Super Flower 201S Aluminum Tower w/ Windows

Review by Paul Machado on May 27, 2002

Product Supplied By: A-pro Innovation
Retail Price: $175 USD

Case Performance:

Now when you think of how well a case "performs" you may get somewhat confused on what is meant. Well a case's performance to me is how well it cools the entire computer and how effective the cooling is. With this case having a total of 4 fans, 2 pulling air in and 2 sucking air out and being aluminum the cpu, motherboard and case temperatures should be lower than a general steel case with the same components. So first off lets go through some general case cooling theories.

In the "Photoshopped" picture above the arrows indicate the direction of airflow in this case. As mentioned before the two fans at the front of the case pull cool air into the case while the two at the rear of the case exhaust the warm air out of the case. In theory the prevent "hotspots" inside of a case the same amount of air being pulled into the case should be equal to the amount of air being exhausted. In this case that is what is occurring. What this also does is prevent large amounts of dust from getting trapped inside of the case because of a negative pressure zone.

Now the 4 fans in this case are not the only things helping to keep this case cool. The aluminum alloy in which the case is constructed from is acting like a heatsink itself. Aluminum which is a better conductor of heat than metal or iron is helping in the process of cooling this case as well. Here is a diagram to help explain this theory. The arrows indicate the direction of heat transfer. Since the entire case is made from aluminum heat is dissipated throughout the entire case.

To help illustrate how much better an aluminum case transfers more heat than a steel or iron case I have attached a graph below showing the differences in temperature. The following temperatures were taken using a temperature bay with the probe placed in the center of each case. The following components were used in each case and the temperatures were taken while the computer was idle and under a full load.

System Specs:

The following temperatures were taken when the computer was idle for 1 hour.

As you can see, the aluminum case provides a much lower case temperature than a steel or iron case. Lets now have a look at the temperatures after one hour of Quake 3, 3DMark 2001, and Sisoft SANDRA Burn in Wizard.

Once again the Super Flower 201S provides lower case temperatures than the steel (Hellstorm 3000) and iron (Antec SX1080B) cases even at a full load. As you can see form the above two charts it is obvious that the Super Flower 201 Aluminum case cools much better than a steel or iron case.

Let's now move onto the final part of this review: The conclusion.