Today I’m reviewing a rather unique product, it comes in a big box but doesn’t cost you anywhere near $50+. It’s a piece of plastic! But not your ordinary run of the mill one, no sir, this baby has been shaped into the form of an air-duct.



Sure most enthusiasts have already tried to get the air in their case to move along a predefined path using cardboard, tape and sometimes even toilet rolls. The Chill Vent approach however comes over a bit more professional and it requires a lot less fooling around to get it installed.

The Chill Vent is the brainchild of Sidney Wong, he lives in the USA but he has some friends at the other side of the world who helped him turn his ideas into tangible objects. The company’s website can be found here and as you can see this is no million-dollar corporation, it’s aimed at the enthusiasts and was made by an enthusiast.

Before I continue with the review I have to mention that Sidney Wong is an active contributor to our website here at Madshrimps. Although he’s geographically far away from the core of the crew members, thanks to the technology of the web, we can keep in contact as if he was living next door, so to speak. It would be easy for Sidney (nicknamed Lazyman, quite ironically) to push us to do a “good” review of his product so that he can profit from it.

Luckily for you the reader and us the reviewers, this is simply not the case, Lazyman sent us 2 review samples and just asked us “what do you think about it, I’m open for suggestions and tips”. So here we are, doing what he has asked us to do, and we do it with pleasure! Telling you what’s good and bad.


So how can a piece of plastic increase the cooling efficiency of your system, turn the page to find out ->

The Chill Vent is shipped in a very sturdy cardboard box and all the contents were in good shape after travelling the long distance between his place and my doorstep, here in Belgium. What you find inside the box depends on what you ordered. The one thing which will be in there every time around is the Chill Vent unit itself which comes in 2 colours, blue and in see-through clear plastic, which really comes into its own when used with a LED-fan.


The Chill Vent with extra mounting pieces

The Chill Vent’s basic model will set you back $18.99 while the most expensive Chill Vent II “Ultra” is priced at $33.99. Between these two extremes the user is given wide variety of choices which boil down to the amount of fans you want included, a full list can be found here. We received the Deluxe version which includes 1x80mm and 2x40mm fans.


The fans installed

The whole concept of the Chill Vent is to offer you a CPU/GPU cooling upgrade without installation hassle or high expense; by guiding cool air from the bottom of the case to your heatsink’s fan it can easily and efficiently drop the overall load and idle temperatures.



The included fans are relabelled, and are quite silent but move only a limited amount of air, pictured here is a close-up of the 80mm fan

Since not every case is the same, you will have to modify the plastic duct to make it ideal for your specific case layout. This is done by removing some parts of the Vent which are marked by V-notched lines. This allows you to cut corners and open up the duct to allow more fresh air to enter. The use of knife and scissors to adapt the Chill Vent make the changes quite definitive, and it will probably be the most “daring” aspect of the whole installation.

The included manual outlines the needed steps without any illustration, as this kit is aimed at the hardware beginners; you might end up guessing “what goes where”. Although anybody who is able to read and comprehend the following quote, which comes straight from the manual, will have no problems:



All this can be done in 10-15 minutes, depending on how much “trimming” there is to be done.

and now a picture of a birdie...



There you go, time to start up the first test system ->

Test System 2 Testing and comments by Piotke

Case: Cooler Master Centurion

CPU: A64 3000+ @ 2450Mhz at 1.7v vcore.

CPU Cooling: Thermalright SLK948-U with a 80mm Papst fan @ 2700rpm

Video: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro + Arctic VGA Silencer @ full speed

Case fans: 1x80mm intake at front, 1x80mm outtake in back and 2x120mm outtake in top (running at 7v)

Motherboard used is a Shuttle AN50R, temperatures were read from the onboard sensor using Motherboard Monitor 5.

As you can see from the pictures below, I had to do quite some cutting to get it installed properly, basically removing the lower half. During all testing I had the 2 small 40mm fans running which are completely noiseless. I had some trouble getting it to fit over the fan mounting clips of the Thermalright SLK, using a 80mm with the clips makes it a close fit, a 92mm CPU fan is out of the question.


Spot the difference between this picture and the one below… :)



As this ATI video card lacks onboard temperature sensors, I will update the video card test results as soon as I get my hands on a suitable graphics board.

Test results

The Shuttle AN50R has 2 system temperature sensors, one at the bottom of the board in the chipset (SYS2) and one near the CPU socket area (SYS1).

The first test is run with all the case fans unplugged



The CPU temperature dropped a lot, a whole 5°C; but it also seems the Chipset is benefiting from the Chill Vent as its loaded temperature readout went down by 6°C! The only anomaly I noticed is the increase in the temperature of the SYS1 sensor; a double checked this many times, the results remained unchanged.

A second test with all the fans plugged in and the 2x120mm ones running at 7v.



Once again we notice quite a drop in the CPU load temperatures; the anomaly we saw in the previous test has disappeared leading to believe that the rear fan removes all the hot air around the CPU socket quite effectively. When using case fans and the Chill Vent the CPU temp dropped an amazing 12°C, all this without a single heatsink upgrade!

Onto the conclusion ->

Conclusion

All the claims made by the creator of the Chill Vent were proven to be true! By using this “piece of plastic” one can drop the CPU temperature and that of other components in the system without ever voiding your warranty. The installation is plug and play and the unit is very customisable to fit your needs.

The addition of an extra 80mm gives it a nice boost and by swapping the included fan with a more powerful one, you can have performance close to what could be achieved by swapping the CPU heatsink for a high-end one, and those are more then double the asking price of this product.

The Chill Vent offers you a simple yet effective cooling upgrade and you don’t need to spend a fortune to get one.

The only drawback would be compatibility problems with certain heatsink+fan setups; this unit will work fine with any stock cooler installed on the CPU, but if you are already using a third party HSF then you’ll have to do some research first to see if the Chill Vent will fit.

I can’t wait to see more innovative products from KoolSolutions find their way onto the market.



Speaking of the market, KoolSolutions is currently looking for resellers in the EU, so if you want to offer your clients a plug a play cooling solution, send them an email to work things out.

I would like to thank Sidney/Lazyman for sharing his innovative products with [MAD] crew.

Questions/Comments: forum thread