You may have seen fan and case accessories that continue to operate case fans after the computer shuts down. Your computer’s processor may continue to radiate heat during shutdown (when the system fans have shut off), leaving your processor unprotected. Vendors claim these units prevent overheating of the processor by running the system fans (and continuing to disipate heat) after the computer has shut off. Little timid to buy one? Well join the crowd. Today I had the chance to review one of Evercool’s Gt-365 Extended Cooling System (ECS) provided by Evercool.
Package and contents
The packaging is original, but the graphics are very busy. The GT-365 is centered at an angle resembling a dicast Hot wheel toy, complete with colored headlights and taillights. The package’s graphics depict a city scene with the unit on a virtual cardboard road. Nicely done. Operation and product descriptions have been incoprporated on the packside of the packaging, with color illustrations. Timing and voltage specifications are also listed with the product features, and are listed below
- LED will be “green when computer is on, “red” when the computer is off.
- This device is connected to the 5V connector from the power supply of ther computer. Due to this, the RPM of the cooling fan will be slightly slower than usual.
- Being connected to the 5V of the power supply, the device will extend DC fan to operate for 5 additional minutes after computer shutdown
- Unline contentional cooler that will shut off once the computer has been turned off, this device will further reduce CPU temperature.
- Please make sure that all the cable and joints are properly connected
The inside of the GT-365 package includes a 20+4 pin ATX power extension (with 2 pin power header), two 3-pin to 3-pin fan extension headers (12 inches in length), a piece of double sided sticky mounting foam, and the GT-365 unit itself. The instructions are printed on the backside of the packaging graphics, with photographs and color illustrations. It is very easy to read and follow along with the pictures…
Installation
Installation is simple and quick. Installatin the GT-365 takes roughly 15 minutes from start to finish. The unit is clearly marked on both sides where the connectors go, 2 slave fan ports on one side and 3 on the other (2 fan connectors and a power connector coming from the motherboard lead). The connections are tight, and once made may require a bit of pressure to remove them from the unit, so they will not fall out on their own. The only question is where to place it? Double sided tape is included to mount the unit just about anywhere – you can hide it behind other components or leave it out in the open for all to see!
Switching the power supply on illuminates the red LED on the top of the unit, and turns on the two slave fans. The connected fans rotate noticably slower than normal (moving about half the normal airflow), but are also much quieter. Once the computer is actually powered on, the GT-365’s status LED changes from red to green and acts as a passive fan hub. At this point the fans rotated at their normal speed, apparently switching over to the normal full-voltage power source, and providing normal airflow. When the computer is shut down the red led illuminates again and the fans slow to about half and ran for about 5 minuts (5min 4 seconds to be precise) and then the unit turns off and the fans and the led went out. On an air cooled system the running fan would allow he CPU heat sink to continue to remove built-up heat from the CPU.
On a side note:
Before I conclude this review I would like to make my suggestions and comments about this product. With a water-cooled system this really would not be a necessary product, unless you used it like I did, pushing air across the mosfet heat sinks and the rear case fan to evacuate warm air from the case. Those using air-cooling will find this product to be a good investment, being that air-cooled heatsinks are still warm when the computer is shut down. Otherwise this heat will linger until the heatsink can naturally cool to room temperature, which could take 10 minutes or longer. This unit allows for a faster cool-down process for such a critical component.
I was originally looking into this product on a SLI video card setup. Being that video cards can be the warmest components in a system they would benefit from having a GT-365 in-line with the heat sink fans. But it was difficult to find an adapter to convert 3-pin to 2-pins and vice versa. Adding these extra cables would add 4 header cables to the unit and make it a very interesting and cost effective cooling investment.
Conclusion
This is a great product when used for the right application. It may not be very practical for a water-cooled system, but that is no reason to mark it down. With this type of system the unit could be used on the rear case fans to draw out extra case heat when the computer is shut down, and does a great job at that. In an air cooled application this product does a great job at removing excess heat from the processor heatsink, or any other target component. We would like to thank the good people at Evercool for providing the GT-365 for review.
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