One part case, one part cooler, eight parts awesome

Posted 05/09/2007 at 12:32pm | by David Murphy

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Mmm. That's the noise I made upon receiving a huge package from CoolIT and Silverstone this past week. Not just because of the contents -- a sweet, sweet system, featuring CoolIT's new Boreas cooler, packed into a TJ07 case -- but because the damn thing weighted nearly as much as I do, I swear. Getting that thing onto a Labs bench reminded me of Homer and the Stone of Triumph. Not fun.

That said, there is a heckuva lot of cooling power in this monstrosity. Unfortunately, eager enthusiasts aren't going to get the same goodies I played with -- two 8800 GTX cards, nestled atop an EVGA nForce 680i SLI motherboard, with an Intel QX 6700 processor fueling the entire deal. CoolIT and Silverstone are only going to be selling the case and cooler combination. While the Boreas will come with all the fixins' to cool your CPU and two video cards, like a bad college party, you'll be responsible for providing your own... entertainment. BYO parts?

Need a space heater? The case comes with an exhaust hole on each side, which spits out quite the warm air when the Boreas is cranked up to 100% operating power.

Opening the case leaves me with one question: where to begin? Cooler? Enclosure? Sticker? I'll start with the case, Silverstone's TJ07 model. As you can see, this little guy is a wonder of practical design. The power supply rests comfortably below (and out of the way of) the system's parts, with a nice little hole for practical cable management. I love the addition of two fans right in front of the hard drive bays; while Maximum PC cooling tests have shown that airflow overkill isn't necessary for the drives, I'd rather have too much than too little. The fans are a wee loud, but compared to the Boreas at full-speed. Well. At that point, extra fan noises hardly make an audible dent.

Unlike this writer's, the basement of the TJ07 case features a healthy dose of airflow. Begone, foul heat!

I also like how the PCI cards are not only screwed in place at the case's exterior, as is customary, but that you can actually lock them in place on the opposite side as well. It's a nice, extra measure of stability for those of us who turn a skeptical eye to the increasingly larger video cards hitting the market. Less component jiggling is great, 'far as I'm concerned.