Cooler Master’s take on the aluminum heatsink/fan drive bay is similar to Silverstone’s (this isn’t rocket science, after all), but CM goes one step further by including two thermal pads—one for each side of the drive.

The CoolDrive Lite also uses a slightly larger fan—4.4cm versus Silverstone’s 4cm—which spins at a relatively slow 3,000rpm.

Cooler Master says the fan puts out 23dBA, which is 2dBA less than the Silverstone unit, but it’s a moot point because both enclosures were exceptionally quiet to our ears during testing.

Still, although our test drive was quieter in the Cooler Master enclosure than it was hard-mounted inside the case, it was slightly moe audible than when it was in the Silverstone FP53. At idle the drive is totally silent, but during seek operations we could hear the drive operating quite clearly, whereas with the Silverstone unit we had to strain to make out the familiar “tick,tick,tick” of the read/write heads flicking back and forth. Obviously, this is a subjective measurement, as no microphones or decibel meters were used, but to our own ears the drive was a smidge louder in the CoolDrive. Both enclosures made the drive more quiet than when it was hard-mounted inside the case, however.

The temps from the CoolDrive were less than 1 C higher than those of the Silverstone unit, so we consider this category a wash. The drive remained sufficiently cool at all times. For comparison, the test drive was less than 2 C warmer in the CoolDrive than it was with a 12cm case fan blowing on it, which is amazing considering how small the fan on this thing is.

The CoolDrive is impressive—but it’s just a bit less impressive than Silverstone’s FP53.
--Josh Norem

Month Reviewed: November 2005
HOT POCKET: Cool and quiet, easy to assemble.
HOT DRIVE: Not as cool or as quiet as the FP53.
Verdict: 9
URL: www.coolermaster.com