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Review of a completely No Noise case
The Zalman TNN-500A is the first case in which you can build a fully fledged PC without using any fans. That's right, no fans at all, not even in the PSU. We review this revolutionary product.
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Our top features:
Having no fans is great of course :-)
We do also like:
Overall Build Quality: Solid, unshakeable, impeccable quality build. Even the Thermaltake (Xaser III) and the Coolermaster ATCS 710 (which has been described as a Sherman tank) look flimsy in comparison. This case has presence. It's imposing. It weighs the better part of 40 KGs when fully built, and the volume of space it occupies could be used for a small housing complex (or at least a couple of standard ATX midi tower cases).
Castors: Highly thought out, well-designed implementation. This case can take the combined weight of both my mothers-in-law (only kidding!), and according to Zalman each foot can support a ton. Looking at the castors/feet you'll have no doubt that this is indeed possible.
Having the wheels is of course a useful feature on this heavy a case but what if you want to put the case on a desk? You don't want to take the chance of it rolling off the table onto your toes. That's where you rotate the control on each foot to extend the feet down. The wheels then lose contact with the table and your PC is rock stable on the four very solid feet. (If you do have a wobble it's because you haven't extended all the feet to the same length, it's easily corrected).
Power Supply: The power supply is the noisiest part in most PCs. It's the main route for hot air being pumped out. Not only to PSU fans tend to be a lot larger than other fans in a PC but they also tend to create a lot more noise. Building a PSU without a fan is a technical achievement itself but Zalman has gone even further. The TNN-500A PSU is only 300 watts but bear in mind that you need a lot less power in this PC as you have no fans. However, the 300 watts it does provide
Handles: Strong, sturdy design of pewter finish handles adds that little sparkle to the top of this all black case. And it's a nice touch. The fact that there are two handles suggests that the case never really was designed for a single person to lift. However, it doesn't take an Arnold Schwarzenegger to get the case off the ground and on to a table. A reasonably fit adult could probably do it. Having two handles rather than one does make it easier.
Versatility: Heat transfer pipes connect the graphics card and CPU heat sinks to the blue heat sink blocks that are screwed down at various locations on the inside of the case. There are several sets of holes for you to screw these blocks into. The advantage in being able to move these blocks around is that you can use pretty much any motherboard in the TNN500A. The location of the processor varies widely from one make and model of motherboard to another and, irrespective of where on the motherboard your CPU is you should be able to find a location on the case body where you can position the blue heat sink blocks so that the neat transfer pipes can connect properly from the CPU heat sink to the heat sink blocks.
Door hinges and clasps:
The clasps that hold the doors shut have a nice "clunk" to them and they even have some limited adjustment to increase/decrease the holder wheel play. The hinges are solid and more than capable of taking the weight of the two side plates - Zalman calls them the left and right heat sink plates.
And the best features are the ones that do not add much to the look of this case but are the most important components for a completely fan free case:
The heat pipes that transfer heat away from the CPU and AGP card
The clever design of heat sink blocks to help in that transfer
The innovative use of heat pipes to transfer heat to the heat sink blocks
The amazing body of the case, with it's radiator fins, ventilation holes and thick aluminium construction that work together to dissipate all the heat transferred to it.
The first image shows a heat sink on the processor with five heat pipes coming out of it and screwed into the heat sink blocks on the case body.
The lower picture shows the heat pipes from the graphics card connected to a different set of heat sink blocks on the case body which together provide 50 watts of heat dissipation. Note that the two heat pipes here (which are included as standard) won't provide adequate cooling for anything above a GeForce 5700 Ultra 128/256 MB or a Radeon 9600XT. For any cards above these you need an optional extra two heat pipes which can be ordered from your case supplier. Zalman do however provide a range of different sized heat sink blocks to fit onto the GPUs of most standard AGP graphics cards.
If you are using a Matrox Parhelia card, workstation graphics card like the Quadro, FireGL, Oxygen, Wildcat and similar note that the processor on the graphics card (GPU) could be substantially larger than the ones on most GeForce FX and ATI Radeon cards. It will be up to you to ensure that whatever heat sink block you fit to the GPU completely covers the GPU itself or you will risk burning it out.
