Kingwin KF-83 Serial ATA Hard Drive Rack

Performance

Testing the operation and performance of the KF-83 was done quite easily.  To ensure that no degradation of our signal occurs by use of the rack we ran SiSoft Sandra 2004 Pro's File System Benchmark to measure the transfer rate of the drive with and without the rack in place.  Our results are the average of five runs per setup with the highest and lowest results being thrown out.

Test Bed

• ABIT KD7 (KT600) mainboard
• AMD XP 2400 T-Bred
• 256mb DIMM Corsair XMS3500 (x2)
• Inno3D Tornado GeForce FX 5600 Ultra
• Seagate Barracuda 120gb 7200 RPM SATA HDD

Results

Conclusion

The Kingwin KF-83 has two main differences over its predecessor.  Namely the lengths Kingwin has gone to in order to dampen out any drive vibration.  The inner tray being cushioned by rubber shocks virtually guarantees elimination of the possibility of any vibration.  Secondly, the triple cooling fan set up will keep a nice amount of air flowing over an installed hard drive, keeping things cool the way they should be.

The practicality of a hard drive rack as we discussed briefly in the introduction coupled with the features and quality of the KF-83 specifically make this a very worthwhile purchase for those needing or wanting to transfer large blocks of data or have a second hard drive with another OS on it making your one machine function in more than one capacity if you so choose.  My only qualms with the KF-83 is the same as most drive racks.  Make a few all aluminum models that will better blend in with an aluminum case.  My other beef is minimal as well.  I would have liked to have seen a hard drive activity lamp as well as power lamp on the unit.  Short of these two concerns the KF-83 proves itself to be a solid and practical product.

Pros

• Extremely practical

• lightweight

• Drive tray cover latch is side mounted making removal easy and problem free.

• Clean lines

• Outstanding item for people needing to transfer large amounts of data

Cons

• No HDD activity lamp

• Only beige available at present

BACK                    HOME