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Aerocool Spiral Galaxies


Date
: 01/19/05 – 06:03:18 AM

Author
:

Category
: Cases

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer
: Aerocool

Price
: $85 USD

Established in 2002,
Aerocool
has been steadily researching, and trying to pump out innovative products that compete with today's well known case and cooling manufacturers. According to Aerocool's website, "Our engineering and RD staffs specialize in airflow analysis, material conductivity, heat transfer technology and efficiency design".

Aerocool's mission
:
"Ours mission is to work closely with our partners and customers and to continue to manufacture the highest quality products to satisfy the market demand."

It has been a while since we have seen any new case innovations that stand out above the rest. And this has put somewhat of a stale-mate on the computer case market. Just when you thought all possibilities were exhausted, a new company brings something to the table . . .
Let's take a first look at the hot new
Spiral Galaxies
.

Page 2 : Package

Computer case packaging has been pretty much the same for the last couple of years. The goal: to deliver your product safely in the least amount of money, while also providing a box that provides information about the product.

and,

Overall the box seemed to be in pretty good shape. Let's take a look at what's inside.

Page 3 : Specifications

Aerocool's Spiral Galaxies case provides standard specifications of what you would be looking for in your next case purchase:

But, what is more impressive about this case, is not what's in the specifications . . .

Page 4 : Exterior

Now, we move onto the important stuff. Aerocool provided a case with an exterior design similar to that of others on the market. On the front we have the power switch, reset switch, and LEDs. Towards the bottom side of the front, the case has vents to allow plenty of air flow, and the top portion of the case opens to expose the 5.25 bays and the 3.5 exposed bays.

Above the door, on the top of the case, lies your standard IEEE1394 and USB2.0 connections.

Moving around to the side of the case, we can look at the side panel. The windowed panel is on the right side of the case, which is different from other case manufacturers, for reasons we will discuss later.

and the closeup shows clearly the Bee-hive pattern:

Aerocool claims "Bee-Hive" side panel for improved EMI protection. The door itself is coated with a special paint that is an electro-magnetic conductor, greatly improving EMI emissions.

The side of the case also appears to have taken a bit of damage during its time being handled:

Moving around to the back of the case, when you've seen one you've seen them all. The arrangement of things on the back is a bit different from other cases. We will get into details of that in the next section, for now, we can admire the solid construction, and this shows a good picture:

Page 5 : Interior

Things just keep getting better with this case by Aerocool. As we move into the case, we start finding the heart and soul of the Spiral Galaxies.

Aerocool put a patented air tunnel into this case. Pushed by 2x120mm fans (which are included). In order for this to work, the motherboard is installed upside down, with the processor at the bottom of the case.

Aerocool also supplied an attachment that allows the air tunnel to cover dual processor systems:

Towards the top of the front, you can see the bays for the 5.25 drives and an extra snap-in holder for an 80mm fan. At the back of the case, are the slots to mount the hard drives:

One of the wonderful things about this case is the hard drives are mounted vertically towards the back of the case. This allows for heat from the drives to be pulled right into the power supply and pushed out of the case.

Aerocool also added shock absorbers to help support the power supply, the rubber tips on these will help absorb vibrations and make it run quieter.

All these great features, with nothing but pictures so far! Let's put them to use.

Page 6 : Installation

The majority of cases involve a pretty simple installations. This case is no exception. Simply mount your motherboard using the standoffs provided, and re-connect all of your appliances!

As I noted before that the motherboard does install upside-down, in order for the heatsink to fit inside the air tunnel. As mentioned before, the windowed side had to be moved because of the standard layouts in today's motherboards. If the door was not reversed, wires would be draped across the entire case, more so than they already need to be! Now a word of caution, monstrous heatsinks will most likely not fit inside of the wind tunnel. I was trying to use a HT-101jr made by Aerocool, and with my Abit NF7-S motherboard, the wind tunnel would not attach properly. This was also due to the placement of the socket on this particular motherboard. Boards that have socket placements further from the top will have an easier time getting their heatsink to fit. I scaled back down to my trusty Thermaltake Volcano 9 heatsink, which had plenty room inside the wind tunnel.

In addition to the great wind tunnel, Aerocool also has made much of the installation of other hardware tool-less! The PCI slots have tool-less snaps to help hold your cards in place:

Aerocool also has tool-less hard drive, 5.25 device, and 3.5 (for floppy drives and such) mounts:

Once you are finished inside, you can put the side of the case back on. Like much of the rest of the case, this too is tool-less so you don't have to worry about losing those pesky screws:

With everything up and running we're looking cool!

So the next big question here, is . . . does that wind tunnel really help? Let's take a closer look at that. I used my Thermaltake Volcano 9 on this processor running at 2.5ghz, that's overclocked about 700mhz from the stock 1.8ghz. I used Motherboard Monitor 5 to record the temperatures with the tunnel and without, at idle and under load temperatures.

The results:

With tunnel:
Idle: 47 Celsius
Load: 53 Celsius

Without tunnel:
Idle: 48 Celsius
Load: 53 Celsius

You would think that the results would be a lot more decisive with the wind tunnel clearly being cooler. It only makes sense right? However in this particular case, it does not appear to make a difference at all. It could be possible that the Volcano 9 is just not capable of cooling this system much past this point, so the introduction of cooler air is not noticeable.

Page 7 : Conclusion

Overall, Aerocool has provided a very impressive case. This case provides tool-less hardware mounting as well as a patented wind tunnel to help cool your system. I would expect this wind tunnel would provide much better results for a system that is running a high CFM fan to get the desired cooling. The wind tunnel could be used along with a lower CFM fan to produce similar results. Besides the wind tunnel, there are plenty of features in this case to keep you happy and your system easy to maintain and use.

Advantages
:
- Tool-less system makes installation and adding components a breeze
- Wind Tunnel design for quiet, efficient cooling
- Overall looks are very appealing

Disadvantages
:
- Metal tool-less mounts for 5.25 and 3.5 bay components are a bit fragile
- Depending on motherboard, power supply usually needs very long ATX wires
- Some heatsinks may not fit inside of the wind-tunnel

A huge thanks to AeroCool for providing with us this sample.

Update
:

One of our readers brought a couple of questions to my attention about this case, so I would like to share the answers with everyone, in case someone else is wondering the same thing!

- As far as the front USB and firewire, they come stright into the case from the front panel. They use the standard pin connectors to which they connect to your motherboard directly. They are not the "extensions" type as you described where they must connect to another USB or firewire port. The front panel audio is also the same way, where they connect to the sound IO pins on your motherboard (of course granted your motherboard supports all of these connections)

- Both of the 120mm fans includd use a 4-pin molex connector. Both fans are held in on a toolless fan-mount directly on the inside of the case.

- I tried not to be too specific on heatsink sizing details as it really depends on your combination of motherboard and heatsink. From the positioning of the windtunnel, a motherboard that has its socket about 10mm lower than the top of the board than mine does could fit a completely different set of heatsinks. Where as the NF7-S board I was using, has the socket positioned almost all the way to the top of the board. It would be much harder to fit the wind tunnel over a heatsink that is so close to the bottom of the case. So to clarify, its not necessarily how "tall" the heatsink is, its more of where it would sit in relation to the motherboard.

- On the clear side of the case, where there is a center black circle, it is not removable to insert a fan. Although this would be a great idea for a mod. It does not come stock to support an additional fan.

I hope this clarifys things a little more, if it doesn't or if you still have questions please feel free to email me!