NEC and Hitachi to jointly develop world first Liquid Cooled Hard Disk Drive (Press Release)

NEC Corporation and Hitachi have jointly developed a new liquid cooling system for desktop PCs, which reduces PC operating noise to approximately 1/3 that of current models in Japan. The new system has been realized by adopting Hitachi’s world-leading, advanced CPU liquid cooling cold plate, and the world’s first hard disk drive (HDD) liquid cooling cold plate, jointly developed by NEC and Hitachi.

Realized by Hitachi’s advanced liquid cooling technology and NEC’s cutting edge PC development design technology, the new system succeeds in reducing noise level of liquid cooled PCs from approximately 30 decibels to 25db at maximum operation, a noise level quieter than that of the average home DVD recorder. The new system will be employed in NEC brand consumer desktop PCs for the Japanese market in the near future.

NEC and Hitachi were able to wrap the entire HDD in high performance noise absorbing material and vibration insulation as the HDD liquid cooling cold plate enables effective reduction of the rise in temperature of the HDD, achieving a reduction in noise of the HDD by more than 10db. In addition, use of a low speed radiator fan (less than1000rpm), a low operating noise micro-pump, and high performance noise absorbing material made it possible to lower the noise of the whole system.

The complete press release can be found here.