Coolerguys Windtunnel IV Case
How many of us has heard of ? I for one hadn't heard of them until Sean asked me if I would like to review one of their cases. Lets look at a brief history of this company. According to the Coolerguys website, they were formed in 1998 and were originally called ChipCool but changed their name to Coolerguys in November of that year. They are not a 'garage' company as some people may think but rather are a professional style company with literal offices and a 5000sq ft warehouse to modify the cases that we, the consumer will buy. This helps to instill confidence in the customer as they can actually go to the business and see it for themselves unlike some other companies.
Many people wish to modify their case for at least one of two basic reasons, to increase the cooling ability or to make the computer look more appealing. The first choice, cooling, seems to be a motivator behind most of the mods we see so far. But the growth of the business of increasing the aesthetics of a computer is growing and Coolerguys seems to understand this as well as or better any other company.
Coolerguys' main business is to modify cases so that they look and/or perform better. They also sell many other pieces, most of which pertain to the modifying of computer cases (lights, window kits, case fans, etc.). Today we will be looking at one of their most popular cases, which incidentally includes many of the mods that you can pick up from them individually. This case is the Windtunnel IV (with side window).
The Windtunnel IV Case
When you first pull the case out of its box and look at the front it would not be silly to ask, what makes this case different than my old generic case? Then you look at the side of the case as well as the top and you begin to get an idea as to what the differences are between this case and many other cases. The Windtunnel measures in at 454mm * 494mm* 195mm (H*D*W) or approximately 17 5/6" * 19 5/12" * 7 2/3". One thing to note is the depth of this case, it is much deeper than most other cases, thus potentially allowing more space between a full ATX board and the hard drives. For Coolerguys information on this case please .
The external coloring of the case is fairly bland and is only brightened up by the side window/fans and the top 'blow hole'. The window itself is fairly big, being 271mm wide (10 2/3") by 261mm (10 1/4") high. I preferred this window to that of the C6 Black Hawk that I reviewed earlier, as you do not just get a look at the CPU socket area, but rather this cases window allowed you to see the entire motherboard area, and in my case this included the diagnostic LED on my Epox 8K3A+. The windows' trim is a nice 22mm wide strip of a black material, which helps the window look professional and frames the window very well.
The Fans
What about the fans included with the case, and believe me there is a fair amount. There are 2 60mm*10mm fans that occupy the top 'blow hole', though why two 60mm fans were used is beyond me, as a single 120mm or even a 80/92mm fan could have been used in its place. In fact the website lists a 80mm blowhole as standard on this case. The two 60mm fans are in fact Delta fans (no not the noisy ones), these spin at 4800RPM and move about 21CFM, they also produce 36dbA of noise which isn't exactly quiet.
The fans that occupy the window of this case are a pair of 92mm Sunon fans. These fans move between 45-48CFM of air while spinning at 2600RPM, and producing about 33-34 dbA of noise. Both of these fans blow into the case, one blows onto the the AGP slot and the first three or so PCI slots, while the other fan blows directly onto the CPU. This arrangement would logically be most likely to cool the processor and other cards, especially the video card, which in the case of GeForce 4 and other similar cards get very hot. This worked, as it allowed me to overclock my Kyro II by a couple of MHz more than previously.
The other fans installed at the front and the back of the case are a pair of Sunon KD1208PTB2. These fans spin at about 2900RPM and they move 39CFM while producing 32dbA of noise. The front fan doesn't do that much as it isn't blowing over anything, the only help it gives is that it gets a slight amount of air inside the case. The exhaust fan is of alot more use as it is one of the few exhaust points for the 2 92mm fans.
Installation
This case with the features included, such as the motherboard tray and the hard drive cage, making the installation of my Epox motherboard, and my peripherals very easy and less work than either my InWin Q500 or even the C6 Black Hawk that I tested previously.
