A fanless PC case has been a dream of mine for ages. Such a setup has technically been possible for a while now but I've never been all that interested in the various compromises necessary to make it a reality.
Instead, I've defaulted to a simple formula for peace and quiet that consists of an oversized Cooler Master Cosmos II case, a massive Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 heatsink with slow-turning fans, a passively cooled low-end video card and a "quiet" power supply.
With a new build looming and my desire for a truly fanless chassis persisting, Kickstarter may have just let me to my next case.
A company by the name of Calyos has launched a campaign for a fanless PC chassis called the NGS S0 that is designed to accommodate high-end hardware through the use of phase-change cooling for the CPU and GPU (and of course, lots of radiators).
Two years in the making and designed with help from Watermod, the NGS S0 can support standard ATX power supplies, any AMD or Intel motherboard up to E-ATX, up to four hard drives and a graphics card up to a GTX 1080 Ti.
Pricing is set at just south of $600 with plans to ship out the first units as early as August 2017. With more than $146,000 of the company's $161,272 goal already reached and 28 days left to go, I don't suspect Calyos will have any trouble getting the money it needs to move forward with production.
Calyos won Innovation Awards in the categories of gaming and computer hardware at CES 2017 but that's no guarantee. As with any Kickstarter campaign, there's a certain level of risk associated here and any money that you donate should be done with that risk in mind.
That said, the technology looks impressive but we'll have to reserve final judgment until we get our hands on a test sample.