Streacom FC8 Alpha Fanless Casing Review

User Experience

Setting up the FC8 Alpha is certainly not a task for the inexperienced as a certain level of competency is required when it comes to setting up the heatsink.

Here’s my complete setup with an ASRock H170M-ITX/ac motherboard with 2 sticks of HyperX 8GB Savage DDR4-3000 and an Intel Core i5-6600K. Yes, I’m very well aware that the H170 board is unable to overclock the i5-6600K, the i5-6600K was used because of its power draw. I could’ve used a Core i3-6100 of which I do have in my lab but that defeats the purpose of testing the cooling capability.

Streacom FC8 Alpha Fanless Casing Review

Now before we get to that, let me talk about the challenges of setting up this casing. Firstly, you’ll need the right screw driver type – are you using short ones? If you are, you might not be able to work on screws that are placed between the fins.

Secondly, you’ll need to know how to logic when it comes to getting the heatpipes in place, the heatsink in place and everything else in place with your 2 hands and available fingers.

It took me some 15 minutes to get the heatsink in place (plenty of manual referencing and screw hunting) and mind you, some parts like the screws that hold the block that holds the heatpipes work best with the allen key they provided so try not to lose it.

Streacom FC8 Alpha Fanless Casing Review

Benchmarks

And so we’ve come to the final part – how does the FC8 Alpha hold up to heat?

I did my usual 10bit to 8bit video conversion test and despite the recommended CPU TDP being 65W, I went with the Intel Core i5-6600K that has 91W TDP.

Streacom specifically states that 95W is the maximum at as with any passive cooling solution, environmental conditions will have an impact on the performance, and that a TDP 95W CPU is only recommended when the chassis is placed in a location with adequate air flow and moderate ambient room temperature.

What did I do? I placed it in a room with temperature at around 25°C with little airflow (it’s air conditioned, with the air-conditioner unit not blowing at the FC8 Alpha) and here are the results.

Card Idle(°C) Load (°C)
Intel Core i5-6600K 46 77

Well that’s amazing, isn’t it? The cooling system has 4 heatpipes that are held to the CPU block and dissipated mainly through the heatpipes and parts of the casing. Once the load is done the temperature drops to idle level in a few minutes.

Streacom FC8 Alpha Fanless Casing Review

The Verdict

The Streacom FC8 Alpha Fanless Casing retails at USD 190 and it’s one solid casing for a fanless (Read : SILENT!) setup. I’m a fan of silent PCs and the FC8 Alpha just strikes a good chord with me.

For readers in Malaysia and Singapore who are interested in this product, please contact Intellity.

goldfries recommended