Cooling Performance

Our mini-ITX test kit includes:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K overclocked to 4.3GHz using a vcore of 1.3V.
  
• Graphics card: GeForce GTX 570 1.3GB
  
• Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe
  
• RAM: 4GB Kingston DDR3 1600MHz memory
  
• PSU: Enermax Eco 82+ 620W PSU
  
• CPU cooler: Zalman CNPS 8900 low-profile cooler

While some cases can house larger coolers, for the results to be comparable, we needed to pick a cooler that was going to fit in as many cases as possible. We therefore opted for a low-profile cooler. This will give a good idea of how well the case is able to remove heat from the system - our primary concern in case testing - although you can probably expect to achieve better results by using a larger cooler if the case in question supports it.

The graphics card fan was locked at 70 per cent speed and the system was loaded using Prime95 and Unigine's Heaven benchmark. We used Realtemp and GPU-Z to monitor the temperatures, taking the maximum values when the readings had plateaued.