Gadgetory

the half ex ladies and gentlemen it feels like an era of computing lived and died with this case the half X represented multiple different facets of computer building that have changed a lot in the last year for example it's got large fans not many cases do anymore 230 millimeters in the front 200 millimeters on the side 200 millimeters on the top partially also representing why these two hundred-plus millimeter fans were so difficult to mix and match with cases because they were not standardized and the case also had the all of the plastic embellishments that you rarely see anymore now the style is basically steel panels and glass and any plastic is shunned before that this video is brought to you by Thermaltake and the view 71 enclosure the view 71 is a full tower case that's capable of fitting three video cards and most configurations it's also one of the better cooling cases in our recent case testing bench lineup the view 71 has hinged a tempered glass doors on either side that make it easy to open and show off and it comes with at least one rain fan though you can get the RGB version if you prefer learn more at the link in the description below so this is something that we don't see too commonly anymore but the half X was once the king of cases and it deserves the title it was high airflow legitimately it was an expensive case that came with a lot of accessories it had USB 3 support in 2010 although you did have threw out a cable through the case out the water cooling hole in the back and into the motherboard but it had these things and this was a true flagship case one that I personally bought and used for several years and I purchased it about eight years ago it's been in storage for at least the last five but today we're revisiting the coolermaster 1/2 X recapping this case quickly then it came with a lot of accessories as stated this is a case that came from an era where plastic was not something to be ashamed of having a computer that resembled a 1980s cartoon robot was some I got you sales and at $200 this needed sales and it got them it was one of the better selling cases of its time it was a well known flagship case and part of that was because of its size you could fit anything in here for the most part it has lots of harddrive cages it has lots of five and a quarter days it's got large fans that whether or not you know anything about cases and airflow and certainly I knew less then than now you look at those fans and you think that's a case that can breathe so this had enough to turn heads and really get interest in the case industry and that's why even now you see so much hype around successors cases that advertise high airflow the H 500 P for example which had marketing materials that stated guaranteed high volume airflow this is the origin of that it's the genesis of that case and everything that's coming after it so the half act certainly was not without flaw but it was regarded so highly that we thought what if we look back at it today what if we reviewed this case like it launched in 2018 is it as good now as we thought it was then and more importantly was it actually good then have our opinions been influenced by knowing more about how thermals work and noise works and all that so a few features this case comes with a lot of plastic accessories one of those is an air duct so you can attach one of two different air ducts we opted to use the one on the side panel fan 200 millimeter intake fan that is just inches away from the GPU and therefore will probably have insurmountable cooling performance for the GPU as we'll discuss in the thermal section so it's got a cowl on the fan here we rotated it so that I can hit the GPU clear the cooler and get some air on the CPU alternatively you could have placed a similar air duct up front to direct air in from the front fan straight on to the GPU and out of the hard drive cages it also came with an internal SATA interface that would allow you to somewhat hot swap drives out of the front of the chassis and you plug them in they mount and crasher fit against SATA interfaces that are then using a pass through to go to the motherboard this was another accessory feature that felt high-end fan hubs weren't really a thing yet so there were no fan hubs in here power supply shrouds weren't even a thin yet either so power supply shrouds are an interesting one these were popularized around 2013 or 2014 by NZXT with the s340 the original that's the case that is it's I believe NZXT is best selling ever case in North America and the power supply shroud was popularized then this case came out years before it but it still had something of a power supply shroud it had a plastic trout that was removable it fitted in the front strictly over the cables it did not cover the whole power supply and that was the way they did it there was no good resolution to the problem of ugly cables now we just covered the entire bottom chamber but back then that was how you did it and considering that modular power supplies weren't even all that common at the time there was more of a price premium and today it made a lot of sense to go that route this case also has a couple of features that are sadly pretty high-end even today and one of those is hinged doors internally the case has a couple of flaws by today's standards one