EverCool Dual 5.25 in. Drive Bay to Triple 3.5 in. HDD Cooling Box

I have been using this product for over a week now, and I find no problems with it at all. I am impressed actually, and that is not easy to do after 32 years in the IT field. I am this to hold one 3.5" and one 2.5" SSD cache drive in my Z800 workstation. It matches the look of the case almost perfectly, and I do not use up any of my eSATA internal drive trays. I used the 2.5"-to-3.5" steel adapter plate ( http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-Convert-Mounting-E71439-001/dp/B00A6SQMSA/ ) which came with my Intel SSD to mount into this unit. This allows me to use one of each drive size with lots of space between them for quiet, excellent quality, cooling. PROS: - Very well made, out of quality materials with intelligent design features. - This product comes with both a 3.5" and a 2.5" (not shown in images) finished drive mounts! - The device will hold three 3.5" or four 2.5" drives directly in front of the included 80mm cooling fan. - the drive mounts are mechanically isolated from the frame with synthetic rubber dampers, this makes your drives quieter, and protects them from vibrations, such as those produced from slamming drawers or the thud of a sub-woofer on your desk, thus protecting your drive and data investments. - The fan is mounted in a separate cowling with a removable dust filter, that you can clean without any tools; the filter material is reusable and washable. - The fan is a long-life ball-bearing low wattage fan that is almost silent. It provides enough airflow to make the drives cool to the touch, thus protecting your investment. - The unit blends very well with black or white (choose wisely; **see note at bottom) cases only. - This unit is quality enough for professional, government, or enterprise level use. - The design of this unit exceeds OEM specifications for case design. CONS: - none that I can find so far! CONCLUSION: I will most definitely buy, and recommend this unit. The quality is there, the value is there, and design and features are there. Good job EverCool. PRO TIPS: 1 - **Note: If you have a custom case, and you wish a colour match, choose the dark or light colour that more closely matches your finish paint, then have someone refinish the removable face plate with model paint, or Krylon ( http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=sr_1_1_acs_h_1i_2595039011&node=2595039011?ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=8-1-acs ) plastic paint. You can find many tutorials online to how to refinish plastic to match something. Automotive, hobbyist, and modelling sites all have step-by-step instructions how to do this. 2 - If you have a low-profile media case, with a double-height front drive-bay, use this EverCool unit to provide effective protection for a small RAID setup in your media server. Many media cases do not have the active cooling capabilities that a RAID array requires. 3- To get a completely silent fan in your media server, it is possible to install a fan controller, or merely use fan resistors! ( http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Fan+Resistor ). Connect a fan resistor in-line with the fan to make the fan perfectly silent, even if you stick your ear right up to the front of the unit; for those very picky audiophiles!

I used this cage to add a 16TB Seagate IronWolf NAS drive and a 2TB SATA SSD (for Plex transcoding scratch space) to the front bay of a Lenovo P520 workstation. The EverCool stock fan setup was awful: a cheap molex-powered sleeve-bearing screamer that moved almost no air, paired with a restrictive dust filter. I ditched both and swapped in a Noctua 80mm PWM fan rated at ~33 CFM. The difference was immediate. Under load, my case temps actually dropped compared to before I added the third drive. That’s not just a bonus - it’s critical. Seagate may rate the IronWolf line up to 60 °C, but NAS drives really live their longest in the low 40s. By turning this EverCool cage into a proper front intake with a quality fan, I essentially upgraded my P520 into a pseudo-server chassis, pushing cool air directly over the drives and into the CPU/GPU path. For a workstation that sometimes runs for days at a time, that airflow is cheap insurance against thermal creep. Yes, it may look over-engineered for a home setup, but this box is my backup tower for 30+ years of personal files, photos, and my 1500+ DVD library (plus books and music). In the stock bays I keep a pair of 8TB IronWolfs, which get synced monthly to the 16TB. Twice a year I rotate in a pair of offsite Barracuda drives for disaster recovery. That means even if the P520 - or the house - goes up in smoke, I’ve still got a copy of everything. It’s essentially a textbook 3-2-1 backup strategy: 3 copies, 2 types of media (NAS HDDs + cold/offsite HDDs), and 1 offsite. All told, this EverCool cage let me turn a $275 used Lenovo workstation and some used (but tested) enterprise drives into a quiet, reliable, server-grade storage box. For what it is, that’s a phenomenal return. Thanks, EverCool!

Good build quality, silent fan. Fits 15mm drives. This was exactly what I needed. Comes with all the screws you need. Two minor things. First, the fan has a 4 pin molex connector where I would have liked a 3 or 4 pin fan connector. Easily fixed by swapping the fan. Secondly, to remove the fan, the filter bracket has to be removed. The clips holding it to the frame barely fit through the holes. I almost broke them.

