Revoltec Zirconium

Next we moved to monitoring the heat performance of the system. Throughout all of our testing the ambient was a very British 23°C in the bit-tech office.

The idle temperature inside the case was a few degrees higher, hovering at 26°C. The CPU meanwhile stayed at a steady 45°C and the graphics card was in the middle ground at 40°C.

We began by stress testing the CPU and RAM in turn using a series of testing utilities. The RAM test bought the in case temperature rose to 28°C while the CPU rose steadily upwards over the course of a few minutes, before settling on 61°C and refusing to go any higher. The CPU stress tests produced slightly lesser results, levelling at a degree lower on both counts.

The temperatures were getting pretty hot around the processor then, which is especially odd considering we were using the beefy ASUS Silent Square as a heat sink, but the system was still running without any slowdown or indication of problems.

We stress tested the graphics card next, using a program called RTHDRIBL, which runs a demo featuring real-time HDR image based lighting to see how far the graphics card can be stretched before it runs out of pimp. It's also free to download, so it's a handy resource for anybody wanting to test their own system.


The stress test for the GPU pushed the in case temperature all the way up to 30°C, which is a little hot for our tastes, while the CPU levelled at 51°C and the graphics card leapt from 40°C up to 55°C and continued to waver within a degree of that over the course of the test.

Heatwise then the system didn't quite hold out as well as we wanted, though the noise never climbed any higher over the course of the tests. We'd really have preferred a much cooler case, ideally with an extra case fan included, but ever since we got the case out of the box and onto the desktop our hopes had never really been high for how it would hold up in testing. The heavy steel construction was a bit of a giveaway.

Conclusions

The Revoltec Zirconium is possibly one of our least favourite cases in a long while. Not only did it look like something a B-movie director would discard as being tacky, it lacked the key features we want in a case such as a removable motherboard tray and didn't hold up well in heat testing.


The installation was quick and simple, but if the case can't perform then chances are you'll just end up removing the system as quickly as you installed it.

The Revoltec Zirconium isn't currently available for sale in the UK or USA either, to further complicate matters. We found that the case was only available in Germany right now (how's your German?), costing between €60 and €70 depending on whether you prefer the black or silver chassis. We reviewed the silver variation, as you can obviously tell from the pictures, but in our opinion the black case looks almost infinitely better.

In terms of dollars and pounds, that price is around $80 or £45 depending on currency conversion rates. So, the case is definitely cheap in the UK but the US price is a lot more formidable and, either way, there are much better cases available at even cheaper rates, reducing the Zirconium even more in our eyes. If you need a new house for your system then do yourself a favour and stay away from the Revoltec Zirconium, unless you like having a red hot stegosaurus look-alike under your desk.

Unfortunately, it gets even worse for the Zirconium because, as we wasted hour upon hour trying to trace down a UK or US reseller, we found out that there is currently no stock even available to Europe. So, even if you were sado-masochistic enough to want the case, there's still no way you could buy it unless you live in Germany so, as one staff member suggested, the Zirconium is quite possibly the worst case never released.

Lack of features, lack of availability, lack of style, value and performance? If these are your demands then the Zirconium has it all, otherwise stay away and go buy a better case instead.

• Build Quality
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 5/10

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 4/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 4/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 4/10

What do these scores mean?