of those is the lack of any kind of dust filtration on the bottom of the case because of the stock configuration what you have is positive pressure at the front so you're taking air in through the front you have exhaust up top you have exhaust in the back what ends up happening as we've demonstrated through testing is that you get a lot of air drafting in through the bottom and because we have this on caster wheels which by the way another really cool feature we have it on caster wheels so it's raised up and that means that air does in fact come in through the bottom we have no dust filter on the bottom and I'm pretty sure it did not come with one either so that is where a lot of your dust comes in through the case and because it's got this crenellations on the top of the case you end up with dust trapped in all of the small corners which some of it is still there even though we did actually try to clean it off so it's definitely dust friendly case and not in a good way but to be fair that wasn't really as much of a concern as it is today we had other features than to drive case sales than dust filtration steel glass and LEDs the focus was on other things so an example of limited dust filtration how does this one come off the front panel is a great example of the poorly designed although for then it was somewhat permissible dust filtration to get the dust filter out of this detachable panel you had to bend these backwards and then you could separate the two pieces of mesh and one of the problems with dust filtration on this case was that it's dust filters basically we're really fine mesh between an outside metal grille to witch dust would stick but a lot of it got through and an inside honeycomb pattern so there's a really fine mesh in-between here something that Coolermaster has revived for their upcoming age 500p mesh which uses the original age 500 P front panel slightly model actually heavily modified to have mesh and then a backing finer dust filter so it's that approach except much harder to clean on the old half x but also less of a concern for the time other things here visually it's interesting it's one of those things it appeals to a certain type of person there's kind of a nuclear smoke stack effect on the top with the two 200 millimeter options and because the fan takes up the entire Bay there's not really much wasted space there this top power button front i/o thing has an unnecessary sliding cover that doesn't really do much for you the side panel for example has a window that really is sort of almost comical and how useless it is but this is before the tempered glass revolution and what else you going to do there's a 20 millimeter fan here not a lot you can do there's kind of a weak LED on the front of the case barely provides enough light to see anything the window so it just shows kind of how the times have changed especially with visuals and aesthetics but of course they've somewhat regressed with cooling performance so radiator support and liquid cooling support in general were more or less non-existent but also wasn't really as much of a thin at this time liquid coolers mostly sucked or we're really expensive cable management is another area where it succeeds through brute force the left side panel of the case bows out a bit and that's enough to jam most the cables into it has some cable tie points but not a whole lot of them and it's certainly lacking in that department another sign of the times now it's not necessarily true that the toppdogg case is the one with the most junk crammed into it this was once the theme and the half ex was a flagship case that we bought but the industry has seriously changed even when we built in this eight years ago we removed the drive cage duct to the video card support and the power supply shroud although there is photographic evidence of cold cathode tubes and underglow for the case we're a bit ahead of the times on RGB cable tie points aren't tightly placed in pairs like cases we've reviewed lately but they exist which was good enough at the time there's plenty of room to spread out cables and tie them down especially with the bulky stock USB and SATA cables cleared out of the way getting into thermals half stands for high airflow and the half ex certainly is that this is where it differs from the H 500 P the H 500 P technically doesn't have half HAF in the name so it's not necessarily directly a successor to this product but it had marketing materials that said guaranteed high-volume air flow something else about high airflow in the reviewers guide and it has - 200 millimeter very visible fans in the front so this was a case that even though it wasn't perfectly a name it was meant to follow the half x we never used the video card cowl but we did use a side panel one rotated 90 degrees so that it would clear our modern GPU the manual does say that only one or the other should be used anyway and we prefer the less bulky one the CPU averaged fifty point nine degrees Celsius over ambien in the torture test with no shroud on the side panel temperature averaged forty nine point one degrees Celsius a difference within margin of error but one which could also be due to the more distributed airflow pattern so what you need to double 200 millimeter top intake had a more dramatic effect and temperature lowered to