Overclocker Cafe - Cremax IcyDock Bodyguard 525

Cremax IcyDock Bodyguard 525

Manufacturer: Cremax
Supplied By: Cremax
Street Price: ~$50.00

by Brian Tiller (5/1/2003)

Anyone remember that old movie "The Bodyguard?" Not the dumb one with Kevin Costner, but that other one. That's what I thought of when Dean handed this to me for review. I wasn't that far off, but instead of a dorky little kid, this bodyguard is meant for your hard drive. The IcyDock Bodyguard 525 does more than just house your HDD. In addition to providing a 5.25" housing for the drive it can also monitor up to three different temperatures, cool the hard drive via fans, and using it's method of installation reduce the vibrations of your HDD. Let's take a look at it.

What you get

Inside the box is the Bodyguard itself along with a short instruction manual, and a small packet of mounting screws. You'll notice that the box is a little worse for wear, thanks to those wonderful folks who ship this stuff, but the unit itself was in perfect health. Everyone say "Thank You" to Cremax for packaging this so well.

The unit itself

Let's start at the front....kinda logical that way, huh? The front of the unit is pretty sharp looking with the LCD display surrounded by black on an aluminum back ground, not to mention the ridges on the sides of the front. Just below the display are three function buttons. These buttons control your temperature alarm settings and allows you to toggle between Celsius and Fahrenheit readings.

The display slides to the left to reveal the fan control and a switch to change between temperatures. This is the first drawback to this unit. The fan control is set flush with the face of the unit and the temperature switch is recessed, why I don't know. Unless you have long fingernails, you're not going to be able to adjust these without using a pen, screwdriver, or some other tool you have laying around.

Moving around to the back of the unit, we see the usual assortment of wires the comes with most any added PC component. On the right side is the PCB where the wires are attached to the unit itself. The temperature probes are attached at the bottom of the PCB.

Thankfully Cremax has labeled these with "T1", "T2", and "T3" so that you know which ones you stick where. Also of note is the fact that these are the thin sensor probes which you can stick almost anywhere you want. Then we have the power wires. One normal four pin wire for the power to the unit, and an additional one to run to a case fan for the fan controller.

The next picture shows you the wires for the HDD activity display on the LCD screen. Good things and bad things about this item. What's nice about it is the fact that Cremax thought to included two wires here, one to plug into the motherboard header and another to run to the cases LED. But unless you place the IcyDock in the bottom 5.25" bay, the shorter wire isn't long enough.