Cooling Performance

For cases with CPU cooler clearance of 65mm or less, we use our super low-profile mini-ITX test kit. which includes:

• CPU: AMD A10-6700K (stock speed)
  
• Graphics card: AMD R7 250X (discrete GPU testing)
  
• Motherboard: MSI A88Xi AC
  
• RAM: 4GB GSKill Ripjaw DDR3 1600MHz memory
  
• SSD: OCZ Arc 100 240GB
  
• PSU: Fractal Design Integra M 550W
  
• CPU cooler: Noctua NH-L9a CPU cooler

In cases that can house a discrete GPU, we obtain thermal results for the CPU portion of the APU, plus the discrete graphics card, while also performing a separate test using the APU alone. This way, we'll be able to compare APU results for a wider range of cases, but also allow you to see how larger cases perform with a discrete graphics card.

The graphics card fan is locked at 40 percent speed and the system is loaded using Prime95 and Unigine's Heaven benchmark for the discrete graphics card tests, and Prime95 on its own for the APU only tests. We use HWMonitor and GPU-Z to monitor the temperatures, taking the maximum values after 15 minutes - enough time for the readings to plateau.