Another 126mm mid-tower HSF: Spire Verticool III
Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 4:44 pm
Add this to the Freezer 64 Pro and the Apack BTF80: I ordered one mid-week and it arrived this afternoon, 2 days later! OK, Iguana Micro is in Oregon. This HSF has been reviewed (see Google), so I'll skip the beauty shots and get to the stuff that interests SPCR folk.
The fan is in the middle, like the much larger Tuniq Tower. I'm one of the people who think that's a good place for a fan to be, if you need a fan. The 92mm fan is replaceable, as you'll see. And the mounting is symmetrical and can be mounted in any 90 degree direction. The HSF does bolt on from the bottom of the mobo, alas.
In this pic, I've removed the high-RPM ball-bearing fan and its shroud from the double copper fin stack:
Here I've installed a low-noise sleeve bearing low-RPM fan, using the black rubber screws that mounted the original fan - they proved to be re-usable. I had the blue equivalents ready had they been necessary:
Here it's all back together and ready for mounting, which I'll do in a couple of days when the rest of the case is ready. The bottom plate is at the upper right, and you can see the K8 mounting details clearly:
I'll be comparing its cooling to a Freezer 64 Pro modded to use a Scythe 100mm fan and now running at 550RPM in another PSI Solo 604 case with a 220mm fan on the left side panel. A 126mm HSF clears this fan with a tad over 0.2" to spare.
This new version of the Spire Verticool is similar to the Asus Silent Square except the Asus is a 141mm part - too tall to fit in my new case.
edit: correct HSF RPM from 800 to 550 - there is an 800RPM 100mm fan in my current case, but it's used to spot-cool the two HDDs, not the HS.
The fan is in the middle, like the much larger Tuniq Tower. I'm one of the people who think that's a good place for a fan to be, if you need a fan. The 92mm fan is replaceable, as you'll see. And the mounting is symmetrical and can be mounted in any 90 degree direction. The HSF does bolt on from the bottom of the mobo, alas.
In this pic, I've removed the high-RPM ball-bearing fan and its shroud from the double copper fin stack:
Here I've installed a low-noise sleeve bearing low-RPM fan, using the black rubber screws that mounted the original fan - they proved to be re-usable. I had the blue equivalents ready had they been necessary:
Here it's all back together and ready for mounting, which I'll do in a couple of days when the rest of the case is ready. The bottom plate is at the upper right, and you can see the K8 mounting details clearly:
I'll be comparing its cooling to a Freezer 64 Pro modded to use a Scythe 100mm fan and now running at 550RPM in another PSI Solo 604 case with a 220mm fan on the left side panel. A 126mm HSF clears this fan with a tad over 0.2" to spare.
This new version of the Spire Verticool is similar to the Asus Silent Square except the Asus is a 141mm part - too tall to fit in my new case.
edit: correct HSF RPM from 800 to 550 - there is an 800RPM 100mm fan in my current case, but it's used to spot-cool the two HDDs, not the HS.