Blizzard 360 Case
Apr 5th, 2001 | By Archive
Blizzard 360 Case
Date
: 04/6/01 – 12:34:35 AM
Author
:
Category
: Cases
Manufacturer: Frozen CPU
Price: $185 (Enermax 350W P/S Included)
Introduction
We saw several computer cases stop by in our testbunker lately, but only a few of them were overclocking minded.
Today we bring you a review off a case that has been designed to bring you one of the best overclockers cases available. It is called ‘Blizzard 360′ and it’s made by the peeps from Frozen CPU, so lets see if the case can keep up with the other cases around heh …
Specifications
The Blizzard 360 is a midi tower case that comes with 3 external 5.25′ drive bays and 2 external 3.5′ drive bays. You also get 3 additional internal 3.5′ drive bays to install hard drives so expansion room shouldn’t be a problem.
Frozen CPU decided to use a removable motherboard tray, which is a really nice feature! I use it a lot because most heatsinks need to be removed with a screw driver. That way I slide out the tray just enough to be able to release the
clip from the heatsink :). Previously I had to remove the powersupply out of my case because there was no other way (apart from uninstalling the motherboard entirely) to remove a heatsink …
Besides the motherboard tray, the hard drive cage is also removable so adding drives or swapping a dead one is pretty easy!
Now that I told you something about the case itself, let us take a closer look at the cooling power of the Blizzard 360.
There are 2 suckholes in the side of the case and one blowhole in the top of the case. All three holes are using a 120mm low speed Sunon fan in order to give you good cooling performance without the annoying ‘whining’ sound from
high speed fans (whining noise = Delta fan noise ;)). Each fan delivers a nice 69CFM of airflow, which results in a total airflow of around 210 – 220 CFM. With an amount like that, your hardware will be cooled as good as possible because the fans in the sidepanel are installed in a way that they blow over your cards and cpu and not somewhere else :).
The top fan, along with the power supply fans, is used to get all the hot air out of the case.
The case also has room to install a 80mm in the bottom front and one just behind the cpu, but I don’t think you will be needing them with three 120mm fans running heh ;). I do suggest that you cover the holes with tape or something in order to create a perfect airflow without too many losses …
Now I know most of you are die-hard tweakers who cut their own holes in their cases, but let me tell you that you will have a very hard time cutting your holes as round as the ones on the Blizzard! The peeps at Frozen CPU use a special designed machine that is able to cut perfect circles in metal … something that is not possible with a dremel or a hacksaw or some other sort of DIY equipement.
Another thing I want to point out is the fact that this case is tool-free, which means that you can open up the case, remove the motherboard tray, … without the need of a screw driver.
The sidepanel can be removed from the case without the need to remove the top and the other sidepanel, which is also handy when you want to add or remove a PCI card or a memory stick or something.
Here is the entire spec list from the Blizzard 360:
- 19.75′ high
- 18′ deep
- 7.7′ wide
- 3-5.25 bays
- 5-3.5′ bays, 3 are hidden
- White thumbscrews & brass thumbscrews for easy access
- 3 120mm low speed fans, one blowhole and 2 intake holes
- 220 cfm of total airflow!
- Rounded edges inside for cut-free hands
- Fan Holes are 100% machined punched – no sloppy cuts!
- Sliding motherboard tray
- Feet on the bottom of the case for stability
- 74cfm for each fan and 36 dba per fan
- ATX 2.01 and Pentium 4 compatible!
As you see the Blizzard also supports P4 systems, comes with feet to increase stability (especially very handy when you are at LAN parties and the kid next to you stumbles over your case ;)) and last but not least there are no
sharp edges in the case so you won’t lose body parts while installing stuff in it!
The test
Since I am an overclocker and I have this case lying around, I thought it would be a good idea to replace my current case with the Frozen CPU case …
Here is the list of hardware that I installed in the Blizzard:
- AMD 1.2GHz @ 1.45GHz
- Abit KT7A RAID
- 384MB Crucial P133 CAS 2 RAM
- Hercules Geforce GTS Ultra
- Accton 100mbit NIC
- Creative Soundblaster Live! Platinum
- AOpen 50x cd-rom
- Plextor 16/10/40 cd-rewriter
- Live!Drive
- 2x 30GB IBM drives in RAID0 config
- Of course … floppy drive :)
After throwing out all the hardware out of the old mofo, I was all set to install it in the Blizzard 360. After 30 minutes of installing videocard, NIC’s, hard drives, cdrom’s, … I was ready to give it a go! I was very happy to see that for the first time in a long time I was not using splitters for the power connectors! Why? The Enermax comes with a
LOT
of power connectors so I had plenty to connect all my stuff.
When I turned on the system I thought I would get noise equivalent to a Boeiing 747 Jumbo jet with all those fans inside. To my surprise, the Bllizzard produces a lot less noise then I was expecting. Of course it is not silent, but you don’t get that whining sound either. The only thing you hear is the airflow …
I think the low RPM Sunon fans have something to do with that because I only know one fan that is more quiet and that’s the Panaflo fans. But those don’t produce as much airflow as the Sunon ones so I think these fans are perfect
for the case.
Results
So what was the Blizzard capable of? The case temp was EQUAL to my room temperature at any given moment!
Running idle or running full load for hours did not increase the case temp by a single degree. This is very good because case temp is important if you are overclocking your video card. Next to that the fans blow directly on my video card (and the other cards too) so I knew it was getting a lot of cooling!
The cpu was cooled with a OCH Blizzard (yea same name other product) watercooler so the cpu was sitting at a very nice 37 degrees celcius under full load people! Isn’t that amazing? With a WBK38 attached to the cpu the temperature reached 45 degrees celcius, which is still a very good temperature for a cpu that is running at 1450MHz and producing around 88W of heat!
If I turned off the case fans the temperature went to 58 degrees celcius in minutes (!!) which prooves that the Blizzard is doing a very good job heh.
Aside from the cpu, I overclocked my GTS Ultra to 275/515 without any problems. Without the case coolers turned on, the card would produce glitches and crash after a while …
Conclusion
The peeps at Frozen CPU delivered a very good overclockers case with more then enough cooling power. It is loaded with cool features like a removable motherboard tray, non-cutting edges,thumbscrews and also the very nice 350W Enermax power supply. The only downside I could detect is the noise (it is the actual airflow you hear not the fans) but since it is an overclockers case I think you can not complain about that. Maybe Frozen CPU could install some sort of BayBus in the case just like Lian Li does with their cases. That way we could slow down the fans when we want to sleep next to our rig ;).
On my case the front bezel was also a bit annoying because of the design, but lucky for you a new revision of the Blizzard 360 was released just after I got the sample and it now comes with another bezel so that problem is out of the way too.
A small note: the power button is mounted on the top of the front bezel, which makes it very easy to turn it on while sitting on the ground! Most midi towers have the button in the middle which means you have to reach down every time
you want to turn it on …
Anyway, if you are looking for a good case with a lot of cooling power, I suggest you look at the Blizzard because there is no way you can buy a case with all these features for less then $185!! Think about it …
Good
- Very good power supply
- Thumbscrews and removable tray
- Cooling power
- Silent, well placed fans
Bad
- A bit noisy
- Front bezel (replaced in the new revision)