Cooling Performance

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, 1.25V)
  
• Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 3GB
  
• Motherboard: Asus Maximus VII Ranger
  
• 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

You may have noticed that this is slightly different to our recent case tests with new hardware - this is due to the fact that we weren't seeing enough variation between cases so we've opted for a more demanding graphics card and slightly higher CPU overclock.

We disable the motherboard's onboard CPU fan control and all CPU power management features. The CPU fan is fixed at 5V 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 CoreTemp and GPU-Z to monitor the temperatures, taking the maximum values after 15 minutes - enough time for the readings to plateau.