Thermal Testing
Pete was considering an R3 as a replacement case for his current gaming rig. At the time of writing, he plays a fair bit of BF3 which belts his i7-920 and GTX 580 around like a red-headed stepchild. So, to satisfy his curiosity, the CPU was overclocked to 4.5GHz @ 1.288v, fans left as is (meduim setting on the fan controller and ULNA fitted to the NH-D14). We then ran Prime95 for 2 hours solid.
Idle temps are around the 33 degree mark. Under this kind of load, the temps hit a maximum of 69 degrees on the hottest core. The next test was Unigen. The important thing to note with this test is that the GTX580 uses a reference cooler which runs hotter than after market coolers but dumps the air out of the back of the case. Most non reference coolers will use multiple fans to cool the card but dump the air inside the case, relying on the case airflow to remove the hot air. This increases the ambient case temp and will impact on the air that gets passed over the CPU cooler.
In the Unigen tests, the temperatures remained the same. The GTX580 hit 87 degrees at its hottest point which is the same result as when it was tested in a Cooler Master CM-690II. These tests were done on a cool day in Autumn. The ambient temperature varied between 21 and 23 degrees. We do wonder how this case will go on a 40 degree summer day but were not keen on increasing the central heating or our carbon footprint to test this out.“That’s only benchmarks!” we hear you say.
Well it would be remiss of us not to actually game with this puppy and check out real world performance. So under sufferance (NOT), we subjected this rig to 2 weeks of regular long sessions of Battlefield 3 and Skyrim. We used CoreTemp to record the thermal performance and the max temperature of any CPU core did not break 69 degrees.
Dirty Deeds
After 2 weeks of use, we thought we’d check the dust filters. Keep in mind that we wanted the worst result possible in the 2 weeks allocated so we ran the rig 24/7 on a carpet floor for a week, then inspected the dust filters. They work. They work enough to prove that you do get airflow through with the door shut and the fan controller on medium and that the filters catch the dust.
