Print this article

Cyclone 5000 Case


Date
: 02/26/01 – 06:53:00 PM

Author
:

Category
: Cases

Manufacturer: Coolerguys

Price: $159.95

Introduction

A great cpu cooler won’t work well when there isn’t coming any fresh air into the case and don’t forget all that air must be taken out of the case too. Most overclockers buy themselves a dremel or a jigsaw and start hacking away at their case to build some blowholes to put fans in. Unfortunately most of the time, such ‘adventures’ don’t turn out well and results in a unhappy camper with a f***ed up computer case!

This is where Coolerguys come into play with their premodded computer cases. Today OC Online takes a look at their Cyclone 5000 case, a midi tower that features blowholes, suckholes, fans, grills and a lot more too! Lets see what this case can do for the lonesome overclocker ;).

Specifications

The peeps at Coolerguys sure know what they are doing, because the Cyclone 5000 doesn’t only sound very slick, it also has very good specs list!

- Midi tower

- 4 external 5.25′ drive bays

- 2 external 3.5′ drive bays

- 3 internal 3.5′ drive bays

- A removable motherboard tray

- Two 92mm Sunon fans mounted on the side to take air in

- Three 80mm Sunon fans – one front intake, one back outtake and one top outtake

- 229CFM (!!)

- 17′ depth / 7′ width / 16′ height

- 300W AMD Approved power supply

As you can see I was not kidding about the good specifications this case can present us. Also note that this case has no sharp edges that may cut of your finger or any other vital part you decide to stick in your case (NOOOOO not that ;)) ).

The Cyclone 5000 has a lot of room for expansion, as it features more expansion slots then some full towers! The removable motherboard tray makes it easy to install your mobo or pull it out to add some cards or other stuff. I hate it when I have to unscrew my board all the time to take it out of the case (for example when I want to test a new heatsink).

Coolerguys has designed this case with the true overclocker in mind because this case is pushing an amazing 229CFM through your hardware, which is quite a bit!

In the front bottom of the case sits a Sunon highspeed 80mm fan that sucks air in. At the back of the case, at about the same height of the cpu, is another 80mm Sunon fan that is sucking air out. This is very good to get the hot air coming from the cpu out of the case before it spreads inside. Coolerguys also installed a 80mm fan in the ‘roof’ of the Cyclone case that sucks air out too. Because hot air always rises, this fan has a crucial role in the case cooling configuration. The fan was not preventing me from installing my cdrom in the
upper slot, but some cdroms might be too long to mount up there. I tested it with an AOpen 50x cdrom …

Last but not least, the case has two 92mm suckholes in the sidepanel. These fans are mounted in a way that they blow the fresh air they are drawing into the case, immediatelly onto your processor, videocard and other cards you may have installed.

Did I mention that all the fans are equiped with grills to prevent cats, dogs and other pets or maybe even kids from being ripped apart. Coolerguys did not installed filters on the fans, which do a good job keeping dust out of your case. The downside on these filters is that they increase the noise (because the air that gets forced through them) and also they decrease the CFM’s because some of the power is lost due to the air that muyst go through the filters.

If you REALLY REALLY want fan filters, it is no biggie to order some and install them yourself …

A case, like the Cyclone 5000, modded to fullfil the needs of a serious overclockers can not be shipped with a 250W or even a 230W power supply! That is like buying a Ferrari with a Ford engine under the hood …. Lucky for us, the Cyclone comes with a powerful 300W ATX power supply which is AMD approved. The p/s comes with enough connectors to make sure you won’t be buying
powersplitters at the local RadioShack ;)).

Testing

In order to see if this case would hold up to its name, I installed a killer gaming rig inside it and of course overclocked it all the way up!

Here is a list of all the crap (crap for which most people would donate a kidney ;)) I threw inside the case:

- ABIT KT7A RAID with WZ BIOS

- AMD 1.2GHz TBird @ 1.33GHz @ default voltage

- 3x128MB Crucial PC133 CAS2 RAM

- Hercules Geforce GTS Ultra @ 270/500 core/memory

- Creative Soundblaster Live! Platinum + Livedrive

- DLink 100mbit NIC

- AOpen 50x CD-ROM

- 2x30GB IBM Deskstar 7200RPM hdd’s in a RAID0 setup

- Windows 2000 Pro + SP1 + VIA 4.25a + Detonator 6.50

I performed the test with a case temperature of 22 degrees celcius and in order to take the heat away from the cpu, I used the preproduction sample of the CORE that I reviewed some time ago.

When I got everything setup and ready to go, I pressed the power button. The first thing I thought was: DAMN this thing sounds like a freaking airplane!! Of course this was something to be expected with a airflow of 229CFM!! Most overclockers will not care about noise, but in case you need to sleep next to this case, I suggest you go out and buy some earplugs :).

When I got into Windows 2000, I immediatelly launched Motherboard Monitor 5.04 to check out the case and cpu temps! I was amazed to see that the case temp was actually identical to the room temperature!!! That’s a very good result heh … Of course I was not stressing the system as I was just idling in Windows.

To see if the case would keep up the good work under full load, I launched an instance of Prime95, a program that really tortures your cpu by using every spare cycle to calculate prime numbers. Once Prime was going, I started my all time favorite FPS game … yes you guessed it: Quake 3: Arena.

After fooling around on the net and killing some mofo’s (and of course get my own butt kicked several times), I closed Quake and checked back at the temperatures. I was happy to see that my case temp was only ONE (1) degree above the room temperature. The cpu was running at a cool 41 degrees celcius, which is pretty good for a 1.3GHz+ cpu!

Prime was still cruising along and crunching numbers so the system proved to be rockstable.

I also tried to overclocked my Geforce Ultra a bit more because now there were several fans blowing right on to of it heh. I managed to gain 10MHz on the memory speed and 5MHz on the core speed, resulting in a 275/510MHz setting. Not bad if you ask me.

Conclusion

Coolerguys really built a very good overclockers case with plenty of cooling and expansion possibilities. There are a few drawbacks on the Cyclone 5000 like the noise and the lack of a no-tool design. That no-tool problem can be fixed if you buy some thumb screws and use them instead of the normal screw you get with the case.
Apart from that, there is no way you can buy a case, a 300W power supply, all the cooling equipement for under $159.95, and even if you could would you be able to make it look just as good?

Good

- Excellent quality

- 229CFM!

- Plenty of expansion room

Bad

- You still need tools to open the case

- Noise

UPDATE:
Coolerguys let me know that they are including Thumb screws and internal fan grills to inhibit your wires from getting cut by the fans. Also for those who are worrying about the P/S, Coolerguys told me they are 100% behind them and if one would fail they will replace it with a new one immediatelly :).