forty five point nine degrees our CPU cooler is oriented to move air away from the front of the case to the back so the top intake fans didn't point directly into it but they still provided much more air than is otherwise sent to the top of the case removing the front panel had no significant effect on the CPU temperature since the only intake fan that benefits from removing the panel isn't pointed towards the CPU there's a large distance between the front panel and the CPU cooler it's partially obstructed by an optical drive bay and the front panel is so well ventilated anyway that it wouldn't make much of a difference comparatively fifty point nine degrees over the ambient isn't as good as the red line oh six at forty seven point eight or the cougar conquer at forty eight point five but it's still among the very best results for a stock case on our chart given how little emphasis the stock configuration puts on CPU cooling that's impressive with an additional fan and the top intake configuration blowing more air through the top of the case the half X is forty five point nine degree results is only beaten by the silverstone Raven o - which is from a similar era and lines of three 180 millimeter air penetrator fans up with the CPU cooler the stock h 500 p was nowhere close falling behind at fifty six point one degrees celsius delta T over ambient which further illustrates one of our primary concerns with the initial marketing materials that referenced high air volume removing the front panel of the H 500 P allowed an average forty three point seven degree Celsius temperature which is impressive and it shows the cooling potential of to unrestricted two hundred millimeter fans but it's not that much better than the top intake configuration of the proper one scan half x moving on to GPU torture thermals next forty six point nine degrees over ambient was the average GPU temperature during the same test removing the side panel shroud raised to this to fifty point six degrees as the airflow was less concentrated and removing the front panel again caused practically no change from baseline the in take test was slightly warmer than baseline at forty seven point five but within margin of error the upper section of the case is separated from the bottom by the GU back plate and the top intake and rear exhaust air cycle doesn't interact much with the heatsink side of the GPU and the stock configuration some incoming air must pass by the GPU to get to the top rear of the case thanks to the side intake fan the stock results for the half X is the coolest GPU temperature on our chart although within margin of error and somewhat tying the red line zero six it does technically chart top though and for that the half X holds strong onto its long-held airflow badge this wasn't properly high airflow setup and it's largely enabled by the now rare side panel fan even with the top intake arrangement intended to benefit the CPU of the GPU is cooler in the half X than in any other case besides the redline zero six the stock h 500 p averaged fifty four point nine degrees celsius tells it's he over ambient a difference of eight degrees this is why we were so disappointed in the h 500 PS middle in performance even without the front panel GPU temperature in the H 500 P average higher than the half X by a couple degrees and that's because of the advantage of side intake something that very few cases have these days that's not just the new H 500 P moving on to 3d mark forty six point nine degrees is easily the lowest average GPU temperature we've seen in the firestrike extreme stress test next bests are the silverstone raven o2 and PMA one case is neither of which have side intake fans and remember this is a test period of thirty minutes so it has plenty of time to reach study stage the stock h 500 p averaged fifty eight point nine degrees celsius delta T over ambient on the opposite side of the charge and a full twelve degrees warmer in its results Silverstone proves that a side panel intake isn't necessarily required to perform well on this test but the half X shows the incredible efficiency of a large side panel fan positioned inches away from the GPO shroud the case was in stock configuration for 3d mark and blender tests so CPU cooling in blender wasn't as good as it could be with the top intake result we tested previously rendering on the CPU core temperature averaged thirty six point six two three Celsius which is exactly the same or almost as the PM o1 and cougar concur and a bit warmer than the Raven o2 and redline zero six it's still among the top performers though just as it was in the torture test knowing that reconfiguring the top improves this further shows the versatility of this well cooled case or the optional well cold case rendering on the GPU GPU temperature is again the lowest we've seen at twenty three point two degrees versus the PMO one's twenty three point seven delta T over ambient this is within margin of error but impressive nonetheless the H 500 P average twenty eight point eight degrees Celsius GPU delta T a difference of five point six degrees in a test where most cases fall within a total range of 10 degrees noise isn't nearly as bad as it could be on a case with for fans and holes everywhere the forty four point six decibel Raven O two proves that forty one point