Laptops are annoying. They are generally slower than desktops, come with less memory and smaller hard drives, and seem to overheat almost at a whim. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know what I would have done without my netbook when I was stuck at the Pittsburgh airport for twelve solid hours, but they are really more trouble than they are worth on their own. And don’t even get me started on the battery life. I was halfway through Zombieland somewhere over South Dakota when my battery suddenly died and I was stuck watching some sappy chick flick on those little Delta headrest screens. Thankfully, there were not sparkling vampires in it.
There’s not much we can do about the crappy batteries except buy extras, and the slowness usually costs hundreds of dollars in upgrades to get us to a happy place. There is, however, a simple way to keep your netbook or laptop from turning your legs into a hot iron griddle. They’ve been around almost as long as laptops themselves and have proven themselves time and again: Notebook coolers. From the ultra-compact foldaway ones to the gigantic models intended for those widescreen behemoths that people are using now, notebook coolers are everywhere. And they seem to get more inventive, more practical, and uglier by the minute.
The Coolermaster Choiix Air-Through Stash we’re reviewing today meets all that criteria, except the ugly part, and even gives you room to put in up to 500GB of storage. That’s right, you can take an old 2.5” SATA/SSD HDD (up to 500GB) and put it in this bad boy for nondescript data storage. All I can say is that it’s about time someone found a use for all that extra space on notebook coolers that didn’t involve some faux fur-lined drawer that’s just big enough to fit a USB stick. Here’s some more info before we get started:
Features
- Compatible with up to 15” Notebook Computers.
- Center silent 8 cm fan for efficient cooling.
- Compatible with up to 500G 2.5″ SATA II HDD & SATA II SSD.
- Innovative, convenient, and inexpensive way to expand your notebook HDD storage capacity.
- Integrated 3 port USB HUB for expanded connectivity.
- Power On/Off and data transfer LED indicator.
- Powered directly from notebook USB port.
- Hot-swappable and Plug and Play compatible – no driver installation necessary.
Specifications
|
||||||||||||||||
On the next page we take a close inspection…
So now you know. Out of the box it pretty much describes itself. Tapered from 2” at the top to less than 1” at the bottom for inclined use, the cooler itself has one fan positioned in the center for drawing heat directly from the vents that most notebook motherboards rest over. It comes with a single USB cable with dual standard male plugs on one end and a mini male plug on the other. This cable is intended to supply data transfer from the HDD as well as provide power to the cooler’s fan. I’m not excited about this, as this is using one single port to provide power to both the HDD, which can really use up the electricity if it’s not a solid state drive, and 12v power to the fan as well. Sounds like a potentially stressful situation in the long run, but time will tell on that one. If daisy chaining 172 different things to a USB port doesn’t hurt it, then this shouldn’t either. But since when do computers act the way they should?
The SATA connection for your 2.5″ hard drive
If you can open a battery pack for any electronic device, you can get to the hard drive dock on this cooler. With a little pressure it slides right off giving you full access to the dock. Simply slide a hard drive in and close it. There are also three other USB ports located on the back opposite the main port. These could be used for flash drives or just about anything else you wanted plug in. There is an included 12v DC power port, however, there is no power cord. So I guess it’s up to the consumer to find a cord that will work with this particular port. A power button on the side controls the fan and also has a bright LED to let you know things are working properly.
On the next page we begin testing…
I plan on testing this with a 500GB SATA HDD which I took out of a recently dismantled external enclosure. For the cooling test, I am going to use my Asus EEE 900a netbook. Here are the specs on that particular netbook:
- Asus EEE 900a Netbook
- Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB Hard Drive
- OS: Windows 7 (other Windows 7 articles here)
- 8.9” Display
- 1.6Ghz Intel Atom Processor
- 1GB DDR2 RAM
- 4GB SSD
Running Windows 7 is a task in itself for a low power netbook such as the 900a. On top of that, I am going to be running software to stress the system and heat things up a bit. I’ll be comparing temperatures with and without the Choiix cooler. Upon placing my netbook on the Choiix’s surface, I realized that there was no build in grip pad on the cooler. Were it not for my Asus’ built-in grips, I would be holding it in place the whole time. Many portable PCs these days don’t have integrated grips, so this might be a problem for some. Also, the slant of the cooler wasn’t exactly comfortable for my style of typing, causing my wrists to cramp up after less than a minute of using it. Thank Zeus I’m not writing this review on it or I’d have carpal tunnel.
Top and bottom of the notebook cooler
I stressed my system using Sandra without the use of the cooler. The resulting temperature was a steady 63 degrees Celsius during full load, without cooling. I let the netbook cool down and turned on the Choiix. I immediately noted how loud the fan was. Not jet engine loud, but louder than an 80mm fan should be. The most likely cause is a lack of anti-vibration gaskets on a fan that is set in a mostly hollow plastic enclosure. The result would be like talking putting an ear bud inside an empty peanut butter jar. It’s going to amplify the sound and bring about an exaggerated amount of noise.
A closeup of the cooling fan and hard drive hood
Anyway, after turning on the fan I started up Sandra again and ran the stress test. I came away with a temperature drop of three degrees, with a final temp of 60 degrees Celsius. Not a huge drop, especially with the amount of noise this thing was generating. I also noticed that, by feel, there wasn’t a lot of air pressure coming from underneath the cooler. It was flowing, but the pressure was minimal. I’m sure with a different fan, something more advanced than a standard bearing fan, there would have been a much more impressive temperature drop.
And now for the grand finale. The data transfer test. Okay, it’s not going to be that grand, but it’s part of the Choiix tour, so we have to check it out. Using HD Tach 3.0, I ran a Long Bench test with 32Mb zones. It took about 15 minutes and gave a speed of 28.4Mbs, which is about as much as you can expect from USB 2.0. It would take a little while to transfer large files to and fro, but watching movies or accessing data would be a snap.
In conclusion, I have to say I was a little disappointed with the main goal of the cooler… the cooling. Sure, it can store efficient amounts of data, but what good is that if it’s not accomplishing its main goal? You can buy an external enclosure that would do the same thing and take up less space. It does keep your hardware off your legs, resulting in less of that “burning sensation” that we tend to get during long computing periods. It is my experience that notebook coolers really don’t cool all that much, but do lift your laptop up from soft surfaces that clog proper ventillation. The Choiix Air-Through Stash is no exception as it doesn’t provide much effective cooling, but does expand the features of your notebook. Essentially, I have to give this one a thumb up for innovation and a thumb down for being poorly thought out and not having the foresight to use a decent fan and some gaskets.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||