Installation

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While there is no removable motherboard tray, there is plenty of space to work with.  The Sytrin ICS 8200 supports ATX and Micro ATX motherboards, however, it seems there is sufficient room for extended ATX motherboards as well.  Don't quote me on that though as I'm generally just going by the official specs of the product.

I particularly loved the tool-free system for the expansion cards.  It works very well and encountered no issues with it.  The only main issue I found with the interior of the chassis is that it only has support for two 3.5" drives.  That can be an issue from some users who have two hard drives and still use a floppy.  This is primarily because directly under the cage, is the AirCon unit itself.

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Now, one minor but very impressive feature with this case is just how easy it is to remove the entire front section of the chassis.  Unlike all the cases I've looked at, it has just one latch on the left side that locks the front section in place.  Yes, there is no need to remove any screws or mess with a bunch of lock tabs.  Just move the latch up to release the panel.  I hope to see this method implemented in a majority of other cases.

The Display

You will be in complete awe when you first power on the display.  Yes, it really does look this good.  I did my best with the pictures above to try and demonstrate.  There are a total of four temp sensors displayed, one of which will display once you run the AirCon unit in Snow Mode.  You can clearly tell what mode it is in by the large icons on the display.  This includes and OFF status, fan icon and snowflake icon.  There is a probe cleverly mounted directly in front of the chassis where the intake fan is located.  This is the sensor that provides the ambient temperature reading or "Tamb", according to the display unit.  It also features and alarm function, which I quickly found works well.  Apparently, when taking the whole front section off for pictures, I must have loosened one of the connectors.  The alarm (triangle) started blinking and the temp sensors would not display.  This also kept me from running it in Snow Mode, which basically turns the peltier unit on.  However, all was good after a quick check of all connections.

Finally, I took one short video of the display in action.  Note: Macromedia flash player required for playback of demonstration video below.  Click here to download.

video clip

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Performance

Before we take a thorough look at cooling performance, let's have a brief look at the test system specs used for review.

This particular board has some of the most accurate temp readings of any board I've used.  Where applicable, I will provide readings both from the motherboard and temp probes from the ICS 8200.  The available probes were used to measure CPU and case temperatures.  Results will be shown both idle and under load.  To load the system, we will use Sisoftware's SANDRA 2004 Pro. 

Two temp readings are provided.  One with the AirCon unit in "Fan Mode" and one with it on "Snow Mode".  Snow Mode actually activates the thermoelectric cooler for more efficient cooling.  Ambient temperature throughout testing was a steady 75ºF.

With the system idle after 30 minutes of operation, we see a one degree difference in case temps when the AirCon unit is activated.  However, there was a two degree differences in CPU temperature when going by the more reliable readings of the motherboard sensors.  I tend to not trust the readings from the probes as they are usually not accurate.  This goes for any LCD temp probes on any product.  That's why both readings were provided for comparison.

Now, under load, we see a three degree drop in CPU temperature when in Snow Mode.  Keep in mind that I'm using the massive XP-120 heatsink paired with a quality 120mm fan with thermal sensor.  This explains the significant difference as this fan will spin faster when things get a bit hot, provided you place the sensor is an appropriate spot.  Also note that the AirCon unit has an upward slope that helps direct airflow towards the CPU.

PSU performance

Whenever a thermoelectric cooler is used, it will certainly put a strain on your power supply.  That's why a quality PSU is required for such operation.  Fortunately, the ICS 8200 is bundled with a very impressive fully-sleeved unit.

To give you a good look at the impact, let's first take a look at the backlit analog power dial this case does sport.

You can see the slight impact when the AirCon unit is activated.  Now let's have a more detailed look using Motherboard Monitor.

**AirCon Fan Mode**

**AirCon Snow Mode**

As expected, we see slightly higher power consumption when the thermoelectric cooling unit is activated.  Also note that like the similar PAC 400 external model we reviewed a while back, it is recommended that you do not share the Molex connectors on the same lead with any other components.  To actually prevent this, the case already comes with its own lead (blue sleeved) already connected to the AirCon unit.

Next: Conclusions