one DBA is definitely loud but the major advantage of using only a single fan a smaller than 200 millimeters is that none of them individually produce much noise the side cowl helps by concentrating air from a large and therefore quiet fan into a small area rather than just using a 120 millimeter fan if the additional fan mounts on the video card support and drive cage were filled noise levels would increase significantly and the point here isn't to dredge up bad memories of the age 500 P but just to show how things have changed and if this case ever really was as good as we all thought it was at least as I thought it was at the time that I bought it for $200 so the 1/2 X it wasn't the end point of case design and 2010's requirements were certainly different than now innovations have actually occurred in case manufacturing wouldn't seem really all that possible to change cases very much but they've changed a lot clearly so this isn't really a discussion of whether you should buy it now because you shouldn't you should not go by the 1/2 X for $200 which you can do new and with even better USB 3 support than this one the original has but you shouldn't buy it because it's just changed too much the case has great cooling configurations compared modern cases but there are other modern cases that offer that too not as many mind you but they do it and they also offer other modern amenities like a better power supply shroud if you want that LEDs and better positions if you want that better cable management better ease of installation features and the half X has support for a gigabyte XL ATX form factor motherboard when's the last time you heard of one of those there's probably 2010 or thereabouts so this is a case where it's hard to clean even externally the drive cages can't be removed the fans aren't all that great it's so big that it needs wheels if the case now doesn't make a lot of sense but again no and by the way basically no liquid cooling support in a $200 case but this is a 2010 product so looking back at it now if the question is was it really as good as we thought it was I'd have to say the answer is yes this was a reasonably well designed case by Coolermaster its major faults are things like dust management which is almost always a side effect of something that has legitimately decent airflow now companies have advanced airflow design since then they've certainly degraded it as well depending on which one you're looking at but for advancements you see things now like none of this none of these holes all through the front panel where they don't need to exist where there's no fan where it's impossible to clean the dust filters now now we have better dust filters we have mesh grilles for the front that certainly existed here but they just weren't that cleanable or maintainable so it certainly improved but we do think that this case generally was one of the better options for the era the excessive three and a half and five and a quarter bays and the overall appearance of the case are dated but they made sense at the time as stated earlier the 1980s cartoon robot look was in as was at one point just prior to this acrylic I believe Linus has a video coming up showing how he purchased sorted a bunch of acrylic things for for radiators at the time so it was clearly part of the in-crowd although I think he apologizes for never having sold any but that's beside the point point is that this case even now thermally and to some extent acoustically is a pretty decent performer it's a chart-topper it's the best in several GPU categories so that's the power of side panel cooling someone recently asked us what we thought of side panel cooling there's your answer if you want the coolest possible GPU temperatures especially for multi card configurations for like a render or workstation box side panel intake we'll get it for you with the least effort the lowest fan speeds and therefore the least noise you can configure the rest of these fans to be lower rpm and let the side panel fan blast and you'd be perfectly fine for thermals and your noise levels would be even lower than we measured so it's got decent design elements and although we wouldn't recommend it today it was a good purchase at the time depending on of course on your style for the externals but we do hope that the H 500 P mesh coming up soon will be a proper successor to this hence the revisit and given our panelists testing and previous measure Phi testing of the age 500 P we think it's possible that it could be a good thermal performer Coolermaster has done a lot to address all of our concerns with the upcoming H 500 P and even the H 500 M and when I say H 500 P I do mean the mesh version so they've addressed most of our concerns as we showed in our CES coverage and will soon be covering that case in a full review we are purchasing the case ourselves we're getting it through side channels solely one to two days later than everyone else but I can assure you it'd be worth the watch so make sure you subscribe so you can catch that and as always go to patreon.com/scishow and you can go to store dock gamers nexus dotnet to pick up one of our mod match we are restocking them very soon and you'll want to be in that first wave because we sold out pretty quickly last time so thanks for watching I'll see you all next time