Windtunnel II Gamer Case
May 28th, 2001 | By Archive
Windtunnel II Gamer Case
Date
: 05/28/01 – 11:30:01 PM
Author
:
Category
: Cases
Manufacturer: Coolerguys
Price: $159.95 (without P/S)
Introduction
As the summer comes near, the temperatures tend to rise and in most cases this means that overclockers have to lower their speeds of their overclocked video cards, cpu’s, … in order to keep their rig stable. Only the peeps who own a nicely cooled case are able to keep running at extreme speeds all year long. Because we don’t want you guys to clock down, we present you a review of the Coolerguys Windtunnel II Gamer case, a well cooled high performance case with a lot of extra features to accomodate the gamers and LAN-party freaks out there! Got you interested? Good! Read on to find out how this case performs and if it is worth your hard earned ca$h …
The Specifications
Lets see what Coolerguys have to say about this beauty:
- Built in USB, Sound, Mouse and JoyStick Ports in front of the case!!!
- Two High Speed92×92x32mm, 55.1 CFM Sanyo Denki fans at 2900 rpms. These are for the intake.
- Three High Speed 60×60x10mm, 21.19 CFM Delta fans at 4800 rpms. These are for the exhaust.
- All fans are high pressure to prevent against back air pressure. Air is forced into the case and not back out the fans.
- +173 CFM of total Air movement!
- Four5 1/4 bays
- Three 3 1/2 bays
- 92mm removable intake filters.
- Laser cut 92mm and 60mm Fan Blow Holes!!!.
- Fans and grills pre-installed and ready to go.
- Completely rounded edges for safety
- Includes Thumb screws for easy panel removal
- Finger ring for easy side panel removal!
- Added Fan shims so fans are sealed up against the panels
- ATX style case
Pretty impressive specs if you ask me!! It is pretty clear that Coolerguys is aiming towards the gamer/LANner with their Windtunnel II Gamer. First of all there are the very handy frontpanel connections. You can plug your mouse (PS/2), speakers, USB and joystick devices right in front of the case. This saves a lot of hassles as you never ever have to dive under your desk to connect all those wires.
How does it work? Well there is a backplate with cables on it that you just plug into the connectors of your motherboard and soundcard.
From the backplate a cable (ONE cable … all the smaller cables are bundled so it doesn’t clutter the entire case) goes to the front of the case. Simple huh!
For the LAN attenders out there, Coolerguys has chosen to install two speakers in the case. Don’t expect too much from them as no soundcard out there can power these babies. If you want to mod them, you can get a pretty decent speaker setup in case you forgot or don’t want to drag your speakers everywhere. Pro Cooling has a nice ‘how to mod’ on setting up these speakers.
Like I already mentioned in the introduction of this review, temperatures tend to go up in the summer and when that happens some of us have to slow down their machine in order to keep their system stable. With this case you will never have to slow down your rig again because it comes with enough fans to blow your cat 15 feet away if she gets in front of the airflow ;).
The Windtunnel II Gamer comes with two 92mm intake fans in the side panel and three 60mm outtake fans (two in the top of the case and one in the back just behind the cpu). The 92mm fans are made by Sanyo Deki and spin at a silent 2900rpm while they still provide 55CFM to cool all your add-on cards and cpu. The three remaining 60mm fans are made by Delta, the manufacturer we all know because of their 7000rpm 60mm fans installed on some of the best performing coolers out there. Luckily for our ears (and neighbours), the Delta fans in the case are NOT the 7K rpm fans, but the more modest 4800rpm fans. All of this results in a cooling power of 173CFM which will be more than enough to keep everything
cool
.
Of course Coolerguys installed removable & washable dust filters on all intake fans so dust won’t be a problem. To prevent your fingers from being chopped off, all fans come with grills. Did I mention all blow holes are laser cut? This means that they are perfectly round without and sharp pieces sticking out.
Because we all like to swap our hardware for newer, better and faster gear the Windtunnel II Gamer case comes with thumb screws for easy removal of the side panel. They even installed a finger ring to pull the side panel of!! What more can a man ask for heh?
Our review sample was equiped with a 400W Fortron power supply which performed very well and can handle a fully config with several hdd’s, fans, cdroms, and more. If you want this power supply, you have to add $79 to the retail price, but you can also get the case with a 300W or even a 450W Enermax (if the 400W doesn’t fullfil your needs …). For those who already own a good P/S there is an option to buy the case without a P/S.
Installing …
Installation couldn’t be easier … Open the box, pull out the case (wrapped with foam and other protective stuff to prevent your case from being damaged) install your system in it and you’re off. The fans, grills, (optional) power supply are preinstalled so you don’t have to worry about that.
Performance
To test the performance of the WTII Gamer, a system was installed inside and we took it along to a LAN party to test it in real circumstances.
System Setup
- AMD 1.2GHz Athlon @1.45GHz cooled by the GlobalWin WBK38
- Hercules GeForce GTS Ultra
- 256MB PC133 RAM
- Western Digital 20GB 7200rpm hdd
- Creative Soundblaster Live!
- AOpen 50x cd-rom
- 3.5′ floppy (?)
- Accton 100mbit NIC
- Coolerguys Wind Tunnel II Gamer case
- Windows 2000 + SP2 + VIA 4.31 + Detonator 6.50
Performance was very good as the case temp was around 1-3 degrees higher than the room temperature! That’s what I call good case cooling :). The processor was being kept at a nice 48 degrees celcius, which is pretty cool too concidering it is running 250MHz over specs and with a core voltage of 1.85v.
Because the intake fans blow directly over the cards, I could push my GTS Ultra higher than I could in a normal case. Since the video card is one of the most important parts of a computer (for a gamer anyway), this is a huge advantage.
The fans are setup perfectly, because the two intake fans blow directly onto the hottest parts of the computer: the cpu and the cards.
The hot air that comes from the cpu goes out directly through the back and the hot air that rises it taken out by the top fans. And last but not least your power supply also sucks air out of the case.
Conclusion
Coolerguys managed to bring us a very ‘cool’ gamers case that is priced well, has a lot of features that will be attractive to LANners, gamers and also to people who want swap hardware a lot.
Overclockers won’t be dissapointed either because there is plenty of cooling supplied by all the pre-installed fans. The downpart of all this cooling is of course the noise but you can’t have a silent case with a lot of airflow. Maybe Coolerguys could pre-install some sort of baybus system so you can set the speed of the fans depending on what you need. The connections in front of the case are very practical and easy to use. The speakers are a bit dissapointing to be honest, and I suggest using a headphone if you don’t want to carry your speakers to your LAN party. Apart from that, the Windtunnel II Gamer is an excellent case for little $$$. Go here to buy one!
Good
- A lot of airflow
- Front connectors
- Easy access
- Price
Bad
- Noise
- Speakers are not able to be used without extra amplifier :(