One feature that I really liked is the removable motherboard/back plate tray. This definitely helps you to install your motherboard, as you can take the tray outside of the case and then install the motherboard without having to cut yourself on the hard drive trays. It also allows you to test the system outside the case without having to reinstall anything else when you put the system back in the case. This removable tray, unlike the one inside my InWin Q500 was tall enough for me to put the fan on my Alpha PAL 8045T without worrying that it wouldn't slide back into the case afterwards.
There is also another feature that makes installation easier, and that's the removable 3 1/2" hard drive trays. This allows you to put your hard drives in their respective cages without having to struggle inside the case to put the hard drives inside the case. This feature allowed me to put all four of my hard drives in without having to struggle inside the case while screwing the hard drives inside the case.
There was a couple of interesting problems with installation. The first problem is that you need to take both sides of the case off to put the power supply in, unlike any of the other cases that I tested. The other problem with this case is that it has some fairly nasty sharp edges, of which I managed to cut myself inside the case, unlike some other cases which make a point of having as little or no sharp edges to cut yourself on. The case also doesn't come with a power supply, which as I've mentioned previously is either a good or a bad thing for us the consumers.
Installation - Continued
The addition of thumb screws is a great idea as it allows for easier access to the system in that you don't have to go searching for a screwdriver every time you want to check something inside the case. I used the remaining thumb screws to hold my add-in cards in, thus allowing me to change either my video card, or my sound card with great ease.
Unlike the C6 this case doesn't have any problem with my hard drives and my motherboard, as there is at least an inch or two of space left between the power connector and the edge of the motherboard (as shown by the red line).
Also like the C6, this case uses the older more magnetic speaker, though this speaker is embedded in an enclosure with one of the 80mm Sunon fans. I personally find it odd that in such a high quality case, an older speaker is still used when a newer, better (in my opinion at least), and smaller speaker can be used in its place.
System Setup
The following system(s) were used for testing:
| CPU: |
AMD Athlon 1.25GHz @ 2.06v - 89.2 Watts |
| Motherboard: |
Epox 8K3A+ (BIOS: 6/19/2002)
|
| Memory: |
256MB PC2700 @ 2.5-3-3-6 2T |
| Hard Drives (In Order: Top-Bottom): |
40GB Maxtor 5400RPM (VL 40), 8.4GB Quantum CR 5400RPM, 20GB Quantum LM 7200RPM, 40GB Maxtor 7200RPM (D740X)
|
| Video Card: |
Hercules Prophet 4500 (Kyro II) (175/175MHz) |
| Operating System: |
Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 2 |
| Front Side Bus |
166MHz (333MHz DDR) |
| Other Cards: |
Sound Blaster Audigy, ATi TV Wonder, D-Link 538TX NIC |
| Coolers: |
Alpha PAL-8045T (50CFM Sunon Fan) |
| Cases: |
Coolerguys Windtunnel IV, Xoxide C-6 Black Hawk, InWin Q500, DSP Generic Case |
| Power Supply: |
Enermax EG365P-VE 350Watts |
The competing cases were as follows:
|
|
|
|
| Xoxide C6 Black Hawk |
InWin Q500 |
My Personally Modded Case |
The hard drive probe was placed on the rear of the hard drive, which was stacked at the bottom of the hard drives. The drives were right on top of each other with only minimal room between the hard drives for air to pass through. Note that the CompuNurse probe is under the electrical tape in the below picture
Test Results
The Windtunnel, like the C6, has a large amount of cooling fans. As such it is logical to conclude that this case, like its main competitor, is designed to improve cooling of your system, while still looking very aesthetically pleasing
One of the main producers of heat inside a computer is the processor, so I tested each case with a Athlon 1.26 GHz processor running at 2.06 volts which produces 89.2 watts of heat. The test was run using Sisoft Sandra's Burn In test with 30 repetitions of Multi-Media and Arithmetic tests. Can the aptly named Windtunnel IV beat the C6 Black Hawk, or will it perform like the Q500 or my old modified case? Lets see:
We can see that the Windtunnel does indeed catch the C6 in this test, and performs a couple of degrees better than the InWin Q500 and about 5C better than my old generic case, which seems to be taking a beating at the hands of these other cases (time to retire it maybe). The equality of the two top cases can possibly be attributed to the fact that the Windtunnel has a big 92mm fan blowing directly onto the CPU cooler. But does the Windtunnel live up to its name when we heat up the hard drive? Lets see.
