| The Cooling The cooling feature is surely the most important part of this review because the Nextherm ICS 8200 is more than special on that point. This latter is the first case we know that offer such innovative way of cooling the whole inside with a Thermoelectric chip based on the famous Peltier effect. We first met this kind of technology with the Waffer PAC 400 reviewed here, but that was not as accomplished as what Sytrin has done today with the Nextherm ICS 8200. In fact, based on the same idea, and following many requests, Sytrin came out with a internal, and thus more powerful device which is able to produce 120W of fresh air with 52W of power. Not bad! The whole concept is based on three parts: 1 - Tangencial blower that brings a important volume of air to part 2 2 - 80mm fan which will concentrate this air on the part 3 3 - Thermoelectric chip topped by a copper "cold speader" that cools the air brought by part 1 when going inside the case To control the process Nextherm ICS 8200 a three positions-switch to control the front cooling unit. - OFF - blower off, fan off, A/C off - FAN ON mode - blower off, fan on, A/C off - SNOW mode - blower on, fan on, A/C on Test setup - Motherboard MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum with cool'n'Quiet off - CPU Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939 90nm with AMD’s original fan - RAM Samsung DDR 400 MHz 2x512MB - HDD Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB - Graphics ATI PCI-Express X600 Pro with 256MB In normal condition, the Athlon 64 3000+ 90nm Winchester Core runs at an average of 35°C which is very cool and does not necessarily need the extra cooling the Sytrin ICS 8200 A/C is providing. Here is the list of situation and environment that would request such addtional cooling: - Hot environment (over 30°C) - CPU running at more than 50° due to overclocking or/and use at 100% for a long time (with video encoding for instance) Now we are going to demonstrate the power of the extra A/C and you will see what could be the impact on your own need. Putting the A/C on and after half a minute the A/C temperature went down from 24 to 21°C As you can see the impact of using A/C is obvious and the case temp as well as every part in going down of a minimum of 3°C which is very good. Of course there are some drawbacks that have to be taken into account. First the noise generated by the airconditioner with fan and blower is adding to the overall noise which can be disturbing after some time. Second, the 52W of power requested for the A/C operation. This is far from outrageous but a 24/7 operation can end up to be costly... Final word The Sytrin Nextherm ICS 8200 is a great case with a gorgeous look and unprecedented cooling features and we must congratulate Sytrin for bringing such level of innovation to the mass. Of course as R2D2 would say, nothing can be perfect in a human world, and there are some details that should be improved but all in all, they are all very minor compare to the pleasure this case will give you: What we like most... - Great classy black look - Top cooling panel with glowing blue lights - Top power gauge - Top access to USB, IEEE1394 and audio plugs - Screwless design - Front bezel - Top notch ATX2.0 fully sleeved PSU - Ease of assembling - Hidden sliding rails ...and less - No key lock on the front door - No way to padlock the side panels - No intrusion detection - No internal speaker - Overall noise when A/C is on - Price What could be improved - Hidden HDD and Power LED when front door is closed - Rear 92mm fan more silent - Manual: Even though it looks really good, there are many details that we found important that are missing. - Front air-intake no filtered - Plastic locks for the cards does not apply to any situation - Need more than 2 x 3.5” bays Suggestion - A low-cost version without A/C, 92mm fan and PSU would be great - Intrusion detection that would not allow snow mode when case in open - At such price including one or two mounting brackets for 3.5’ devices would be a smart move Overall note from AMDboard.com: 9/10 More information Guide to Peltier cooling - Understanding Thermoelectric Cooling - An Introduction to Thermoelectrics - Digit-Life - PC Mechanic - Arstechnica AMDboard’s friends ICS 8200 reviews - PC Modding - 3D Game Man - InsaneTek - A True Review - Techniz - Phoronix - Extreme MHz - Hi-Tech Reviews |
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| Cooling Special - Review 05/03/05 |
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| Sytrin Nextherm ICS 8200 Intelligent Midi Tower - Part 3 |
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| Once the cooling is on the A/C button gives access to 3 modes (OFF-FAN-SNOW) |
| The front cooling unit with a tangential blower, 80mm fan and the peltier TE chip with a big "cold speader" on top |
| The tangential blower is an unusual part in PC |
| Cooling panel is ON Front FAN is OFF A/C is OFF too The Alarm red triangle is OFF and can go ON in case of problem |
| Cooling panel is ON Front FAN is ON (turning arrow and white fan are displayed) A/C is OFF |
| Cooling panel is ON A/C is ON (Snow mode) (turning arrow, snow flake and A/C temps are displayed) |
| After few second A/C temperature goes from 24°C to 18°C It won't take long before the whole case get cooler |
| Important! A one degree pulled down by PC aircon cooling inside the system is totally different from what we used to have with the tranditional coolers. Re the cooling performance of PC AirCon Cooling System, the correct way to measure "a one degree of temp. decrease by the ICS 8200" is as below: One degree temperature drop in CPU, chipset, graphic chip, and so forth is actually caused by the one degree temperature drop for the air inside the system case. The cooling power for this air temperature drop can be expressed as: Q=(m) x (Cp) x (dT) where: (Q) is cooling power in KJ (joule); (m) is the amount of air measured in weight (Kg); (Cp) is 1.007 KJ/(KgK) for air at 298K (25C); (dT) is the inside/outside air temperature difference |
| Contacts Sytrin Distributors USA www.frozencpu.com www.epowerhousepc.com www.class-ic.com Europe www.pc-cooling.de (Germany) www.bacata.net (France) www.team-dignitas.com (UK) Australia www.below-0.net www.i-central.com.au |
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| Your best source for AMD Athlon 64, barebones, DDR, nForce2, nForce3, nForce4, motherboards, notebooks, Opteron, Sempron & Turion 64 information |
| Now in the US! see here |
| Now in the US under Masscool CS-ICS8200 Brand name! see here |
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