Test Setup and Test Methodology 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 & Fitting larger video cardsWe found enough room behind the HDD bay, motherboard plate and 5.25” bays to hide most overly long cables, so airflow will not be restricted a lot here:
In order to fit a large 8800 GTX video card we had to turn the HDD bay 90°, so that it faces the side panel, this allowed room for the GTX to fit without interfering with the SATA/power cables:
The case is wide enough as to accommodate the side panel fan bracket and large video cards (in height), we moved the fan towards the rear of the bracket to cover the in-take of the 8800 GTX cooling fan.
Onto the performance tests ->