Barebones PC Cooling Tower: A Showy Case From Koolance

Mini Fans Versus Heat Sink Hulk

The pump is located inside the heat sink. Because of its miniature format, it only has a low pump capacity.

Some striking features are the minute fans which are supposed to ensure the perfect cooling of the heat exchanger: A normal CPU fan, such as you would find on most basic cheap and cheerful PCs, absorbs more power than all three of these fans put together. We measured a power input of 0.64 Watt per fan, which yields a total power of 1.92 Watt. And this is supposed to efficiently cool a huge heat sink measuring approx. 35 cm in length and 18.5 cm wide? Weighing some 3 kg, it is also on the heavy side. At this stage, we soon came to the conclusion that there are some serious design issues! How are three mini fans that produce an extremely low air flow supposed to cool a volume of water of around 2 liters?

Using Water To Cool The Power Supply Unit

The pump is located inside the heat sink. Due to its miniature format, it only has a low pump capacity.

With most power supply units, the integral fan cools the components with an additional blast of air. Koolance has removed this fan and foolishly replaced it with a cooling element for water cooling. As a result, the heat builds up beneath the tower, thereby generating additional heat inside the case. Numerous modern motherboards are fitted with a passive cooler, which relies on air flow. Neither the standard fan for the power supply nor the passive cooler for the motherboard are provided in this case.