Author: Spot Posted on: 9/4/2001 Sponsor: PCNut Discuss: In the forums

Introduction Just about all PC enthusiasts know heat is the number one enemy when it comes to your CPU. An overheating CPU can cause lock-ups, the ever so dreaded "Blue Screen Of Death", and numerous broken mice (depending on your temper). Of course you can get yourself the best heatsink on the market to help fight this "heated" battle, but sometimes that's just not enough. One item often overlooked is quality case cooling. Of course, the ideal situation would be to get all of the hot air out of your case, and bring in new fresh air from outside. Not everybody has the time nor desire to start cutting their own holes and mounting case fans, so today we are going to look at an easier method of stirring up that stagnant air. We are going to look at South Bay Engineering Inc.'s 2CoolPC Plus and 2CoolPC Turbo system coolers to see how they perform and if they are worth your time and money. The Units The units themselves are to be used in mid-tower or full tower cases. If you have an old "pizza box" case lying around - these won't do you any good. Before we get into any testing or anything else, let's take a closer look at the 2CoolPC Plus and the 2CoolPC Turbo. They are designed to sit on the bottom of any mid or full sized case. Each unit has a 92mm fan that directs approximately 2/3rds of the air flow through the molded plastic and up towards the CPU and chipset area of the motherboard while the other 1/3 of the airflow blows directly onto the PCI/AGP and gawd forbid you still have them - ISA cards. Since pictures are worth 1,000 words, here are a few to help you understand the airflow a little better.     We really hate to give first impressions in a review because it is 100% opinion based, but there's a first for everything at LWD. Not to worry, I won't bore you with what the boxes looked like (because I didn't get any) or how well it was packaged, but I will tell you I "assumed" they were going to be junk from the second I got my hands on them. I pretty much started laughing because the plastic felt really thin and cheap. Of course, this is all opinion based and what really matters is how it performs. Personally - if it does the job of cooling down my CPU - I don't give a rat's ass what it feels like. Enough of my blabbing, lets move on with some stats of the two units on the testbed. The molded plastic is the same on both units so that means there is no difference between the "Plus" model and the "Turbo" model aside from the actual fan. Here are all of the stats I ripped right from 2CoolPC.Com.   2CoolPC Plus 2CoolPC Turbo Price $29.99 USD $34.99 USD Fan 92 mm 92 mm CFM ~50 ~60 Air Velocity ~13.5 MPH ~19.7 MPH Power Draw 0.30 amp's 0.39 amp's Life Expectancy 64,000 Hours 60,000 Hours Installation There's not much to the installation as you may have guessed from looking at the pictures of the two devices. All you have to do is turn your machine off, open your case, place the 2CoolPC Plus or Turbo on the bottom, and plug it in. According to the installation guide on 2CoolPC, you should place the unit as far back (to the rear of the case) as it will go. That's really all there is to it. The 2CoolPC comes with a Y-molex connector attached, so if you do not have any spare power connections, you can unplug a hard drive or CD-Rom and then use the Y- connector. You should also note that both units also come equipped with three handy little Velcro tabs to help hold it in place if your case happens to get moved around a lot. Here is what everything should look like once they are installed:     Testing Now for the fun part; the testing. Let's start out by looking at what 2CoolPC's web site has to say about their products. This quote actually had a large bearing on how the testing was done. Why only test it on one machine when basically what they are saying is "your results may vary from case to case." Because computer and server cases vary in size, the benefits vary with each system. We have sent our products to a number of computer hardware review sites so you can actually see what kind of typical results you can expect from our cooling systems. Keeping this quote in mind, I grabbed two different cases to see if the results varied from one system to the next. One is a midtower El Cheap-O case and the other is a full tower model. Technically, system specs shouldn't matter since we are most concerned with the results "with" and "without" the system coolers installed, but I will list them here so you can see all of the heat producing components. Hardware Test System 1 Test System 2 Test System 3 Case Mid Tower ATX Full Tower ATX Full Tower ATX CPU PII 400 @ 496 (4 x 124) T-Bird 1200 (12 x 100) T-Bird 1400 @ 1575 (10.5 x 150) HSF SECC II Stock P.O.S. Global Win FOP32-I Vantec CCK-6035D Motherboard Abit BE6 Asus A7V Epox EP-8K7a Video Card GeForce 256 SDR Reference Card Asus 7700 GeForce2 Pure GTS 64 MB Asus 7700 GeForce2 Pure GTS 64 MB RAM 128 MB PC100 128 MB PC133 256 MB PC2100 HDD (1) Maxtor 10 GB ATA/66 (1) WD 2.1 GB (1) WD 20 GB ATA/100 7200 RPM (1) WD 8.4 GB ATA/66 5400 RPM (1) WD 20 GB ATA/100 7200 RPM (1) WD 8.4 GB ATA/66 5400 RPM CD-ROM / CD-RW (1) 32x CD-ROM (1) Creative Labs 4x2x24 CD-RW (1) 50x CD-ROM (1) 50x CD-ROM Operating System WinME Win98 SE Win98 SE The Results To keep the CPU at 100% utilization, SETI@Home was run on normal priority for the duration of the testing. The maximum temperatures were reached after about 30 minutes, but all temperatures were recorded at 45 minutes just to make sure it was at its peak. Sisoft Sandra 2001te was used to record the temperatures since it was a common application that could be used on all test systems. I know Sandra is not the most accurate at reading CPU temperatures, but remember, we are looking for a temperature difference "with and without" the system coolers installed. With that being said, here's how everything panned out: Conclusion As you can see from the results, the effectiveness of the 2CoolPC Plus and the 2CoolPC Turbo were quite dependant on the case and system in which it was used. When used in a full sized case, both tested systems showed a drop of several degrees Celsius. But when used on this particular mid tower case, the temperature difference was basically non-existent. You should also note that the Turbo model didn't produce any lower temperatures than the Plus model. In the test situations involving the PII and the 1.2GHz T-Bird - the temperature was actually slightly higher with the Turbo model installed. I'm not really sure why this was happening but it happened consistently throughout all test systems over and over again. Both coolers performed well enough for me to say I would recommend them as a quick and easy cooling solution. If you decide to purchase one for yourself, I would save the extra 5 bucks and get the 2CoolPC Plus and not the Turbo. I do feel that $30+ USD is a little steep for a 92mm fan and some plastic, but if you are not a "do-it-yourself" kind of person, and don't feel like cutting a hole in your case - these may be just what you need. Always remember, the decision on whether to purchase one of these coolers is ultimately up to you - the consumer. Special thanks goes out to Humphrey (Da Head Nut) at PC-Nut.Com for sending these cooling systems our way.

Copyright © by LWD All Rights Reserved.

Published on: 2004-02-18 (10475 reads)