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 Coolermaster Real Power M520 520W PSU Western Digital 74Gb Raptor SATA HDD Maxtor 200gb 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:



Cable routing




Your best bet is to stick to SATA hard drives, modular medium sized power supply, and no SLI setup; otherwise the internal airflow path will be completely blocked by the cables mess, as there is little room to navigate the HDD power and data cables without blocking the airflow.

Time for performance stress tests ->