250mm fan in a case tested

DRIVERHEAVEN pays tribute to the Vantec Vortex 2 hard drive cooler. It comes with a high power blower that will keep even the hottest HDDs cool and a cleanable air filter to keep your drives dust free. The fan speed can be controlled by a blue-light knob and any unwanted vibration can be minimized with dampeners. The cooler does a good job of cooling a Seagate 7200.7 by cooling it by seven degrees under load.

Legionhardware puts the Asus A8R32-MVP deluxe motherboard to the test. The Xpress 3200 is the smallest chipset on the market and dissipates only 8w. With its black finish, the A8R32 is obviously aimed at the serious enthusiast. It does impress and represents a lethal product, especially when paired with a Radeon X1900XTX. Now it does not costs as much as one would expect and it does not have that much incompatibilities which affected Xpress 200 products.

Legithardware checks the Albatron 6600 512MB DDR2 video card. Frankly speaking, is it worth having 512MB memory on such a card? Probably not. It is deliberately targetting the brag-on-figures kind of geek. This card has no SLI connectors, a smallish HSF for the PSU and definitely nothing for the memory modules. It is definitely not a power card so you might use it in your HTPC instead.

Extremeoverclocking tests the Hyper Type-R 480w Power supply, which does not have a modular cable design as its elder brother. Black and with a 120mm fan, it is serious stuff and has no frills attached. Expect good performance, good efficiency, low heat dissipation and low noise. Very bad news though is that the reviewer actually damaged the power supply, although it comes with a three year warranty.

From Mr Frosty himself comes the Noctua NH-U9 low noise heatsink, with plenty of aluminium fins surrounding four copper heatpipes. No fans are included and the overall weight of the structure is just below 600g. Dissipates heat very well, although beaten into first place by its bigger brother. There's also a very interesting table which compares heatsinks at a 125w Thermal Test threshold as well as their noise levels.

3Dextreme tests the Aerocool Extremengine 3T casing - it has a huge fan on its side, 250mm to be more precise, it also has a 140mm fan in the front. The jet engine theme is well here. Other than that, it is made up of steel, has the usual ports and two aluminium doors. Not as noisy as one would expect. The fan comes with a fan controller anyway and the 160CFM provides more air flow than one would need. µ