Cooling

All of the included active cooling in the MCE601 is situated around a small area of the case.


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In this shot, we see the two included 60mm fans fixed to the back plate, and the single 80mm fan located inside the included power supply. All three of these fans are designed to exhaust hot air out of the back of the case and, in turn, create a low pressure inside the case. This vacuum-like effect should draw in cooler air through the various sets of ventilation holes cut out of the top and bottom panels of the chassis. The main sets that we identified are situated above the CPU, above the video card area, and beneath the hard drive cage.


Click to enlarge.

Looking at the underside of the top panel, we can see a shroud designed to pull in cooler air directly towards the top of the CPU so that the CPU fan will use that cooler air to cool the processor and surrounding components.

Internal Design Construction
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  • Dmitheon - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link

    Couple of quick additions. Not to sound like an advertisement, but pcalchemy is offering a customized version of this case (in addition to the standard one), where they remove the PSU and add an adapter which allows any MicroATX PSU to be used. It's a bit cheaper than the normal version. Also, a thanks to the site for review HTPC cases. Many of the regular HTPC sites don't actually do thermal & sound measurements, and this stuff is useful. My only other hopes that you guys can take a look at some of the newer offerings from Uneed and Silverstone, particularly Uneeds X11 and X15e, and Silverstone's LC14M.
  • yelo333 - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link

    Same issue as #3.

    FF 1.0.3, and Gentoo stable.
  • Netopia - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link

    I don't think that there are any other graphics on that page. There SHOULD be (it does say click to see full sized) but there aren't.

    Photography also needs to be better. In an all black environment like inside a case, one should use some sort of bounce flash to fill the shadows and give some contrast so that people can tell what they are looking at.

    Other than that, nice review.
  • Aquila76 - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link

    #3 - Same deal on XP and FireFox, too. Maybe the link got wiped when the article was posted?
  • sideshow23bob - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link

    Hey I had trouble viewing the thermal data. I assume there was something more than an picture of the internal case +mobo, b/c that's all I saw when I scrolled over it. I'm currently on a friend's Mac and using safari as a browser, so let me know if it's my issue or on all computers. Thanks.
  • Googer - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link

  • Zepper - Thursday, May 5, 2005 - link

    Guys are slipping... Typical Ahanix - all show, no go. I have never seen one yet where even half the attention paid to the external appearance was paid to internal details and modern conveniences. No vibe dampers for the drives or fans. Less than 1/4" of added height would accomodata a stanard PSU. And it goes on and on...

    .bh.

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