Displaying items by tag: Cooling

Competition is one of the cornerstones of innovation, in the tech world and in many other areas.  When we have several different companies marketing products to us that serve the same function, they will each strive to bring us, the consumer, something better than their competition.  Price, performance, appearance - all of those are parts of the equation for value.  Some companies offer what is perceived to be (and very often is) absolute top-of-the-line quality at a premium price.  Others will present their product from the cost-to-performance ratio.  Still others will rely on aesthetics to bring in the consumer.  All are different and valid approaches to the marketplace, and if you’re in that market long enough you’ll likely eventually start to see a trend in certain brands, identifying which ones fit into which category.

CPU cooling one of the prime considerations in any build.  Once a new system builder decides if they’re going to use air or water for the purpose the next step is usually research.  If they’re smart they’ll look at reviews online, from both tech sites like ours and from actual users on sites like Newegg and Amazon to learn what they need to know about the specifics of a potential cooler.  They’ll most likely start with the names that most of us in the game know already, names like Noctua, Cooler Master, Zalman and Prolimatech.  These are all great names in the business and they’ve gotten that way for a reason.  I’ve had the privilege of testing coolers from all of these companies and I was impressed with them all, but once in a while a company comes along that I’ve never heard of and offers their product for testing.

I was recently offered the chance to put the Gamerstorm Lucifer CPU cooler from Deepcool through our torture test.  I had heard of Deepcool but rarely, and never with any fanfare. It turns out they’re a huge name in the business that is only now coming into the U.S. market.  I gladly agreed to abuse their cooler and show you guys the results. First, let’s take a look at the cooler.

PC enclosure reviews are not exactly the most exciting things on the internet. In far too many cases (no pun intended… ok well maybe) we find that the differences between one company and another is wholly cosmetic and are not much more than fancy side panels and extra plastic to give the case a different shape. This is not to say that there is no innovation in the market, just that really innovative features and designs are not all that common. One company that has recently stood out is In Win. Over the last few months In Win has released some very novel and innovative cases. These have not been your standard “hey I have more HDD bays and fans” type of innovations, but actually new and innovative designs and even materials (like a glass case). Today we are taking a look at one of them, the In Win 901. This is a very interesting SFF case that just might be one of the coolest enclosure designs we have seen in a very long time.

CES 2014, Las Vegas, Nevada – During our visit to the Thermaltake suite we had the chance to see some of the new products that will be hitting the market and what we saw was pretty impressive. To kick things off Shannon Rob walked us through two new cases that are tailored to the enthusiast on many levels. The first up on the plate was the Urban T81. This roomy enclosure can be setup for use with air cooling or water (even a massive water rig). I know that many of our modding friends will be drooling over this one and its little brother the V71. Shannon does a great job of walking us through the highlights in our video coverage (if you can get past the background noise).

Cooler Master Silencio 652 is a Midi Tower chassis with a total weight of 10.4 kg and dimensions of 220x507x508,6 mm. Inside the enclosure can be installed three 5.25 "devices, as well as nine 3.5" HDD. It is designed for installation of Micro ATX and ATX motherboards.

As we demand more and more from our mobile devices manufacturers are forced to try and stuff higher power CPU and GPUs inside ever-shrinking laptop and tablet shells. This leaves them in tricky position; they have to either put in tons of fans or make the materials for their products. Some have tried to split the difference with a combination of fans, materials and also components that react to the demands of the user. However, (you knew there was a however didn’t you) there are times when these are not enough and where the ergonomics of modern laptops (to include thin and light). Due to this unfortunate fact cooling companies have managed to open up a market for coolers which are intended to keep your high-performance laptop cool. Many of these are ungainly (in terms of ergonomic) despite bringing better cooling to the table. They also tend to be bulky and difficult to transport making their use limited. Thermaltake has a novel design that aims to deal with both portability and ergonomics, the GOrb II. Let’s take a look at this interesting device and see if it really does help bring something new to the table.

SiverStone presented several processor coolers inside Argon product line, designed for Intel and AMD chips. They presented three classic tower design coolers which differ in the diameter of the fan and the number and thickness of the hot water pipes.

General Electric (GE) has demonstrated a very interesting system of cooling computer chips. The system is called Dual Piezoelectric Cooling Jets (DCJ) and it is a reduced version of the cooling system they already developed for cooling jet engines - the first patent for DCJ to General Electric was given back in 2004.

Rumors of the demise of Scythe USA may be just that.  In a press release yesterday, Masahiro Sakai, CEO of Scythe USA Inc., published a post on their website stating in part that "Scythe USA had to make the difficult decision to end its operations as a result of the closure of its parent company."

In the world of computer enclosures things can get boring pretty fast; after all how much can you do with a box? For too many companies the way to differentiate their products is to put in a window and extra LEDs and call it a day. There is little that is new to be perfectly honest with you. However, every now and then something comes out that does stand out from the crowd. We have seen it before with some very unique designs and concepts. One company that has done a fairly good job at keeping things interesting is Cooler Master and in particular their CMStorm line. While at CES this year (2012) we were shown a case that caught our eye and imagination. It was the CMStorm Stryker. We called it the Storm Trooper, not only for its connections to the CMStorm Trooper, but also because it reminded me of the Strom Troopers from Star Wars.  We have one of these in our lab now and well… let’s dive in to see what you get and how well it performs.