Cases, Cooling & PSU Posts - Page 1

CES 2020 - Alphacool is well known for their custom liquid coolers for consumers. Think of it as enthusiasts liquid cooling, but one area many do not know they have a presence within is the professional space. Things such as HPC/Datacenter space where liquid cooling can be massively beneficial but also highly specialized due to the way rack space or U's are managed.

Alphacool has fully integrated solutions for rack-mount servers used for both compute or GPU offload rendering. As you can see here, they outfitted an X399/2990WX 32-core Ryzen Threadripper with four RTX 2080 Ti GPU's.

All of these with special inlets which come from the edge of the card and have their rubber tubing routed to a small splitter, which then feeds into a sizeable triple-fan radiator with thick high static pressure fans in push/pull configuration.

CES 2020 - Alphacool had a strong presence at CES 2020, and their Aurora DRGB/ARGB applications have been at the forefront of much of the glitz and glamour. The part we are looking at today is no different. Today we are looking at Eisbecher Aurora.

Let's address the name first as that's where a lot of users scoff at Alphacool parts, but being a German company, their names tend to be a little strange to us USA folks. Well, according to Google translate, Eisbecher means Sundae, while separating them from Eis Becher roughly translates to "ice cream cup."

So, I am clearing up nothing in regards to the naming in this article, but I digress. So with the RGB Ice cream cup, we know its a full glass tube, which of course, means we have less to worry about in regards to scratching when cleaning. Also, note the two sized 150 and 250 each with the inner tubes Alphacool uses for anti-cavitation, which has always been a unique solution compared to some of the flat plates or foam pads used in some other solutions.

CES 2020 - Alphacool has been well known for a while now with their AIO and custom cooling solutions all based off of the roots of full custom liquid cooling. Their Eaisbaer line is a reliable indicator of this as for all intents and purposes, an Eisbaer unit is a Pump in block unit with a cooling baseplate or even block exactly like their custom options. These same units use G1/4 standard cooling fitments along with quick disconnects to allow adding more parts to the loop.

Here we have the LED-lit acrylic front block for NVIDIA GPUs along with the placard showing that the GPU blocks are nickel-plated copper. This makes for the beautiful shiny block but also helps with the tarnishing issue where copper can discolor, making for a less sightly build. The Eiswolf Aurora units are claimed to have a newer model DC-LT pump for quiet and cool running operation.

CES 2020 - FSP showed up with several surprises at CES 2020, one being a new dual system chassis while the one we will be discussing today is its new Twins PRO power supply solution.

Here we have it, dual redundant power supplies that happen to fit into a standard ATX/PS2 form factor. This now enables users of home servers built upon standard ATX chassis to have a redundant PSU option and maximum uptime as the units can be hot-swapped while live to replace a unit should it fail.

CES 2020 - FSP has always been a brand we know for PSU's and also some cases scattered about on the market. While admittedly their cases have still held their own, they have never really been the ones to push the envelope until now.

The CMT710 is an insane semi open-frame design similar to what we have seen with the Cougar Conquer, Antec Torque, and, most recently, the Thermaltake AH T600 TG. But the CMT710 is so much more on top of this. The CMT710 is a double-wide chassis to allow two full liquid-cooled systems back to back.

CES 2020 - Inwin was not all custom signature series cases and RGB, they slid in a stylish and quite attractive mITX entry into their showing at CES 2020.

Meet the B1, a small and chic mITX entry made for APU usage for office PC's, HTPC, or general computing. The B1 is meant to fit in as a suitable mITX enclosure while also fitting in as a piece that can be a conversation starter or not look out of place in a stylish setting. The tempered glass is quite dark, so if you opt for non-RGB components, you would be hard-pressed to know there's a PC inside.

The B1 has an integrated 200W InWin PSU, which is likely Flex ATX form looking at the chassis form factor. The chassis does not have any expansion slots and therefore, will be relegated to APU/iGPU usage. The only I/O on the front is a single USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port and a combo 3.5mm jack, while that may seem minimal, it helps with the minimalistic design of the B1. The clean lines around the chassis are relatively unbroken except the tiny I/O.

CES 2020 - Lian Li has been on a roll optimizing chassis as you may have seen in our coverage of the Lian Li PCO11D Mini.

Lian Li has optimized one of their other recent popular entries, the Lancool II. This time they are introducing the Lancool II mesh which, as you can see, has a mesh front end and lower side doors for further enhanced airflow.

At a glance, the Lancool II mesh does not look too different from the standard Lancool II. Still, once you start looking at the ordinarily solid vented panels, you see that Lian Li wanted to enhance significantly the Lancool II's ability to breathe.

CES 2020 - Thermaltake released another chassis at CES 2020, and this one is rather extreme and mirrors a prevalent one on the market.

Welcome, View 51, and it's large open chamber design, which allows for massive liquid cooling capacity.

View 51 is claimed to support up to four 360mm radiators, in which the thickness is not defined. However, we are very interested to see if it can fit all of that hardware concurrently.

CES 2020 - InWin has had a trend of sorts, releasing awe-inspiring and many times downright strange chassis for their "signature edition" series.

CES 2020 is no different from the introduction of the Diey, which translates to "butterfly," and to say this chassis is extremely unique still feels like a massive understatement.

CES 2020 - InWin may not be new to PC hardware, they are jumping into cooling with the introduction of the new SR series AIOs.

The SR series AIOs come in both 240mm and 360mm options to fit most enthusiasts chassis.

The pump head unit is a unique design that InWin claims have dual impellers internally to help fluid evacuate heat more quickly, allowing for better overall thermal deltas. The pump head has a pulsating white LED, which will change to red if there is a pump problem or over-temperature concern.