Altech's latest NRG build is a little box of blue awesomeness - say hello to the Frost i5.
Small form factor systems used to be cute. They used to be those quaint little boxes that would be stuck behind some billboard screen, or tucked inside an ATM, or powering a fast food register. Slowly they evolved from humble beginnings - though you'll still find primate SFF systems in the usual places - and today the barriers of entry to the small-sized high-powered computing world are placed low enough to limbo under.
Such is the system that Altech sent us: the NRG Frost i5. Inside its ITX-sized frame are some serious computing components that nail the Frost determinedly to the enthusiast post. The SilverStone SG05 is the case of choice here, a basic cube shape that packs an internal 600W PSU, plenty of power for any future upgrades. This is unintuitively located at the front of the chassis behind the fascia, and though the power cable connects at the rear of the case, it's passed internally via an extension cable to the unit itself.
The middle of the case boasts the teensy GIGABYTE H55N-USB3 motherboard and Intel Core i5 760 processor, cooled by a decent-but-not-astounding Zalman CNPS8000A heatsink. There's plenty of speed for most computing tasks, and the 4GB of DDR3 should be enough room for any program likely to be run. Rounding out the specs is a single NVIDIA GTX460 card, which is factory overclocked to 725MHz. It's a nice mid-range balance of components that neither surprises nor causes worry, with the two included blue LED strips giving it a touch of gamer flair.
Performance in games is exactly where we would expect it to be given the specifications, and the Frost has just enough grunt to play Crysis on High settings. With game settings tweaked it's not a stretch to see this as a seriously portable LANning rig. It returns a P16222 in 3DMark Vantage, a respectable result, though the Frost doesn't have enough power to run Lost Planet 2 at our settings, chugging along at 23.8 frames per second.
Performance isn't the be-all and end-all, however, and the Frost has a few annoying quirks. The first of these is the 1TB hard drive, which causes the entire system to vibrate when being accessed - and the desk below in the process. We noticed a lot of heat being generated by the power supply when under load, causing the fascia to become noticeably warm, and the single 180mm Air Penetrator fan mounted to the top of the case isn't powerful enough to get enough air in to cool the entire system. It's also quite intricately cabled inside; though mismatching SATA cables and multicoloured power supply cables do detract from what would otherwise be a neat build.
In all the Frost presents good value in a small space, and if you can live with the vibration and noise, it's worth a look-in.
Blow up, or suck up?The whole system is cooled by a single 180mm fan, naturally pointed inwards to the case, forcing the air out the vents in the side. Though this provides good processor cooling (being located directly underneath the fan), it starves the graphics card of easy airflow and makes its fan spin harder to be cool; requiring a 69 per cent speed to be at 63 degrees, generating 70dBA. We flipped the fan around, drawing hot air from within the case and venting upwards, which dropped temps to 59 degrees, the speed to 63 per cent and the noise to 67dBA - though processor heat at load increased by 12 degrees! If you prefer low noise then feel free to swap the fan around; but for overclocking and performance we suggest you leave it alone.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012