Post
by sciberpunkt » Thu Feb 22, 2007 8:08 am
I bought the original TT Big Typhoon a while back before the VX came out. The two things that drew me to it were the huge heatsink and standard 12cm fan that I could replace if the need ever arose. Well, the need arose as the fan was DOA. I replaced it with a TriCool rather than deal with a NewEgg RMA.
As the article says, the height is misrepresented and, when installed in the ThermalTake Bach case, airflow is nearly blocked due to lack of space between the fan and case cover. In fact, it was so close, I couldn't get the case cover back on without removing the Big Typhoon's grille first.
The Bach has a small 7cm vent at the top but it's not centered over the CPU and covers about 2/3rds of the fan. It still cools the CPU fine according to SpeedFan with my weak AMD64 3500+ single core keeping the temps below 45C under 100% load, but I'll have to come up with a better solution when I swap the CPU out for a higher-end dual core one. I'll probably end up making a 12cm hole on the case cover and install a grille of some sort.
One "modification" I did was to reverse the direction of the fan so that it blows the CPU heat up through the heatsink and out of the case rather than down and into the case. It seems to be a little quieter this way and keeps the CPU just as cool along with keeping the case temps much lower. I suppose I lose some airflow across the MB that way, but my ABIT AN8 has the northbridge cooled with a separate heatpipe and heatsink at the back of the case and the NB temps aren't any different with the fan blowing in either direction.