Hardware Arctic Cooling Silentium T2 Eco 80

so basically, buy it, spend lots of time and a fair amount of money on making it something else, and THEN it'd be what you want.

Why not just buy the case you want?

This is a shame, i liked the Silentium T1 series, but never really got up close, now i can see that £50 is a bit steep for this case, had it been £35-40 might have been worth it. For my rig and budget, the £15 case i have now will suffice, and given £50 is my upper limit, its gonna have to be a bit better than this for me to want it anymore.

 

Having read all of Joe's other case reviews I don't feel he has an elitist attitude, he bashes the Lian-Li's just as much as this case. If you're used to a reviewer going "omg this case roxurs" then you're going to the wrong site. Joe does a good job of showing this case as it stands if you just install a system in it. If we're going to start to have to modify our components to fit a case then you can't have an objective review that allows comparison between different cases.

Anyways it doesn't matter who the case is designed for, it doesn't do a very good job at what it's marketed to be: quiet and cool.

 

I own an Arctic Cooling Silentium Pro case for a year. (The one reviewed here is the same with a different look and a better PSU) It was silent, all components were cool and the price was great. Six months ago I decided to overclock & watercool and I used the hard disk compartment to fit my water pump + tank. The back of the case allows for easy installation of a 2x90 radiator. The 500 watt psu (again I repeat that the PSU of the Eco 80 is even better) didn't have the problem to handle the following:

8800 GTS overclocked
Core2 4400 overclocked
2 hard disks in RAID
4 GB ram
a bluray writer
a cd/dvd writer
a front panel to count water levels and temperature
a wireless card
Laing pump
2x90mm sharkoon fans

People look at the size of my case and can hardly believe that everything can fit there. It's possible because of the PSU placement at the front bottom.

It's a great case, combined with a great PSU at a price that's less than half to what you would normally pay.

Joe should give it a second shot.

 

I'd be interested in seeing a picture of that mod if you'd care to post a pic or two of the insides and out.

 

It's a fabricated standard. It's a Faux copy of the 80Plus and the fact you can whip the fan off and stick your hand in very easily means it's dangerous too. We had a PSU engineer in last week and he laughed at it, claiming it didn't even meet EU regulations - that because it was in a case they have probably got round it.

The build quality is atrocious, the plastic is awful, the internal design lacks a lot of features and the door design is nasty.

We appreciate your comments and please feel welcome to stay! (we want PICS!! please ) but compared to what else we've seen it's the bottom of the barrel material.

 

meh, get some cheap(er) placstic and pay about the same to have it machined into something decent, and get a decent PSU which won't ultimately fry your machine (it may be efficient but it still fluctuates like there's not future for it)

 

http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hydro1.jpg

this is taken 5 months ago, before I decided to go with the 2x90 radiator.

 

Bluephoenix, I have no fluctuation problems with the PSU. I have not measured it, but I do trust the manufacturer's claims of conformance to the 80plus standard.

I have recommended the case to 2 students of mine (4 months ago) and they have reported zero problems. In fact they are both amazed at how silent it is.

 

I don't like its appearance. Period. It's like an obese external HDD.

 

I'm just shocked you'd choose to watercool and spend money on such a nasty feeling and plastic case, despite other problems. If I had the cash to watercool I'd be looking to do it a much better case. A Cosmos or a Stacker for instance.

 

"Nasty feeling" and most of your review is purely a point of view. But noise, power efficiency and temperatures are not. You didn't measure noise and power efficiency (statements like "quiet, but" or "we had a PSU engineer in last week and he laughed at it" are not substitutes for measurements).

You did measure temperatures though.

Specifically you found that at 22 degrees ambient the CPU stresses up to 60 degrees. On the Cosmos case that you recommend here, at 23 degrees ambient, the CPU stresses up to 45 degrees. That's a delta of 16 degrees in favor of the Cosmos.

Such a variation of temperatures is very difficult to achieve on passively cooled components; for example, this comparison http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling/showdoc.aspx?i=2336&p=18 shows how small the variations can be.

But to measure a delta of 16 degrees on an *actively* cooled component is impossible, unless one blocks all air vents in a case. Or unless one is mistaken.

 

It's interesting how, when I read a bad review on a component I know and have tested extensively, it enables me to judge not the component - but the reviewer.

I have used two of the previous model of these cases (with 370W 85%+ efficient PSU) for two years with zero issues. They are still in daily use, one in a studio, one in a front room. I know from personal experience that almost all the comments of the reviewer are poorly informed or based in simple ignorance, this either technical, practical or thermo-dynamic.

It makes me doubt the authenticity of the site as a whole.

It annoyed me enough to sign up just to be able to post this comment.

Now, farewell. I'll look for somewhere where I can respect the reviews.