Tests
Tests
Airflow :
Additional ventilation takes the form of two Thermaltake Riing 140 fans placed at the bottom in suction and a third 120 mm fan mounted on the side of the motherboard in suction.
CPU airflow, original ventilation then completed:
Let’s start with the temperature of our CPU. We’ll keep the front and top of our test case. Let’s see if the airflow is sufficient to influence the cooling of the Ryzen 5 3600X.
By default, the case is fanless, so we logically record higher temperatures than when the configuration is on the benchtop. With the heat accumulating inside this 2500X, we recorded a delta of 45.5°C.
However, the addition of fans drastically reduces the temperature, bringing it down to 38.4°C. A delta very similar to that of the desktop configuration.
Original CPU airflow without front panel or top :
In order to ascertain the limiting factor in the story (and by how much), we remove the top covers while removing the bottom dust filter. The aim here is to show the raw performance of the integrated ventilation… Or to see how well the case retains heat, since the 2500X has no built-in fan.
The temperature difference with and without the upper mesh panel and lower filter is very small. In fact, by removing these elements, we go from 45.5°C to 44.6°C, a difference of 1°C. Clearly, even without a fan, the case won’t turn into an oven.
GPU airflow, original ventilation then supplemented :
We repeat the operation, but with measurements taken on the graphics card. Here, we test with original ventilation, then with added ventilation.
As far as graphics card temperatures are concerned, we don’t find anything alarming, with a delta of 42.4°C by default. Once again, the addition of a fan lowers the temperatures recorded on our ASUS RTX 3050 Strix. The latter benefits directly from the airflow provided by the two Thermaltake fans mounted below.
Original GPU ventilation airflow without front panel or top:
We repeat the same test, but remove the case’s front panel and top. Let’s see how this affects card temperatures.
As with the processor, the part of the case mounted just in front of our graphics card proves very unrestrictive in terms of airflow. Once again, the difference is around 1°C.
Insulation :
Here, we’re simply measuring the noise emitted by our configuration when we run the CPU cooling and GPU cooling very fast.
Compared to the bare-bones configuration, Corsair’s case attenuates the noise of our configuration when it’s heavily loaded. The noise level drops from 41.5 dB to 38 dB, not bad for a case with a number of mesh panels.
Original fan noise :
This time, we measure the noise emitted by the case’s original fan. To do this, the configuration is run in idle mode ( CPU and GPU fans at minimum), while readings are taken successively at 5V, 8V and 12V on the case fan.
Obviously, with 0 fans supplied, fan noise will not be emitted by the case’s fans, but by those of the graphics card and the CPU cooler. To be on the safe side, we nevertheless recorded the noise level of our config in idle: ≤30 dB.
To sum up:
It’s clearly a shame that the case comes without a fan as standard, since the 2500X is a case that breathes well. As we’ve seen, the various panels do very little to impede airflow. Otherwise, in terms of insulation, it also does the job, attenuating noise pollution when the ventilation of our configuration is running at full speed.
