DeepCool CH170 Digital
The big advantage of small PC cases can be that they take up minimal space on a desk. If this is to be combined with high performance, the orientation (of the case) must be vertical. As is the case with the DeepCool CH170 Digital. In addition, this new case is also equipped with a panel for monitoring the essential parameters of the components. For example, their temperature, but also the power consumption.
The DeepCool CH170 Digital comes out with a comparable volume to the older CH160. Both of these cases hold approximately 19 liters.
The fundamental difference of the new CH170 Digital case is that it focuses on a vertical layout (instead of the horizontal layout of the CH160 case). The dominant dimension is thus the height at 380 mm. The depth (200mm) and width (250mm) are significantly smaller, meaning that the DeepCool CH170 Digital case will take up less space on a desk or other substrate than ‘horizontal’ cases with similar component support.
The DeepCool CH170 Digital can fit up to a 172mm tall tower CPU cooler or alternatively a liquid cooler with a 240mm radiator. This ensures cooling of even powerful CPUs.
In order to be able to talk about a possible gaming configuration, graphics cards are supported up to a length of 305 mm. DeepCool shows the Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition in its illustrations, which in itself indicates that the thickness of the graphics card can be above standard – the specifications state 65 mm as the maximum.
The graphics card is mounted vertically and its cooler uses a perforated wall to draw in air. The shell is actually heavily perforated on four sides. Three side panels (only the side with the motherboard tray is solid), and the fourth is from the top. The perforated part is the larger part, where only the edges of the individual panels are solid. And quite narrow edges at that, unless we take into account the wider segment with USB connectors (2×3.2 gen. 1 type A + 1×3.2 gen. 2 type C), a shared 3.5 mm jack for stereo and microphone. And at the very top there is also a button to power up the PC.
Among the materials used, steel (SPCC) and ABS are mentioned. Supported motherboards are exclusively in Mini-ITX format (170×170 mm). Inch storage is also supported, meaning one, and it is up to the user whether they prefer the 2.5″ or 3.5″ format. There is only one choice – either or – or there is a third option, namely to use this position to mount one of the two supported 120 mm fans. But in that case, you can only count on storage on the motherboard in the M.2 slot.
Important Note: The CH170 Digital case is shipped without fans, but the positions for them are there. All 120mm – two on the side, two on the back, and one fan can also be installed on the bottom of the case or on top as a ceiling fan (typically oriented as an exhaust fan).
Since it is the “Digital” variant, it also includes a simpler segment display for displaying various data, which the case will probably connect to via the USB 2.0 interface. DeepCool writes about a real-time display of parameters of the CPU, GPU, and even the PSU in regards to power consumption. Here, however, it’s probably not about the total power consumption (and this panel won’t replace the wattmeter on the socket), but about the “CPU package power” type of value, which various diagnostic tools can routinely read as well. In this case, however, this information can be accessed directly from the case’s information panel. It is located on the bottom, horizontally.
You can immediately access the processor from the “case body” and get information about the temperature or clock speed of its cores. We will hopefully look at how the internal application accesses these values in more detail at some point. It would be good to know if these are the maximum or average values of all CPU cores.
The case will be available in both black (CH170 Digital) and white (CH170 Digital WH) versions in stores starting November 12, 2024. The suggested retail price is 80 EUR.
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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- DeepCool CH170 Digital
