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In the Forums... |
Posted: July 8, 2000 Written by: Dan "Tweak Monkey" Kennedy Cost: $34 from The Card Cooler Review unit supplied by The Card Cooler  Installation Installing a case fan is never a difficult task, but when you've got two 120mm fans that are connected, space might be an issue. For the testing of this cooler, we used the Addtronics 6896A. It's a great case with plenty of room. However, the SCSI card installed on this system (Adaptec's 29160) gave just the right amount of room to make the installation of The Card Cooler XT impossible. So the SCSI card was moved to the 2nd PCI slot and then the cooler was installed. There was another problem though. The 80mm fan that mounts above my CPU fan was in the way as well. Luckily this bracket comes right out with a screw...  I don't think it's going to fit here. :( To install the cooler you simply remove the screws that fasten two of your add-in cards in place (in this case, the SCSI card and the video card). You then put the cooler's brackets in place and re-insert the screws. Plug it in and you're done! On some cases, The Card Cooler XT may not fit. For this reason you should check the free space inside your case before purchasing this product.  There it is, installed! Performance After installing the cooler, I can honestly say I barely noticed the difference it added (sound-wise) with the case closed. With the side open it was a tiny bit louder, but that's obviously going to occur. Regardless of how quiet these fans are, they can move a ton of air. If you put your hand under the fan you can feel it blowing air all over the important PC components. In this case, these were the network card, sound card, video card, CPU, memory, and most of the mainboard. Another advantage of large fans is the wide area they cover. Overall, performance was very good. I have used normal 120mm fans (as opposed to these quiet fans) and I believe these flow about 80% of the normal fan's CFM rating, or so it seems. This was plenty to keep the PC components cool, and the CPU temperature even dropped about 10ºF -- no joke! Before the CPU was running at around 110-115ºF and at LAN parties or other busy situations, I would have to drop the clock speed to prevent the PC from crashing. Now it hums along at around 98-100ºF, and occasionally it drops even lower.  This was after nearly an hour of Counter-Strike in an 85ºF room. |
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