Bottom line this is a well made cage that does it's job. I used it to add 3, 4TB drives to my HP Z420. As other reviewers have mentioned, the spacing between drives is very tight - making you wonder if any air will get through, but all 3 drives are running at 36 degrees C. The fan is quiet, especially compared to the 3 fans already in the Z420 case and is not objectionable. My only criticism is that the fan connector is Molex rather than SATA. PS: There are several silver colored metal cages, in the $18 range which claim they are 5.25 to 3.5 cages, but they are only 3.5 wide and have no way to mount them into a 5.25 drive bay. (I bought one and wound up returning it)

People keep complaining about the door sticking or breaking when they try to open it- I'm glad I read your reviews before I bought this because I knew what to expect when I got it and I was EXTRA CAREFUL. You gotta treat it like those cheap baby locks on cabinet doors and get a fingernail wedged in the crack so that you can push down on the locking mechanism above the little handle. Yeah its a pain BUT I have a solution so that you never have to do that again once you get it open the first time. Use either sandpaper or a nail file/emery board to file down the locking mechanism so that instead of looking like a spike it is more like a small bump. Take care not to break it off entirely because you might want the door to stay shut. But it did fit in my 5.25 bay perfectly and I didnt even bother with the screws. For those complaining that its "too big"- DUH! Of course its a "tight fit" its SUPPOSED TO BE so that it creates a seal. So you gotta make sure it goes STRAIGHT in. If you accidently have it even the slightest bit of an angle- it will get stuck. You gotta put your hand inside the case and guide it through. You might even have to squeeze the sides of this... "contraption" to get it past the bumps on the inside of your case. DONT WORRY about scratching it- its metal so it will be fine. in fact- if your case IS too narrow by a millimeter or something- DONT put ANY screws in it before you install it because then it wont fit. If for some stupid reason you need to install hard drives inside the contraption then... idk what to tell you other than... get creative. My HDDs are installed in the bottom behind the 3.75" bays because wtf am I gonna use those for? There is a 2nd piece of metal- presumably for SSDs so... I'm 99% sure I didnt put that in how the manufacturer intended. I screwed my SSD into it and then set it on top of the contraption and it works fine. it also means i can easily just take it out when i need to because i didnt screw it into the chassis. Honestly- the only reason I bought this because 3 out of 4 of my HD bay covers are missing. I dont have an optical drive. So I had taped a 120mm fan into that hole and covered it with a torn stocking and duct tape. It looked awful. This contraption covers 2 bay slots and it has a fan in it plus a mesh cover. My case no longer looks like a frankenstein monster. I still have one slot empty but... i just put a strip of duct tape over it for now and some day i might buy a blue ray drive for it.

It does what I want but has some design issues. Cons: - There is very little space between 3.5in drives so air flow is questionable - If you have shucked or Enterprise drives that only have two screw holes on the side, you will be stuck with only the front two screw holes. The sides are not long enough to reach the rear holes. Drives with 3 screw holes are fine. I ended up putting some thin spacers in between the drives near the back to keep them separated. - For installation in a Fractal Define R4, there are no screw holes that match up the rear mounting holes (seems like a trend). So again, only the front screws holding it in. - The front panel is a pain to open to get at the foam fan "screen". Pros: - It fits 3 drives in 2 5.25in bays like I need. - The front fan is surprisingly quiet considering it's just a 12V fan with 2 pins on a molex connector. It must not run very fast. Time will tell on cooling ability. - Looks decent if that matters to you

Used this to fit 3 more 3.5 inch HDDs into my dinosaur of a case, a Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-02. The adapter fits perfectly into the 2x5.25" bay. The drives fit perfectly into the 3.5" bracket; there is no wiggle room. I had worried about tolerances, but this adapter is very well made. Contents of the box are exactly as pictured; it came with a bunch of screws in a couple of ziploc bags that I used to mount the drives. There is an additional 2.5" mounting bracket (also pictured) that I did not use, but can confirm that it would fit a 2.5" drive perfectly. Note that this is not a hot-swap adapter, and there is no clearance in the bracket for a DIY hot-swap tray solution. Replacing a drive will require unscrewing and will likely involve taking the whole thing out. The adapter maximally uses the available space. When used with three big 3.5" drives, there is very little space between the drives: this is just because 2x5.25" literally cannot admit more, and is not a fault of the adapter itself. The drives themselves are longer than the adapter and stick out the "back" into the case; it's very much like the demonstration image. The fan is nearly silent. There is palpable airflow, but it's not much; my relatively bulky drives almost totally block the fan. Still, the drives are relatively cool: at 7200 rpm and 7 W idle power, they read 40 C (ambient 24 C). The openable door is indeed very stiff, per the other reviews; this is not a problem for me; I just leave it closed. Note that the fan connector is Molex! My PSU comes with Molex connectors (labelled for "peripheral"); you may need an adapter. The fan only uses the 5V and ground, so you may be able to rig your own solution. In terms of mounting, note that there are five rows of holes in the 3.5" bracket. I used the bottom, middle, and top rows; the top 3.5" drive goes above the top of the bracket. Because of this, it is not possible to mount the drives "upside-down". Unclear when this would be necessary, but be careful if you have this unusual constraint.

I bought two of these for my NAS and I couldn’t be happier. I stacked 3 HDD drives in each and there is a small (but important) gap between each drive for air circulation provided by the fan. I also was pleasantly surprised how silent the fans are. The loudest part of my NAS is the spinning drives themselves. The fan also seems pretty replaceable should it ever fail. The only downside was the MOLEX power cable of the fan. I would have preferred a 4pin so the motherboard could control fan speed. At the same time, 100% fan speed is probably for the best anyways. The filter is a nice touch too. There are much more expensive versions of this device that don’t come with a fan or filter. I highly recommend you use NAS rated drives with this even if you’re using it in a PC setting. NAS drives are much better with heat dissipation especially in close proximity to each other.