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We
meet again today, after several weeks in which CrackMaster monopolized
the reviews at PC Hardware :). Today's review could seem common
because we do not talk about anything spectacular. But cooling solutions
are important simply because reliability goes hand by hand with
them. If you had ever opened a HP workstation or any professional
computer you would have noticed the powerful air cooling system
- heatsinks, large fans. There are fans even for RAM. Four years
ago, when I had the chance to look in a Silicon Graphics workstation
I was amazed of it's cooling system. There was a system which took
the hot air from inside and redirected it to outside, a huge heatsink
was installed on the MIPS CPU, almost any chip on the BETA video
system had it's own active cooling. It was impressive, but I understood
why they had to install all this stuff. When I touched a heatsink.
It was so hot as lighting a cigarette on it's surface would have
been a piece of cake. Until one or two years ago regular users didn't
know what advanced cooling means. Overclocking was the one that
have changed things a bit, but not very much. Many of you are tempted
to say "Hey, what! I have an advanced cooling system just in
front of my eyes". Unfortunately you can have as many fans,
blowers and heatsinks you want. That's not advanced cooling. Why?
Because the cooling system build in a professional server is a piece
of fluids engineering. It has all the stuff needed to cool to a
safe temperature, nothing more. Minimum space with maximum effect.
Any server has a range of environment operating temperatures. That's
why large ISPs have air conditioned data centers. You may say that
the latest cryogenic cases are advanced. Of course that they are.
But why didn't Compaq adopted them? Do you think that they care
of 600 bucks when they sell a machine for 10,000? No. They don't.
These cases have FCC problems, are heavy and most important their
reliability isn't proved yet. They want to build a computer which
has to run for months with an average load of over 40 percent, ready
to answer to several thousands of hits every hour. An accidental
shut down will cost them a lot of money. That's why they use rock
build air cooled cases.
First
look
You will tell
me that I made a lot of noise for nothing. Not quite, because we
will review something that wants to be a "different" cooling
system. This review subject, the 2COOL PC device produced by South
Bay Engineering, as different as it might pretend to be, it's not
a new thing for me.
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Cards
to front air redirecting devices are build from years in any
decent server. But servers have the box designed in a way
that permits a front fan to collect all the hot air from cards
region and pull it out. 2CoolPC
guys had the idea to realize something similar for PC users,
something easy to install in any case.
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The device
is shaped in "L" form and it's based on another idea:
it takes cold air from outside and redirects it to cool the cards.
Let's take a look to the below pictures to see how the system actually
looks.
2
Cool PC product picture. Click on pictures to enlarge.
Yes, the device
is plastic build. The fan is supposed to be placed in the front
of the case while the plastic hole have to stand on the top of the
PCI cards. In theory sounds great, but I had several problems with
installation in narrow cases like Palo Alto PA600
or CATX. But if your case has a space of over five centimeters
above cards you will be able to install it.
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23:19 
Tagan TG480-U01 480W ATX / EPS Power Supply Review 
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