Scythe Slot Rafter

bgiddins · Post by **bgiddins** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 8:12 pm

Has anyone tried one of these yet?

http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/acc/0 ... etail.html

Basically a plastic mount that slips into a vacant PCI slot, and screws to the case, allows for the mounting of up to 4 x 2.5" HDD/SSDs, plus an optional pair of 80mm fans.

Now for SSDs they would be ideal - they might work great in a mini ITX case with a PCI riser for adding more drives, but I'm wondering how they handle noise and vibration with regular 2.5" HDDs, or even VelociRaptors. Being plastic they might resonate a bit.

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 8:50 pm

Oh, I like that. Would be nice to cool a fanless-but-in-need-of-a-fan GPU too.

reddyuday · Post by **reddyuday** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 10:41 pm

Yeah, I was considering this to cool my GPU as well. But, after I installed all the drivers, my GPU quieted itself and the need went away.

I think this is a neat little inexpensive device. But I kinda doubt the web page when it says 4 HDDs + 2 fans. I think it is more like 4 HDDs or 2 fans. In the picture, you see 2 HDDs mounted in one slot and 1 fan mounted on another. It could be theoretically possible to mount a fan on top of 2 HDDs. But it wouldn't make sense. Both the fan and the HDDs will be starved for air and the fan will end up occupying the next PCI slot any way.

If your needs are cooling then you should also consider the new Scythe Stay PCI rack which allows you to mount 120mm fans. (It is not on their web site yet, but you can find at performance-pcs.com.)

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 10:28 am

I just noticed this over at A-Tech: 2.5" drive mounting kit

It lacks the stability of resting in the mobo though (via that plastic piece on the one you linked to).

Z-Drive from OCZ might grow in popularity too.

bgiddins · Post by **bgiddins** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 3:05 pm

Saw that A-Tech mount as well - I would imagine that with a Velociraptor attached (my main interest) it would vibrate like hell and be no better than the ice pack. The Scythe at least is plastic which may have a slight dampening effect, and I run integrated video and have heaps of space around the single PCI slot on my board.

The A-Tech would at least however have some heatsinking capability.

Agreed about the fans and four drives - two of the drives would get airflow, but the stacked drives on the far side would not. Would be neat however to use this for a RAID 0 or RAID 10 mounting option for four 2.5" SSDs if you lacked the space in the case (like I do with a bunch of 1TB disks installed).

jaydeesan · Post by **jaydeesan** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:27 am

reddyuday wrote:... But I kinda doubt the web page when it says 4 HDDs + 2 fans. I think it is more like 4 HDDs or 2 fans. In the picture, you see 2 HDDs mounted in one slot and 1 fan mounted on another. It could be theoretically possible to mount a fan on top of 2 HDDs. But it wouldn't make sense....

You can clearly see from the pictures that HDDs are mounted on the top side, and fans on the bottom, so you CAN put all of it on the thing at the same time. It would be pointless of course, but you can.

(Not sure if that's what you meant by fans on top of HDDs, it's on the bottom.)

Too bad it's not at least 92mm, could be useful for passive video card coolers.

reddyuday · Post by **reddyuday** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 9:01 am

jaydeesan wrote: You can clearly see from the pictures that HDDs are mounted on the top side, and fans on the bottom, so you CAN put all of it on the thing at the same time.

Indeed! I didn't see the pictures clearly. If the HDDs are one side and fans on the other, I guess the air flow could work. But it doesn't seem ideal.