is the shuttle ICE in SFF box good? anyway to improve it?

currently thinking to get a shuttle SFF box as a multimedia server. and i'm wondering is the ICE heatpipe any good? anyway to improve it's performance?

planning to put in a 2.4c and o/c it with stock voltage....

I'd say the ICE is VERY good! My SN41G2 box with a AMD Barton 2500+ runs at about 40c with very low fan noise. (using a Papst fan)

As for improvements, the most common one is mounting a 80mm->120mm adapter on the back to get even more airflow. But being a heatpipe tpye, you can only get down to a certain point as the heatpipe needs a bit of heat to work properly.

is that running at stock? or you did slightly o/c?

also, i can swap out the stock fan for something else right?

it is actually pretty decent, I got load temps of 48C with my 2500+ Oced to 2.2 ghz at 1.65 vcore. take in account that my ambient temps were pretty hot, but these temps were after some mods.

the simplest mod that improved temps the most was cutting out the back grill, and mounting a fan on the outside of the case sucking out. it seems to move more air this way, temps dropped probably 5C just from that.

the next mod I did had to do with my hardrives, I have a 30 GB and a 120 gig. the middle HDD enclosure stays pretty cool, but the lower one gets pretty hot

with no mods at all HDD temps were in the high 40C to 50C, very scary

all I did was cut out a hole for a amd stock fan I had extra, screwed it in, and now after all my mods the HDD never go above 40C

so it works pretty good without seriuos modding. I did have a Smart fan 2 and it had my temps extremely low, it was really nice, but it was to loud. if you have the ADJUSTABLE KNOB THAT WOULD WORK, BUT MY KNOB BROKE, SO THE ONLY WAY i COULD TURN DOWN THE SPEED WAS USING SPEEDFAN. BUT WHEN FIRST BOOTIG UP IT RUNS AT 100%, SO i DIDNT LIKE IT.

right now IM using a 2500 rpm led case fan, its quiet, looks cool, and is below 50C on load, so IM happy

so, put the fan from behind and let it suck out the air is better than the stock pushing the air from the inside? how 'bout push & suck at the same time?

the newer shuttle case (875chipset) already has side opening on both side for better cooling... did thinking to put some sort of LED lighting in it to make it looks better.... may be a LED fan will do....

oh, btw, what kinda video card you guys are using?? i'm think the all-in-wonder 9800 pro for both gaming (half life2 is around the corner) and PVR function.

I dont know about push and suck didnt try it. I think it works better to suck though because none of the air gets blown back in the case, like it does when its being pushed out. plus by getting rid of the inside fan enclosure it probaly has more room to breath. either way it works really well.

its kind like water cooling, most say that it is better to suck air through a radiator than it is to push through a rad. same concept.

the mesh should work pretty good. On mine I cut out the side where the vid card fan is and put a aluminum fan filter to cover it. I think that helped also.

bottom line, with the mods I did and with my barton 2500+ at 2.2 ghz 1.65 vcore, 9700 pro, 2 7200 rpm Hardrives my temps never reach 50C on anything