Although I'm sure if someone did a test comparing side vs top/bottom cooling the sides would win for the simple reason that the drive has an Al chassis so the whole thing is a kind of heat sink. So if you cooled the sides you would cool the drive. You'd also be cooling it via conduction which is by far the best.
Cooling by the top the heat has to travle through either some kind of sealent or air then through a thin sheet of Al or steel this is far less efficent. The top and bottom are also normally much more uneven than the sides normally.
However if you take into account a HD puts out less than 20w of heat than you don't need the best solution in the situation. So in reality it probobly doesn't matter for a 7200 rpm drive. I'm as of yet unsure how I'm going to cool my HDs. It will depend on A) cost of materials, B) how I want to position my drives.
|