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

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!

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've been looking for a dual-5.25-bay solution for a while, and most of them were either too involved (I don't need to hot-swap) and/or looked ugly, some by being cheap and others by having too much bling. (I use a Corsair 600T and I wanted something subdued.) And many of the other visually quieter solutions were pretty much all-plastic on the inside too.This is a good, not perfect, solution to my problem: The interior is very well made, mostly metal and the device works with the tool-less 5.25 bays of my case. Currently I have one hard drive in there, and I might put a second, but I wouldn't put 3 as they couldn't breath at all, and might even be touching each other. Nor could air from the front fan go anywhere.There's a drop-down door in the front and behind it is one of those relatively thick mesh filters, which are very effective. I took that out as I know from past experience that an intake at that location won't pull in much dust and I wanted more airflow. This isn't a negative for the filter, as it's a good-quality filter, and easily removed for washing. (Note that the fan seems just about right for this purpose: It doesn't move a huge amount of air, but enough for this application, and I don't notice any additional noise at all.)The front cover is also very reserved. IN photos, the EVERCOOL logo on the black version looks as though it stands in strong relief to the rest of the front, but in person it's more subdued, which I like.My only dislike is that the black plastic looks cheap. The problem is that it doesn't look all that "black" - it has a dusty black look to it.Having said that, I paid $20 total for this and it's a strong bargain at the price. But given how terrific the rest of it is, I'd have been happy to pay a few bucks more for a higher-quality face.

Worked great to add a fan and more HDD space to 4u rosewill case