Seagate ST3500312CS Pipeline HD, enabling fanless DVRs - Page 2

Fanless DVRs No Longer a Fantasy With Power Efficient Drives From Seagate Enabling the Fanless DVR Historically, DVRs have been designed to use high-speed hard drives that consume large quantities of power and generate a considerable amount of heat during operation. As a result, standard DVR design requires the use of a motorized cooling fan to aid natural convection and distribute heat away from critical device components. But cooling fans can be noisy, especially when accelerated to offset the rising temperature inside the DVR box during intense usage periods. The transient noise from the fan can detract from the entertainment experience of the user. In addition, because fans are an essential component in the standard DVR model, the reliability of the entire device hinges on the life of a single part. Consumer demand for quieter, more energyefficient home entertainment devices is driving the development and production of systems with low power consumption. The emergence of the hybrid DVR design, which requires only intermittent use of the cooling fan, reflects this trend. But until now, power efficiency concerns made fanless DVRs impractical. The persistent technical challenge has been to create a drive that uses minimal power and produces less heat but is robust enough to withstand high ambient temperatures. Low Power Density: The Key to Fanless DVR Operability The fanless DVR design requires an increase in the amount of natural convection that occurs within the system. Because there is no fan to draw heat out of the DVR box, heat must be dissipated much more efficiently. Seagate has made this possible by creating a remarkably efficient hard drive that uses less power to complete tasks and produces up to 40 percent less heat than comparable drives during the same duty cycle. As illustrated in Table 1, the power density1 of the 320-GB Seagate Pipeline HD drive is as low as 0.19 watts per square inch of drive surface. Power Consumption- 3-Stream HD PVR (W) Surface Area (in2) Seagate® DB35.3 Series™ 160-GB Drive 6.0 to 6.5 17 DVR Hard Drives Seagate® DB35.3 Series™ 320-GB Drive Seagate® DB35.4 Series™ 250-GB Drive 7.5 to 8.5 5.0 to 5.5 23 17 Power Dissipation (W/in2) 0.35 to 0.38 0.33 to 0.37 0.35 to 0.38 Table 1: Power Density Comparison: Seagate® Pipeline™ HD vs. Comparable Drives Seagate® Pipeline HD™ 160-GB Drive 3.9 to 4.5 17 0.23 to 0.26 Seagate® Pipeline HD™ 320-GB Drive 4.5 to 4.7 17 0.19 to 0.24 1 Power density is a measure of power per unit of volume. A hard drive with a low power density consumes less power per task and generates less heat during operation. 2