Cooling Performance

As we mentioned in the review, our test graphics card wouldn't quite fit in the DS380 so we used a GeForce GTX 750Ti instead. In addition, we had to use an SFX PSU instead of our usual ATX model - this was graciously provided by SilverStone in the form of its SST-ST45SF-G PSU. This means that neither the CPU or GPU delta T's are directly comparable to our other cases on test. However we've included the CPU delta T graph as a rough guide on how well the case deals with an overclocked processor. We could have removed the drive bay and installed our usual mini-ITX case test graphics card but then this would skew results further and ignore the impact of the hot swap drive mount on cooling.


Our mini-ITX test kit includes:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K overclocked to 4.3GHz using a vcore of 1.3V.
  
• 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 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.