Keep it cool man, real cool. Or at least real cool-ish.

Over the past week I have been testing the Intercooler from Nyko. Nyko makes various products to assist you in your digital life from skins for your XB360 faceplates, cases for your iPod or iPod nano, to grips for your PSP. Yes, Nyko would like to have you covered. Which [due to some bad experiences back in the PSOne days that I had] I normally would steer far away from, but it looks like those cheap days are long gone as far as Nyko is concerned.

I recently received an Intercooler from Nyko for review, and I have to say, I was surprised at how sturdy the product seemed off the bat. The Intercooler device itself weighs next to nothing, and is basically just some extra fans that you can put on the back of your XB360 to keep it from overheatin like a bastid. Anyone who owns an XB360 can tell you that's a HUGE fear. The suckers get HOT man! Have you seen the XB360 power brick? Well have you? Sorry, I'm digressing, but that thing is freaking huge! Anyways, back to what I was talking about...the Intercooler.

In all honesty I didn't expect the thing to work. The premise was simple: put more fans on your XB360, and thus it should stay cooler. But the unit seemed so small, how much cooler could it make my XB360 in reality. Reality is, it did help. It wasn't like polar cold, but it did drop the overall temp of my machine about 9 degrees. Which is a big deal when you are running your XB360 for hours at a time. From what I can figure the Intercooler works with the fan that's already in the system in pulling cool air through the vents on the sides of the unit through the back to aide in the cooling process. I could be wrong, but all I felt coming out of the back of my XB360 was warm air [like usual] just much more of it faster than usual.

The Intercooler is neat in that it just snaps into your XB360 using the existing vent holes on the back of the unit. So there are no clamps, or bases that you have to have room for to sit your XB360 into in order to use the device. It's quite small actually. It does add a couple of inches to the back of your XB360, so if you have your system someplace where it's just barely fitting in there safely, you'll want to move it to a much more open space. [Which, as warm as this system runs, you should do anyways...what are you a pyromaniac?] The device lines up with the power port on the back of your XB360 and then you plug your power plug into the Intercooler and it gets power. So it gets a plus for not needing a power plug of it's own, but the cord does not sit as snug in the Intercooler as it does in the XB360 which is where I find a little fault with Nyko. As mammoth as the power supply itself and it's plug is, I'd feel much more comfortable if it were a lil more snug with the plug. Ya Dig?

So it comes down to this: Would I recommend this thing to my friends with XB360's? Yeah, yeah I would...especially if they had systems that would be running for 6 to 8 hours at a time constantly spinning a disc. For $20 bucks it wouldn't hurt to have some extra cooling power on your XB360, but I'd make sure that they were laying the system on it's side, and had a prop for the power cord coming out of the Intercooler.

You should definitely check out Nyko's website as it looks like they are [trying to] step their game up. Who knows, they just might help you step yours up at the same time. ;)



Is that a shuriken in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?