I must confess to, like many technophiles, having an instinctive distrust for anything I perceive as being "low-tech". Therefore I admit to being more than a little sceptical when I first saw the 2CoolPC Plus. A big plastic scoop with a fan stuck in one end is, at first glance, hardly going to impress anyone who's been watching the "I can make a bigger heatsink than you" battle going on in the cooling game at the moment. In fact, I first mentioned it on the news page and in a rare opinionated moment :) I said I thought it looked dumb. Well watch what you say kids, because 2CoolPC contacted me and offered to send me one to review, in an attempt to change my hastily-formed opinion of it. Did they succeed? Let's see..

The unit itself is, as described previously, a big plastic scoop with a fan in one end. This fan is a "Top Motor" dual ball-bearing 80mm unit, fitted with a passthrough molex power connector. I couldn't find a CFM rating but it seems to be pushing a pretty decent amount of air around. There is a lower-rated unit available, called simply the "2CoolPC", which has a sleeve-bearing fan with presumably lower output. The basic principle of the unit is that it draws cooler air from low-front in the case and ejects it sideways onto the motherboard, cards and CPU's. A simple idea but useful - many overclockers spend time tweaking the airflow inside their cases and this makes it a no-brainer. As you can see in the photo below, only about 2/3 of the fan is feeding the duct, the rest blows the air further along the bottom of the case.

Installation is a snap - no more than a cursory glance at the included instruction sheet required. The manufacturers recommend sliding the unit up against the back of the case, presumably for best alignment with the motherboard. All their documentation shows the unit installed in a minitower - in my mid-tower you can see (photo below) the duct lines up with the AGP video card but in fact the air is ejecting pretty much directly at the CPU. This should be the same for any sized tower case as the motherboard is usually the same distance from the bottom. If you've got very wide cards in the lower slots of your motherboard it might be a squeeze to fit it into the case. I have an old ISA SB16 in this machine and the 2CoolPC was resting against it when the case was on.

Performance
I first tested it in a fairly typical gaming machine. A C400 overclocked to 600MHz at 2.3v on a Soyo SY-6VBA-133 , a Diamond Viper V770U at default clock and a single hard drive all inside a Macase K10 midtower. I tested with and without the case-front fan that comes with the Macase, with and without the 2CoolPC Plus in the case. I ran the Unreal Flyby with SETI in the background for 20 minutes and recorded the on-die temperature, the case temperature (as reported by the motherboard) and the temperature of the back of the video chipset (as reported by a Dick Smith remote temperature probe). The ambient temperature was about 24C for the duration of the tests.

I also tested the unit in my main workstation. This machine is a BP6-based dual Celeron C366 @ 572 unit with 4 HDD's, 2 CD-ROM's, an internal tape drive etc. This machine is used for general surfing, image and HTML editing but always has 2x SETI@HOME sessions running so it pumps out the heat. I have tweaked the airflow a fair bit, there is a cut-out front intake fan and a 100mm exhaust fan in the rear. It's a full-tower with a lot of devices and hence the internal cables are limiting airflow and starving the exhaust fan, I think, and as the Sydney summer beats down I have noticed the temperatures climbing and the occasional lockup. I added the 2CoolPC Plus into this unit, but raised it up (using an empty CD case on it's side as a spacer off the bottom of the computer case). This meant it was basically sucking air from the case-front fan and blowing it directly onto the intakes for the CPU fans. The CPU's have been running on average 2C cooler than before and the 2CoolPC Plus is staying in this box for now.

Conclusions
Well, despite what their website will tell you, the 2CoolPC is not a magical fix-all-problems device. It is VERY good at moving air from the front of your case and directing it at more needy parts of your system. Of course, if you're not getting good airflow into your case, then all you'll be doing is blowing hot air around. This is demonstrated by the improvement in performance by adding a case-front fan as well. However, as shown by the graph, this unit can be used to very good effect in heat-troubled machines. A definite improvement in CPU, case air and system card temperatures can be clearly seen. I would have no problem recommending the 2CoolPC Plus as a cheap and simple way to improve airflow inside your case except for one minor point.. at USD$34.95 it's not actually all that cheap. Still, a heat problem can turn into a very expensive problem indeed and if you're looking for a simple plug-in solution that doesn't require cutting holes in your case or other silliness, the 2CoolPC Plus looks like a pretty good option.