Test Setup and Test Methodology

Intel Test Setup
CPU	Intel Core 2 E6400 @ 2.8Ghz (from CSMSA)
Cooling	Coolermaster Hyper TX
Mainboard	Intel 975X Bad Axe (Modded by Piotke)
Memory	2 * 1Gb PC6400 OCZ
Other	XFX Geforce 8800 GTX Antec TruePower Trio! 650W Western Digital 74Gb Raptor SATA HDD

Room temperature was 20°C during testing, ambient noise clocked in at 37.8dBA. Noise measurements were taken at 50cm from the front of the case.

Realtime HDR and Orthos were used to stress the Dual Core system; Core 2 Temp was used to monitor Core temperature (duh) and Speedfan to check the temperature of HDD and Motherboard. Rivatuner’s temp monitor checked the G80 GPU at regular intervals. Maximum values were recorded.

The Intel Bax Axe motherboard features several thermal sensors, the “mobo” values are those recorded by the sensor which can be found between the DDR2 memory banks, marked A in the overview:



3D Core-Fan

Sunbeamtech includes 7 different mounting positions for the two 120mm fans in their manual, however as you will too find out, the number of options you have will be limited to how much room is left in the case.

With the Geforce 8800 GTX installed the only possible lower fan position was blowing down onto the mainboard, there was no room to fit the fan any other way. The CPU fan was set to blown down at an incline down onto CPU cooler and memory banks



While the side fan manages to draw in some fresh air from the holes in the side panel, the other fan blowing down onto the CPU area has no direct access path to obtain cool air, it’s recycling air from inside the case.



Swapping the large VGA card with a more modest 7900 GT we now have room to fit the lower fan to blow air from the front towards the back of the case:




Onto the stress testing ->