SUMMARY: Mike checks out the Wind Tunnel II Gamer ATX case from CoolerGuys. This case is the big brother of the original Wind Tunnel, with more blowholes and little features which makes this a nice case.
There are a total of three 60mm fans for the removal of that hot air. I’ll start off with the two that have been lovingly placed on the top of the case. The fans are Delta units that spin at 4800 RPM and each have a rated airflow of 21-CFM. The fans are mounted into the same laser cut blow-holes, and also have the same shims installed for a very solid seal to the case. Fan grills give it that finished look and also keep your little fingers safe and sound.
The two fans sit far enough away from the power supply where there is no chance of getting tangled up in the wiring harness. These fans are connected by way of a 3-pin connector that can be hooked into any standard fan header on the motherboard. Since these fans are not pulling that much power, they did fine with the standard connectors.
The actual connectors for these two fans are brought together into a single header so that if you have a limited number of these headers on your mainboard, you’ll still be able to have all the fans running at once. And that’s what it’s all about…more airflow to help keep temperatures down as much as possible.
The third 60mm fan is mounted below the power supply to help get rid of that excess heat that forms around the video card. Even with a fan mounted on the video card itself, it can’t do a very good job of directing the heat to an exit. that’s where the rear fan comes into play. While the heat is being mixed up by the fan on the video card, this rear fan just sucks all that hot air and removes it from the inside of the case. And any excess hot air that gets away from this rear mounted fan will just rise and be expelled through the top fans. it’s a nice, simple setup that is very well executed.
- Power Supply
The power for this case is provided by a very solid 350 watt Fortron Source PSU. It is an ATX 2.03 compatible unit that delivers more than enough juice to take care of those power hungry components that we all know and love. Even with all the extra fans as well as my normal components, there was no shortage of power at any time.
It comes with the standard voltage settings of 115 volts and 230 volts. This will allow it to be used in nearly any country since a few use the higher voltage as their standard in electrical current. It also comes with the toggle switch to discontinue the power flow, and also a solid fan to help with the task off removing even more hot air from the system and the unit itself.
I love to see a power supply with lots of connectors, and this one doesn’t disappoint at all. Besides the standard ATX connection that powers the motherboard, there are two connectors for floppy drives, and six 4-pin molex connectors for peripherals and extra fans. There is also an auxiliary connector for those server cases that are extremely power hungry. I normally run two CD/DVD type devices, a single hard drive, and a bunch of fans, and this thing still had one or two extra connectors left. This comes in handy if you’re going to be running a RAID setup as you’ll have enough power to keep all the hard drives happy.
Something of note: While I was checking out the Fortron Source website, I noticed that they had a page devoted to warning people that there are fake Fortron power supplies being sold. After reading the page fully, I checked out this unit and was happy to find that it is authentic. it’s always good to know that the people who are selling you these high-end cases are getting their parts from reputable sources.