The cooling fins on either side of the case to dissipate that heat.
What we don't like about the case
Safety and security: Please note that the below comments are based on the initial prototype of the case and actual shipments to customers may not suffer the same issues.
Safety: The case looks like it's shut but despite a door both at the front and the back the guts of the case are more accessible than in any other design of case. You don't need a screwdriver, you don't even need to take the side panel off to access the RAM, PCI slots and CPU! Unlike any other PC case we've seen - when you open a door (front or rear) you can insert your hand right through the case to the other end of the machine.
A child could open a door (either at the front or rear) simply by push-clicking the door open. He can then put his hand deep into your PC, pull out the power cable going to your hard disk, unseat your graphics card, pull your RAM out and even unplug you from the power supply. You'll try to power your PC up later and be left tearing your hair out because you can't find why it's not booting. There are other implications for internal components being so easily accessible, especially by kids. Drink spills reaching the motherboard accidentally, sticks poking your PCI cards and chocolate ice-cream being smeared over your RAM are all things the parent of a two year old will have nightmares about. For the older kids - this is a convenient place to hide your unwanted broccoli :-). If you're missing your hamster or pet mouse have a look inside this case first. It's a nice warm place to hide. And it can't be locked.
Hard disk attachments: Maybe we were just unlucky but we've had no joy with this. The idea of incorporating the ZM2-HC1 hard disk heat sink with the TNN-500A case was a good one but we are not particularly excited about the ZM2-HC1. It comprises two metal plates that fit either side of the hard disk and a set of pipes that connect from one plate to the other. This creates a larger surface area for heat from the hard disk to disperse. So far, so good. But the ZM2-HC1 connects to a case via a set of four very, flimsy rubber bushes (bottom, inset). We don't know whether it was just our unit or whether there is a design fault with these bushes but we had a problem. We set it up in a PC and before long the combined weight of the hard disk and the heat sink caused two of the bushes to break (visible to the left of the hard disk here) leaving the hard disk balancing on the other two and we doubt those would have lasted long. The ZM2-HC1 is definitely something that you wouldn't want to fit into a PC that you are trusting to a knock -it-about-and-bash -it-around courier. The normal rough handling PCs get at most couriers is bound to damage something this delicate. Poweroid will not be using this hard disk heat sink in PCs we build. Our couriers are better than most ...but they don't have an unblemished record. Fortunately, there are other 3.5" locations within the case that will take up to four/five hard disks. It's been pointed out to us that Zalman have a revision to this product coming out shortly in the form of the ZM2-HC2. This hopefully will not suffer the same shortcoming.
Security: The easy access to internal components does raise some security issues. We don't know why you'd leave this expensive a case in a less than secure environment but a thief could nick all four of your RAM modules in under ten seconds. And he doesn't even need to have any tools on him.
Cleaning: We haven't had to dust one of these babies down yet but if you're using this case in a dusty location it could take a while to wipe down all the fins. (Who said men don't think about all these things? :-)) The good news is that not having fans pumping air into and out of the case reduces the amount of dust that collects inside the PC.
One unmovable block: The centre CPU heat sink block (blue one to the centre top of the below image) can be relocated parallel to the motherboard but there aren't the screw holes to move the block closer to the motherboard. This may be an issue if you're using a motherboard which has a CPU located further away from the right edge of the board. The example in the picture here is a P4C800 Deluxe motherboard and as you can see the CPU heat sink is fairly close to the edge of the board. Zalman does provide a full list of motherboards that they have tried in this case. The manual lists about 90 motherboards that are "approved". These include cheap makes like Asrocks to expensive ones like Asus and several in-between, including the DFI LAN party (yeah, right ;-))
Packing: The packing could be a bit more robust. The external cardboard box seems sufficient to hold the empty case but it wouldn't be strong enough to ship a completed PC in.
The polystyrene blocks that go at the bottom and top of the case are brittle blocks and liable to break if the box is dropped thereby reducing the shock protection available to PC components like the hard disk. Fortunately, the case itself is like a bomb raid shelter
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