Testing Time

Testing the Antec Skeleton has been pretty tricky; not least because our test setup’s Asus Silent Square Pro heatsink just doesn’t fit beneath the Skeleton’s frame! The only cooler we could source which did fit was the Intel stock CPU cooler, so for this time only we’ve made an exception and fitted the inferior stock cooler. Bar the heatsink though, we installed our standard testing setup into the Antec Skeleton - here's a reminder of the hardware we use.

CPU: Lapped Intel Pentium XE 955 (dual-core, 3.46GHz)
Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 Ultimate passive cooled
Motherboard: MSI P6N SLI Platinum
RAM: 2x 512MB Corsair XMS2-667
Hard Drive: 1x 250GB Western Digital WD2500 7,200RPM
Heatsink:Intel Stock aluminium heatsink
Power Supply: Xilence XP700 700W PSU

While this isn't representative of current ultra high end hardware, the equipment we use is specifically selected to kick out the maximum amount of heat inside the case. With a passively cooled graphics card and 130W TDP processor at its core to really heat things up, we're attempting to push a case's ability to cope with toasty components to the limit.

In our experience, the CPU stress test is a good test to indicate a case's ability to exhaust hot air and the GPU stress test is a better indicator of a case's intake ability as the GPU is generally further from the exhaust fan and so its operating temperatures rely more on case airflow than exhaust. However, with the Skeleton’s unique open enclosure approach, how will performance be affected, especially considering the significantly poorer CPU cooling solution we've been forced to use thanks to the Skeleton's poor design choices?