Nextherm ICS 8200

In this day and age of cooling, you generally have either air cooling or water cooling.

In this day and age of cooling, you generally have either air cooling or water cooling. If you’re really serious about your cooling you’ll give refrigeration units a go. If that’s the case (ha! pun!) then right off the top this slick, black, beauty is probably something you might like to consider -- it’s a rather nifty Peltier system and case all in one.
 
Design-wise, the interior of the case has four spots for 5.25in drives and two for 3.5in hard drives. That is a bit of a disappointment, really. If this case is aimed at the enthusiast, as is more commonly the situation, then we tend to appreciate our hard drive space a little more than the optical drives. Even if you’re an optical drive enthusiast, you’re not going to have more than two or three drives unless what you have in mind is a burner server. In which case, why the hardcore ambient cooling? Hard drives tend to output a great deal more heat than burners. That said, it likely comes down to how the case is cooled, as this uses a bit of power.
 
Basically the concept is to cool down the inside ambient temperature, thus producing an overall cooler running machine. How it cools is clever, yet simple. This isn’t actually a proper refrigeration unit (trust us, this is a good thing), so no blazingly loud compressor, however it does have a similar effect. Not on the ears, but on the temperature.
 
Though not nearly as loud as a compressor, it does have some noise to it. Through a perforated vent at the front, a 3400rpm 80mm fan draws in air from outside the case and passes it over the copper heatsink inside. This is a double-sided heatsink, with another set of fins underneath.
 
Lodged between the two is a thermoelectric plate that changes the air to a cooler state by essentially sucking the heat out of it. The fan then blows the cooler air inside the case and another barrel fan under that blows the heated air out the otherside on the base.
 
All this can be monitored and controlled via the nifty control panel on the front of the case. There’s an option to easily flick the air-con off when the need arises and it’ll simply use the intake fan like any ordinary one.
 
As has become an acceptable standard for cases, everything about this case screams tool-less. The case sides, all the drives, all seven of its expansion slots, the rear 80mm exhaust and even the front panel pop out without so much as a huff.
 
Underneath the compressor where the exhaust grill is located, there is a fin directing the used air to either side of the case so as to remove any stagnant pockets of warm-air under the case. There is also a grill directly opposite at the top, however this doesn’t have a fan on it.
 
To keep the sound down, this relies on passive heated-air finding its way out. If needed, a fan can still be mounted here, with four holes drilled to suit an 80mm fan.
 
With 120W being used up by the thermoelectric unit, that leaves you merely 340W to play around with, probably the reason as to the lack of additional hard drive spaces. As such, this would make a pretty decent platform for a gaming rig.
 
Weighing in at a grand 15.5kg, this is one heavy box. Carting it around to LAN parties might prove to be quite the muscle builder, but there’s no doubt that this is a supremely sexy case for anyone serious about cooling.