Test Setup

For cases capable of housing ATX or larger motherboards, we use our standard ATX case test kit, which includes:

• CPU Intel Core i5-4690K at 4.3GHz (43 x 100MHz, 1.20V)
  
• Graphics card Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 3GB
  
• Motherboard Asus Maximus VI Formula
  
• RAM 4GB G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3 1,600MHz
  
• SSD OCZ Arc 100 240GB
  
• PSU Fractal Design Integra M
  
• CPU cooler Gelid Rev. 3 Tranquillo
  
• CPU cooler fan Be Quiet! SilentWings 2 120mm

We disable the motherboard's onboard CPU fan control and all CPU power management features. The CPU fan is fixed at 7V with an adaptor while the graphics card fan is locked at 70 percent speed using MSI Afterburner. The system is loaded using Prime95 25.11 and Unigine's Heaven 4.0 benchmark. We use Core Temp and GPU-Z to monitor the temperatures, taking the maximum values after 15 minutes - enough time for the readings to plateau. To account for inconsistencies in the ambient temperature at the time of testing, we report the delta T values for both components i.e. the measured temperature minus the recorded room temperature during testing.

Cooling Performance