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Global Win YCC-S27 Mini Desktop Case Review

Cases & PSU/Cases by piotke @ 2006-02-11

With the introduction and growing popularity of Windows XP Media center edition, more and more people are putting computer in their living room. The HTPC (Home Theater PC) opened a new market for slick designed cases. Today we are testing the Global Win YCC-S27 Mini desktop case. Is it possible to bring fast desktop performance silently to your living room? Let?s take a look.

Cooling & 200 Watt PSU

Let's talk about cooling

Small Form Factor case with much less air space inside requires more thermal management than full size case. Global Win puts in a couple features to extract warm air and enhance air flow within.

Both side panels have small ventilation holes.

A 60 mm fan is included.

The PSU has a exhaust fan.

A 40mm fan hole is provided on HDD rack (the fan is optional)

I do have my second thought about the 40mm fan provision. When the fan is installed with the case over closed the fan would be mostly blocked by the cover itself; while the other half of the fan would have to get air through a very small number of panel holes, making this an uneventful attempt.

200 Watt PSU

This case comes with a mini 200 watt PSU to match its size.

Specifications:

Madshrimps (c)

Don't expect a lot of 4-pin molex connectors from a 200 Watt PSU, and you really should not. 4* molex and 1* floppy should be sufficient for the intended purpose. Tests can be found on the following page, but first the test setups.

Test setup(s)

The sound and heat tests were done with the following configuration. The combination of low power consumption and great performance of the Pentium mobile makes it interesting for HTPC configurations.

Piotke's Test Setup
CPU	Intel Pentium M 715 (1.5 GHz / 2 Mb / Dothan)
Extra	Asus CT-479 CPU convertor
Mainboard	Asus P4P800-VM
Memory	2*512 Mb A-Data Vitesta DDR600

Yet, the low power consumption makes it less interesting to test the PSU. That's why I tested the CPU also on a different platform:

Piotke's Test Setup
CPU	AMD sempron 64 2600+ @ 2 Ghz
Cooler	Zalman 7000Cu - Fan @ 5 Volt
Mainboard	Albatron K8 Ultra
HDD	Maxtor 250 gig
VGA	Albatron GF4 MX480
Memory	2*512 Mb A-Data Vitesta DDR600
Optical	Nec 2500 DVD writer

The Sempron 2600+ @ 2000 Mhz and 1.6 vcore is putting out close to 100 Watt according to this online calculator.

All results were taken with room temperature at ~22°C. Due to room temp fluctuations, different mounting and user error can account up to 1-2°C of inaccuracy from obtained results. Please keep this in mind when looking at the results.

Noise level of each fan was recorded with SmartSensor SL4001A. The sensor was placed ~65cm away from the HSF. The lowest dBA reading in the test room was 35.7dBA.

System was stressed by running K7 CPU Burn for 30min (after Thermal Compound’s burn-in); this application pushes the temperature higher then any other application or game we’ve yet encountered. Speedfan was used to log maximum obtained temperatures.

Arctic Silver kindly send us their “Lumière” thermal testing compound which has the same colour as Ceramique, requiring a mere 30-minute of break-in time!

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