Date: February 18th, 2007
Article by: Karl Van der Walt (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Spire
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PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND TESTING
Unfortunately, my motherboard has its power connector right in the middle of the board and the front panel power connector makes a real mess of things. This shouldn't be an issue for those of you with side mounted power connectors. Aside from that little mess I was able to hide my wires easily owing to the numerous holes in the motherboard tray.
Well, there it is, all put together and powered up. As you can see the lights are really pleasant and not over bright. The lights really help accent the front of the case and provide a pleasant visual on an otherwise plain exterior. I find the design pleasing although the lack of a window may make it less appealing to the more gaming orientated builders.
Lets have a look at the all-important cooling performance of the Swirl. I will be comparing the results against my old generic windowed case pictured bellow. The case has a single 120mm LED side inlet fan.
Tests are performed at a constant temperature of 20c for both cases. Idle temps were taken after one hour of system inactivity and load temps were recorded at their highest during an hour of 3dMark 05 and Aquamark testing in conjunction with two instances of prime 95.
Some very decent numbers, particularly on the GFX and case fronts. My CPU HSF cools very well so I wasn't surprised that the idle temperatures were the same. I also suspect that the mess of the power connection cables may be partly to blame for the identical scores here. Overall these are some very good numbers for a system of these specifications; in fact this is the coolest this system has ever run.
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