Cooling Performance

Our test kit is fairly indicative of the kind of PC that most people will be opting for and we also carried out tests in an enclosed TV cabinet, in the open and while streaming HD content on Netflix to give you some idea as to the impact these situations will have given the case is passively-cooled.

Otherwise we used Prime95 to push our CPU to the max to see how the cooling system fared in a worst-case scenario, recording the CPU temperature using Core Temp. We tested using a 35W Intel Pentium G2100T CPU and Intel BOXDQ77KB slim motherboard.

While Akasa specifies a TDP limit of 35W we threw in the Core i3-2100 65W CPU we used recently to see what happened, especially as common tasks like Netflix don't require 100 per cent CPU usage and 65W models are usually much cheaper too. All tests are with the Intel Core i3-2100 except those listed as using the lower wattage Intel Pentium G2100T.

Our test kit comprised the following:

• Intel Core i3-2100
  
• Intel Pentium G2100T
  
• IIntel BOXDQ77KB mini-ITX motherboard
  
• OCZ Vertex SSD