pricey but if it works......

:D

I'd hesitate to mount a drive upside-down...

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/op/packOrientation.html

I tend to agree with Charles over at storage review; Probably no big deal, but still...

[Stroked_S-10]

This post should have been started in the water cooling section.

I bought 2 of the Koolance HDC1's to use on my on board SATA RAID, 2 - 36.7G 10,000 rpm WD Raptor drives that run at 40º c at an idle.
I bought 2 of the HDC2's to use the thermal material with some large heat sinks (1" tall x 4" wide x 4-1/2" long (they were 4-1/8" wide but I milled 1/16" off each edge and drilled the 4 holes to mount them centered on the bottom of the drives)) to mount to 2 other 120G SATA drives, used for storage. With that and the 2 - 80mm thermo control fans (the hotter it gets the faster they turn) about 1,500 rpm at 20º c., 1,600 @ 25, 1,700 @ 30. I should be able to keep the internal case temps down near room temp.

Bill