A nifty way to enhance system cooling and an attractive addition to any case – Joe
SUMMARY: A nifty way to enhance system cooling and an attractive addition to any case.
The good guys at The Card Cooler were nice enough to send a sample of the The Card Cooler XT 4-Pin to try out (available with LEDs in blue, green and red or without). The Card Cooler is a simple idea well executed. Readers know that moving air inside a case is essential for good cooling.
The Card Cooler XT features two 120 mm ball bearing fans, spec’d at 2.4 watts each, 138 cfm total, 2400 rpm, 35.5db/fan – two fans running will be slightly noisier. The Card Cooler attaches to two screws on the PCI slots – this aims the fans at both PCI cards and the CPU/Northbridge complex. As many Northbridge coolers are fanless, moving air through this air should keep things a bit cooler.
In addition, with RAM getting faster, moving more air over the memory slots should be a top priority (as well as removing those dumb clam shell “coolers”), and the Card Cooler can do this quite nicely.
I should point out the Card Cooler moves air inside the case – it’s not a substitute for getting cooling air into the case.
I installed the Card Cooler in one of my cases – took all of two minutes. This pic above shows the lighting effect – blue is very soothing (my wife happened to wander in and said “Oh – how pretty!). I measured noise at 56 dBA (8” from the fans) – this is fairly low; with a cover on (I never use a cover) it should not be noticeably noisy.
Air flow was noticeably increased – the fans move a good amount of air in the case. In addition, as you can see from the pic, the fans pretty much cover the motherboard to enhance cooling.
The Card Cooler is a nifty way to enhance system cooling and can be an attractive addition to any case – a good addition to enhance cooling for passively cooled components.
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