Hard drives are spinning faster and faster, formerly most IDE drives spun at 5400RPM. Now many hard drives, in addition to having high density platters, are spinning at 7200RPM, former SCSI territory. As such hard drives are getting hotter, the IBM Deskstar problems recently are an example of heat (and other issues) related problems that hard drives can/are running into. The Windtunnel only has one fan that blows air underneath the hard drive cage but does this help? The following tests were done with a 18GB video file encoded in HuffYUV (9000Kb/s) copied to the same drive, different folder, using Virtualdub. Lets look at the results and see if the Windtunnel can keep up or even beat the C6:
Now this is interesting, the Windtunnel can't keep up with the InWin Q500 which has no fans blowing on the hard drives. Even though the Windtunnel has a better case temperature it cannot translate that cool air over to the hard drives. It seems that the two 92mm fans are doing most of the cooling while the hard drives barely get any air, the front 80mm fan doesn't blow on them, and the 92mm fans are too far away to provide any sort of cooling airflow. This seems to be the one major performance weakness of the Windtunnel IV, it doesn't cool the hard drives very well, if at all.
Lastly we will consider how loud the case was. Since I didn't have a sound meter, I couldn't get exact sound readings. However I know that it was definitely louder than any of the other cases, almost about as loud as the 50CFM Sunon 80mm fan, while the other cases on sounded about as loud as a 37CFM Sunon fan. Please remember that this was simply my subjective opinion of the sound level.
Conclusion
We've looked at the case, both the cooling performance, and the aesthetic attributes of the case. What then can we conclude about this case when compared to the other cases it was tested against? Lets first look at how it looks.
The case isn't painted a nice black, like the C6, and in fact it has the same color most computer cases have had for a long while. The window, while interesting to have, is not (at least in my book) very useful for many things. The only functional use for it is to see any visual errors (CPU fan stopped, diagnostic LED's). Apart from that all it is there to do is to look good, and give a view of the colorful components inside the case such as a or a .
The performance of this case is a mixed bag. On the one hand it helps cool the CPU and the case down a decent amount compared to either good quality full tower cases (InWin Q500) or your slightly modified generic case. But when we look at the hard drive cooling results the Windtunnel looks fairly bad. In this case it is beaten by the full tower case by a few degrees and is about 10C warmer than the C6 Black Hawk. If hard drive cooling was added, i.e. a fan in front of the hard drive bays, I have no doubts that this case would perform almost if not as good as the C6, our best cooling case so far. The sound was quite a bit louder than the C6 Black Hawk and didn't cool all the pieces inside the Windtunnel well as the other cases.
But the design of the case is really were the Windtunnel shines. The removable motherboard tray, and the removable hard drive racks are some of the best options for installation. Put simply, these additions allow for your system to be put together quicker and much easier. The thumb screws are a great addition and a help in installation as the case is held on by them, and I've used the rest to hold my AGP/PCI cards on the motherboard. The only low point of this case's design is the lack of a power supply.
I would like to thank for providing me with the Windtunnel IV case to review.
Good Points
- Good at cooling the CPU and PCI/AGP cards
- Has a nice window
- Removable motherboard tray
- Removable hard drive cage
- Thumb screws
- Deep case
Bad Points
- Some sharp edges
- No cooling for hard drives
- Bland gray color
- Loud Fans
- No Power supply
Bottom Line:
If you are looking at a case with a window, and don't have all that many hard drives, this is a good performing mid tower case. If you need a case that's easy to service or upgrade then this is definitely something to look at. Otherwise this case doesn't have all the features needed (i.e. hard drive cooling) to make it a Viperlair recommended case in my opinion.
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