Reviews - Pro-Clockers! PC Reviews One MegaHertz At A Time

Testing

Testing was run using CPUID HWMonitor and Hyper PI.  CPUID was used to track the laptops processor and internal hard drive, while Hyper Pi was used to encourage the laptop to run at a heavy load which will run up the temperature.

As it shows here, this laptop runs very hot, even at idle and as expected under idle there is not much of a difference between temperatures with or without the Choiix Air Through Stash. 

Now under Hyper PI’s assault we see the Choiix Air Through Stash shine.  It dropped the CPU temp almost 11% and the HDD just over 13%.  Pretty impressive numbers for a laptop cooler with all its features that costs around $30. 

Conclusion

I would like to thank Cooler Master for sending us the Choiix Air Through Stash to review.  I have to admit I was more impressed than I originally imagined.  I really like the built in hard drive port, and installing and using it was a snap.  I ran data transfers between my laptop and the built in hard drive looking for slow response times and hang ups that could be blamed on the integrated docking port and or the data transfer cables.  I compared this to an external back up hard drive I have set up, and was surprised and happy to see no issues what so ever. One thing you should consider when purchasing this product is that the SATA II docking is limited to 500gb due to the integrated adapter.  Currently on Newegg.com I’m only finding one 2.5” drive over 500gb’s, but with the 3.5” drives hitting 2tb’s I wouldn’t think it would be long before this carries over to the smaller cousins.  I was a little worried about the angle on the cooler, since my current laptop cooler is flat.  I had nothing to worry about and found I actually preferred the angle set up for comfort while typing.  I did try using a larger 17” laptop and I would recommend that you stick with something 15” or smaller, 17’s are just a little too large to use.  You can tell that this cooler was well thought out and designed.  I found a lot of other laptop coolers with USB hubs, but this is the only laptop cooler that I could find with an integrated SATA II hard drive bay.  This makes it extremely useful and should be a must have for anyone that either uses/stores massive amounts of data or likes to back up their data for safety reasons.  No more lugging around that external hard drive when you need to back something up, it’s already there!

Pro’s:

• 80mm fan
• 3 USB ports
• Everything powered by USB or sold separately DC adapter
• Completely tool-less SATA II 2.5” HDD dock!!!!
• Hot swappable, no drivers needed
• Impressive Cooling Power

Con’s:

• Size limit on laptop
• 500gb limit on HDD