The I.C.E Technology looks interesting and all, but the question is& how does it perform? Leaving our BIOS settings at default, which is Fan Guardian Enabled (we'll look more into this later on), we took some tests and observed temperatures under full load. Needless to say, the temperatures weren't that impressive...

Maybe "weren't that impressive" is an understatement. It was downright scary to be running at 71C. Keep in mind that the default settings "turns on" speed control. I decided to turn that off and let it run at full bore.

Things were a little better, but not that great still. I'm not really certain how other reviewers managed temperatures less than 60C, but that wasn't happening here. You'll have to keep in mind that for testing, we only had one hard drive and the Radeon 9700 in here. If you were to load up with an optical drive and another hard drive with a fast CPU, I would expect you'll have similar temperatures as we've had.

What are my thoughts on the cooling performance? Honestly, I wasn't too thrilled with the I.C.E. Technology. I did test with the stock Intel, though getting it to fit wasn't so easy. The stock cooler is about 4C better than the best scores the heatpipe was able to manage. To improve the cooling, I would look into a faster spinning case fan, though be aware that the shroud, without modifications, won't allow for an oversized 80mm fan.

On the otherhand, the included Sunon fan is relatively quiet. It is noticable at full speed, but not unbearable. Since the SS51 is aimed more at the enthusiast, the noise probably won't be an issue.

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