Silverstone Rave 2 case with different panels (Maingear says they removed the Dork). However there is more to it than that. Maingear has essentially redesigned the Raven. The reason for the redesign (beside the whole looks issue) is heat. The Raven was a perfect fit for the Shift and allows the heat to rise and exit the case in a much more natural manner (het does rise naturally). This improves the efficiency of the cooling system dramatically.

Playing into Maingear’s serious dislike for heat in your system they have collaborated with CoolIT systems to develop a liquid cooling system for the Shift that matches the design philosophy of the Shift itself. The cooling system in question is the EPIC180 (EPIC stands for Enhanced performance Innovative Components). Once again Maingear has taken a good concept and refined it for their customers.  Here we see that they have dramatically increased the surface area available on the radiator. This combined with the thinner design allows air to pass through more efficiently. The combination of the angled shroud and the Silverstone SST-AP181 fan provides smooth air flow that, unlike other designs” reaches almost all of the surface area of the cooling fins.

The cooling head itself is much larger (to make sure it covers the new Sandy Bridge E CPUs) and has an improved thermal plate and pump. All of these design choices transform the EPIC180 from a typical liquid cooling system into one that can bring you extraordinary results. So let’s take a closer look at the EPIC180 and see just what these design choices do. Once we are done with that, we will take it for a spin on our Core i7 3960 and see just how much farther we can push it.

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So far the EPIC180 is looking very formidable. Our next video will cover the performance results and hopefully allows us to push our Core i7 3960 to an even higher overclock than we have been able to reach with either the Intel provided Cooler or the Corsair H70.

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