SYS Technologies Cold Fusion 1000 - Athlon 1GHz

As we briefly mentioned before in our Kryotech SuperG review, the SuperG and thus the Cold Fusion 1000 makes use of Superpower’s KS-298 Mid-Tower ATX case.  The case itself features four 5.25” drive bays and three 3.5” bays (one internal).  Of those bays, one of the four 5.25” bays is occupied by the 72X True-X drive, and all three 3.5” bays are occupied by the two hard drives and the 1.44MB floppy drive. 

Since the heat generated by the CPU is isolated from the case itself courtesy of the KryoCavity, the job of cooling down the case is simplified considerably.  As we mentioned in our review of the SuperG, there is a single intake fan at the rear of the case, but we criticized the decision not to make the rear fan an exhaust fan. 

After a discussion with Kryotech about the reasoning behind this, it turns out that their tests indicated a much cooler environment for the components on the motherboard itself if the 92mm fan at the rear was an intake fan instead of an exhaust fan.  You learn something new every day.

The first SYS Cold Fusion 1000 system we received was outfitted with a Sparkle FSP300-60GT 300W power supply, which is on AMD’s Recommended Power Supplies list for the Athlon.  Unfortunately, when combined with the DDR Quadro, especially under 3D games, the system would immediately lock up.  We traced this problem down to the AGP card not receiving enough power as a result of the Athlon at 1000MHz/1.85v drawing too much power from the PSU.  SYS was able to verify this and immediately shipped us an Enhance (not enhanced, Enhance is the name of the company) 300W PSU that got rid of the problems.