I am a fan (pun intended) of less fans. I really hope this technology can continue to grow and be polished to the point of a workable cooling solution for overclocked procs. Also it looks fantastic, I love the design.
Thing is, if it needs a case with good airflow for it to work then that means you've lost the "silent" aspect so then you might as well stick a Noctua in there which is suppose to be near silent anyway and gona be able to deal with anything you then throw at it. Plus, a Noctua wouldn't cover the PCI slots and its cheaper.
Saying that though, I would like to see Tom do a review on this just to see how well it really performs. If it could be used to build a completely fan-less media PC or something than that would be great.
it can only handle 100w tdp so while its good for a stock system so are a few other heatsinks, my ifx14 could deal with that passive and its a couple of years old now :|
Any case with decent airflow will improve its cooling performance. But yes side fans blowing into it will help, exhausts fans pulling air through it will work.