Introduction

As overclocking has become more of a daily ritual for most PC users today, the demand for good thermal sensing probes has become ever more increasing. The CompuNurse thermal probe was the first to come into the market a few years back and then it was the DigiDoc, a more advanced thermal probe. Seeing the potential for this kind of device many manufactures are now coming out with various modifications to the fundamental design of the CompuNurse thermal probe. Today we bring to you a thermal probe by Enermax, the Temperature-Monitoring Drive Rack.

The Temperature-Monitoring Drive Rack is basically two CompuNurse thermal probes which is fixed onto a 5.25" drive bay. It also has allocated space for two 80mm fans so that it could also be used as a hard drive cooler if you decide to take advantage of the total unit. Furthermore the unit comes with naming tags for CPU, HDD, and CHASSIS etc… so that you know which probe relates to which device. 

As with all thermal probes I use, I tend to cut out the extra bit of plastic around the thermal sensor to make sure I get the most accurate rating possible. I attached one sensor to an IBM Deskstar 60GXP drive and the other to an AMD Athlon 1600+. I used some tape to attach the sensor to the hard drive as well as the sensor on the CPU to make sure they don't move around. Of course you could also use one of the sensors to check on your casing temperature as well. I had another separate probe doing this job for me and had no reason to have another one.

As far as I can see there are a few advantages of going for the Enermax Temperature-Monitoring Drive Rack rather than two CompuNurse probes alone. First off, if you attach two 80mm fans this unit also becomes a hard drive cooler. However you cannot attach the fans as well as the Hard drive on the same unit, so you must place the Drive rack on top of the hard drive. Secondly almost everyone who gets a CompuNurse probe has to do some kind of mod to their casing to make it fit into a drive bay. However you needn't have to do that in this case as it directly fits into the casing. Thirdly it's very much cheaper when you compare the total package you receive. 

Installing the drive is pretty straight forward. All required components are provided, so all you have to do is put them together. Locate a free 5.25" drive bay and slide it in and attach the sensors to the desired devices. Before you attach it to the casing remember to place you hard drive or two 80mm fans on the rack or it'll be simply a waste of space and resources which are easily accessible to you. Besides who wouldn't want more cooling to their system? A 7200RPM hard drive or a CD-RW produces a great degree of heat. If you have any of these devices two extra cooling fans will not hurt at all. I had two 80mm fans lying around catching dust; boy was I glad to get this unit to fix these two in. The supplied screws will not go in as easily since there are no grooves on the plastic. So I would suggest driving the nails through once before you install the fans on to the rack. After installing the fans simply slide the unit in and Viola!! You're ready to rock. 

I wouldn't call this an innovative product since at the end of the day this is yet another CompuNurse thermal probe with a few add-ons. However if you're currently in the need for two thermal probes along with a 5.25" drive rack, then the Enermax Temperature-Monitoring Drive Rack is definitely one of the cheapest products offering a great deal of value. Face it people, two thermal probes, a drive rack and all this for just $19 bucks. It can't get any cheaper could it?

Thanks to Tony at Pham Computer for providing with this review unit.