Temperatures and Decibels :

As mentioned on the test setup details page, we are using a Pentium 4 Prescott CPU overclock to almost 4ghz, turning it into a true baking oven, the ability to keep the CPU and the other components cool makes or brakes a case. You can have the fanciest looking case on the block, but if it's not up to job of removing heat efficiently it will fail.

To increase the challenge, and the heat, we also overclocked the 9800 Pro ATI card to XT speeds, with all 5x80mm fans running our dBA meter measured 54 decibel at 58cm from the case, not really a silent system; with all the fans off and the HSF fan at its lowest setting the dBA reading dropped to 52, a bit better, but unfortunately the different component temperatures crept up to dangerous levels after only a couple of minutes, indicating overheating problems.

So it's time to find the perfect balance between noise and temperature. With a room temperature of 20°C (64F) we started out battery of stress applications, 2 sessions of Prime95 produced 100% CPU load. Here are the temperature numbers.



And our noise readings:



The front fans on the Praetorian 731 make sure that your hard drives do not overheat, but at the same time these fan cause quite a bit of overhead noise. Finding the balance between noise/temperature was a challenge, the top fan proved to be of little use, while the back fans impacted the CPU temp quite a bit.