8. CPU Cooler

The CPU cooler (Figure 13) employs heat pipe technology to keep the Pentium 630 cool and does a decent job of it. The fan blows air out of the z556 through an opening at the top of the case (Figure 14) and is regulated by temperature sensors. It isn't too noisy when idling, and under a light load, it usually produces a noise level comparable to a loud whisper. However, when a medium to heavy load is put on the CPU, the fan's noise level ranges in volume from a buzz comparable to a refrigerator motor to the noise level of a hair dryer on "high."

Figure 13: CPU cooler close-up

When the fan really spins up to a high level, it can be clearly heard anywhere in the room, and it calls too much attention to the z556. The more attention that a HTPC calls to itself, the less attractive it becomes in a home theater environment. I was a bit disappointed with the loud fan, but it does not kick in very often, and quiets down fairly quickly once it has taken care of the heat spike, so it's bearable, if not ideal.

Figure 14: CPU fan vent

I was very happy to see passive coolers on both the north and south bridges (Figure 15). The tiny little fans that are sometimes mounted on the Northbridge are notorious for being one of the first parts in any computer to wear out and become noisy. I hate Northbridge fans with a passion and I'm always happy to see motherboards that manage to make do without them.

Figure 15: North and South bridges are passively cooled.

Graphics

The low profile Nvidia Geforce 6600 (Figure 16) won't win any benchmarking trophies, but it's sufficient for any multimedia tasks that the z556 will throw at it and handles HD resolutions. Its impressive array of outputs makes it a very versatile solution for an HTPC, but it has to resort to connectors at the top of the card to connect to the VGA, S-Video, composite and component output connectors on the z556 rear panel.

Figure 16: Low profile Nvidia Geforce 6600

But I was disappointed to see a cooler fan on the card, since part of the point of using a less-than-bleeding-edge video card in an HTPC is to eliminate the need for an active cooling system. The fan's noise level is not noticeable at the moment, but I suspect that after a time it will wear down and become noisy. The low profile size of the card and the way that it interfaces with the other video outputs in the case would make it difficult to replace without losing some of the video output options that are available in the z556. In addition, the current GPU cooler looks to be a rather tight fit and might be difficult to replace as well.