Computing on Demand PC News & Reviews
The fan demonstrates some rather impressing statistics though, much of which are equal to larger 80mm fans. First off, it actually pushes quite a bit of air. Rated at 30CFM it can cool a CPU without any real problems. The only drawback to this is that when it’s pushing the maximum amount of air it also creates its maximum amount of noise, a not so incredibly annoying 38dB. Most fans that run at that noise make a high pitched whine, but with this crossflow blower you don’t get that. The fan also has a 3 pin Molex for power. I like this idea because it doesn’t limit the ability to replace the fan without soldering. This also allows you to use a 3 pin Molex splitter and hook up some hyper LED’s to shine behind the front grill of the unit. I see some modding opportunities arising here.
Temperature is monitored from an included thermal sensor. This sensor is intended, according to the provided instructions, to be attached to the bottom of the hard drive. The readings then make their way to the LCD via a two pin Molex. The ideas are flowing through my head any time I see something that isn’t soldered in. It can be very simple to get another thermal sensor with a longer cord and take readings from your CPU instead of your HDD. I tested the accuracy of the thermal sensor against 2 others that I and found that it’s right on the money.
Now we are getting to the meat between the bread. Let’s see if this unit can stack up against standard configurations in most cases. The drive’s competition is simply a couple of Panaflo fans in the front of my Lian Li PC-75. Testing is simple; I take measurements at random intervals throughout the course of my normal day.
From these results we can see that the unit doesn’t offer anything over using normal case fans to cool your hard drive. These fans were not added for the purpose of cooling the hard drives, they are simply my intake fans, and the hard drive rack is located right behind them.
I do still have a couple of issues with the vortex that I have to get off my chest. First, it doesn’t cool better than most current configurations. Second, the unit doesn’t remember its settings when you power down. It defaults back to having the fan off and the readings in Celsius. It is a major annoyance to have to turn your system on, and then configure the Vortex again. A product that costs nearly $40 should remember its settings.
Other than that, the unit is stylish and quiet, but with everything said; I can’t see myself purchasing one for my systems. Adequate case cooling is more than enough to keep any hard drive cool. My opinion, spend the extra money on a nicer case.
Sidewinder Computers has these on sale right now for $29.95; so if you are going to pick one up, now is the time.
Sidewinder Computers is allowing us to give these away to our readers!!! All you have to do is register in our forums and have a minimum of 10 posts to be eligible. Have FUN!
