Topic: Cases
Product: Nextherm ICS 8200
Provided By: Sytrin Corp
Reviewer: K Elliott
Date: March 26, 2005

Introduction

The days of plain aluminum heatsinks have come and gone and whether you like to admit it or not you're now more than like to 1/2 of copper bolted on to most motherboards being cooled by a 120mm fan. Some companies like Alienware are now being to offer their system without a typical heatsink at all and instead opted to go with water cooling instead, this says a lot for our desire to have cool operating systems as well as saying volume about money not being all that important if the results are good enough.

Today we are looking at a case that attempts to cool things off using a completely different approach, where the water cooling and heatsink are attempting to cool a specific item that being the processor - the case we are reviewing today attempts to cool everything by cooling the environment that the processor is in.  So I'm sure you're curious how Sytrin is going to go about this aren't you?

There system is based around a Thermoelectric Chip or what some people a Peltier, the Thermoelectric Chip is comprised of two dissimilar materials and when a positive and negative electrical voltage are applied to leads on each side of the chip one side will become extreme hot while the other will become extremely cold.

What Sytrin has done is to place a heatsink module on each side of the Thermoelectric Chip, the cold side is controlled with the PC AIRCON (short for air conditioning) control panel, while the hot side is vented immediately to the outside of the case to insure the temperature of the case remains low.  I should mention that air is forced across the cold side of the heatsink by a 2400 rpm 80mm fan located at the bottom of the case. while the hot air is removed with a 3" wide squirrel cage fan out the bottom of the case. We will get into more details of how this all works as we look at the case further.

Now we need to take a minute and discuss the formula used to determine the actual drop in temperature.  Via the mechanisms of convection, the temperature of the fresh air passing through the low temperature heatsink is reduced to below the ambient level. Therefore the temperature of the air entering the PC System is lower than the ambient air temperature.

To help figure out the actual drop in temperature it always helps to have some sort of a formula and we just so happen to have on.
 

Features

• Advanced system level cooling, "Air -Conditioning Cooling" to provide extra cooling power - 120 watts.
   

• Compact performed air-inlet design to maximize cooling performance.
   

• Integrated Monitoring System Combo - LCD Panel and Dialed Gauge for real time tracking of temperature and power consumption.
   

• Powerful 460 watt power supply built-in, SATA - Dual 12 volt lines.
   

• Tool-less design for easy assembly.
   

• Easy access dual USB 2.0, IEEE1394(Firewire), Audio & Speakers Ports
   

• Retractable foot stand
   

• Classy and contemporary appearance.