Anyone heard of this SFF: Torspoal Silent-I?

[ElectroBlaster]

Ive seen these on the web recently and wondered if they were anygood:

www.altairst8te.co.uk/silent-i/IMG_2251.JPG

This particular model is an intel i866G model with dual-channel and sata, lan, wireless lan and aerial built in etc! there is even an amd64 version doing the rounds which looks like the styling was ripped-off from the playstation2 lol

There are more pictures here to look at:

www.altairst8te.co.uk/silent-i

At the price they are being sold for I might buy some for my kids and scale their pc's down

 

[hethers]

Appears that these can be sourced at a remarkably good price. Anyone any experience or background info on these units?

 

[ElectroBlaster]

Ok I took the plunge and got one!

But i cant say many good things about it tbh... the board is great, works really well and I cant fault it for stability. Its the case and cpu cooling that lets it down completely. I have a celeron 2.8 in there and it hit 90c and that was with artic silver, an 90mm fan thats inside and all at stock. I know these presscots can run hot but ive never seen one that flipping hot before its the cooling, there isnt a fan on the back to expel hot air!

Heatsink setup is a right nightmare, there is a heatpipe and copper plate just like the shuttle ice but.. and this is a big BUT! it aint the same. The whole heatpipe/heatsink assembly is fixed to the bottom of the psu and the whole lot must come out to fit the cpu. The cpu clip itself is just as bad... talk about fiddly it took me ages to get it right

And the really annoying gripe is when fitting a cd drive in, the front has to come off or you cant get the drive in... an annoyance more than anything but you could do without the hassle tbh! Its great if your going to kit it out and never mess with it again, but if you decide to change the cpu or the cd drive then get ready for fun!

 

[WJA96]

Is there somewhere to fit a fan on the back?

If the cooling issues could be overcome, does the BIOS look clocking friendly?

 

[ElectroBlaster]

The cooling issues will only work if a fan can be modded on one the sides or top! Maybe a 60to80mm shroud might fit on the back of the psu but that means stripping it down and finding a way to fix it on. The internal fan sits under the psu in a shroud which holds the radiator, this has pipes coming off it and they sit into a copper and aluminum cpu plate. its not great tbh, not even patch on the shuttle ice solution, but maybe with some good modding and a nice 80mm fan it could be a lot better.

The bios looks quite feature rich, all timings can be messed with, agp, voltages etc. Im happy because PAT is enabled and everything works... but I cant tell which part is wrong regarding cooling, is the board lying or are the programs I have here reporting wrong? Aida32 and Speedfan both say the cpu is up above 90c? but in the bios its reading 43c-ish and warm air is blowing out the back!

Im about to try and find a bios update, im a tad wary as theres hardly any info on this thing

 

[freebooter]

What are you thoughts now on this? Still having problems or has it settled down? The AMD version is really ugly - and it seems strange to go with agp on a modern board. What is it like noise wise?

 

[Mul]

The cooling issues will only work if a fan can be modded on one the sides or top! Maybe a 60to80mm shroud might fit on the back of the psu but that means stripping it down and finding a way to fix it on. The internal fan sits under the psu in a shroud which holds the radiator, this has pipes coming off it and they sit into a copper and aluminum cpu plate. its not great tbh, not even patch on the shuttle ice solution, but maybe with some good modding and a nice 80mm fan it could be a lot better.

The bios looks quite feature rich, all timings can be messed with, agp, voltages etc. Im happy because PAT is enabled and everything works... but I cant tell which part is wrong regarding cooling, is the board lying or are the programs I have here reporting wrong? Aida32 and Speedfan both say the cpu is up above 90c? but in the bios its reading 43c-ish and warm air is blowing out the back!

Im about to try and find a bios update, im a tad wary as theres hardly any info on this thing

With that in mind I can feel warm air coming out my EZ65 barebone kit but my Northwood 3.0Ghz is only running ~40*c.

I'd trust BIOS readings over temps shown in software. I'd expect the system to be a tad unstable with the CPu hitting well into the 90's

Mul