On most name brand gaming cases such as Antec Nine Hundread, Thermaltake Armor+MX, and COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP there are many different features that make them better than your basic beige case. Besides the fancy lights and big cooling fans there are always a couple of unused 5.25" bays on the front of the case.
With the Icy Dock MB973SP-B this takes advantage of the unused 5.25" bays and gives you performance with out sacrificing the looks of your gaming case. With the prices of hard drives dropping you may have a couple extra hard drives lying around not being utilized and have nowhere to store them. If that's the case, the MB973SP-B is the internal hard drive enclosure for you. Of course, it not only lets you store your hard drives, it also comes with many features that you don't see on other enclosures on the market today.
Let's take a look at this all new 3.5" SATA tray-less module designed with gamers and power users in mind.
MB973SP-B Features Overview:
Individual power button for each drive
Features of the Icy Dock MB973SP-B include being able to turn off the power to each hard drive independently from each other. This will allow you to save power when that particular hard drive is not in use. Besides saving power it will also increase the life of the hard drive since it will not be spinning up.
Tray-Less design for easy hard drive access
The enclosure also has front access to hot swap your hard drives. The enclosure has a tray-less design for genuine plug & play and hot swap use. No more fumbling around with removing the side of your case when you need to swap out hard drives.
80mm cooling fan with smart cooling technology
As many of you already know, heat can be a major contributor to the reduced life of new hard drive, especially for RAID setups since the drives run at the same time. With the Icy Dock MB973SP-B cooling is improved due to its dedicated hard drive fan. The Icy Dock MB973SP-B has a massive 80mm fan keeping your hard drives cool for longevity and performance. The enclosure also has a fan controller with smart-cooling technology to make sure the fan is supplying enough air to the drives. The controller senses the drives temperature and speeds up or down the fan as needed. The enclosure has both 2 PIN and 3 PIN fan connector which compatible with most of the high performance fan on the market.
Front side USB and eSATA ports
Another feature of the Icy Dock MB973SP-B is the two easy access front panel interface connectors. The first is a standard USB port perfect for a thumb drives or any USB device instead of going around the back of the case. Second is an eSATA connector perfect for your portable 2.5” drive with eSATA interface like the Icy Dock MB668US-1SB. So you can connect it directly to the front eSATA port and connect the USB to the USB port for the power. Besides functioning and making life easier the Icy Dock MB973SP-B looks good doing it. It follows many design themes of some of the popular gaming cases out today. The enclosure has a Black aluminum faceplate that fits most of the popular gaming cases. Aluminum body constriction protects the drives and provides better heat dispersion for you hard drives. The enclosure allows for SATA 6 Gb/sec for high speed SSD drives so you don’t have to worry about losing any speed with your new lightning fast SSD. Now that we know the features of the Icy Dock MB973SP-B you might wonder how it will help the gamer that wants more performance out of their computer. With the availability of have three hard drives mounted in you case you can utilize all three hard drives to get improve your gaming experience. Benefits of the Icy Dock MB973SP-B no mater how you have it configured are easy hard drives installation, easy maintenance when drive failed, and better cooling ensures drive runs cool. Other options:
1. Use 3 drives for RAID 5, connect drives to motherboard or RAID controller card.
2. Use 2 of the drives for RAID 1 connected to motherboard for protection. Use 1 high performance HDD or SSD for OS & Applications, and have the OS & Applications backup on the RAID 1 drives.
3. Use a duplicator program or clone software to make a quick and easy copy of your main hard drive. The Icy Dock MB973SP-B will allow you swap drives in and out to make as many copies as you would like.
4. Use one drive for your OS, one for games and applications and the last for storing larger media files.
5. Use 2 high performance hard drives in RAID 0 for OS & Applications and use the 3rd drive for making a backup of the risky RAID 0 drives.
If you want a hard drive enclosure that will take up those unused 5.25” bays on the front of your gaming case then the Icy Dock MB973SP-B is the enclosure for you. It utilizes the bays and makes hot swapping hard drives quick and easy with its tray-less design. If you are a gamer that wants your computer to have more performance by using three drives then the Icy Dock MB973SP-B is the quick and easy fix for your problem. Now that we know the features of the Icy Dock MB973SP-B you might wonder how it will help the gamer that wants more performance out of their computer. With the availability of have three hard drives mounted in you case you can utilize all three hard drives to get improve your gaming experience. Benefits of the Icy Dock MB973SP-B no mater how you have it configured are easy hard drives installation, easy maintenance when drive failed, and better cooling ensures drive runs cool. Please check the following link for more product information.
MB973SP-B:
