Test Methodology
Comparison Chassis |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chassis | Form Factor | HEXUS Review | Reviewed Price | Product Page |
| be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 | Full-tower | June 2016 | £200 | bequiet.com |
| be quiet! Pure Base 600 | Mid-tower | January 2017 | £75 | bequiet.com |
| Cooler Master MasterBox 5t | Mid-tower | December 2016 | £75 | coolermaster.com |
| Cooler Master MasterCase Maker 5 | Mid-tower | June 2016 | £180 | coolermaster.com |
| Cooler Master MasterCase Maker 5t | Mid-tower | December 2016 | £230 | coolermaster.com |
| Corsair Carbide Series 270R | Mid-tower | December 2016 | £65 | corsair.com |
| Corsair Carbide Series 400C | Mid-tower | January 2016 | £80 | corsair.com |
| Corsair Carbide Series Air 740 | Cube | September 2016 | £135 | corsair.com |
| Corsair Crystal Series 460X RGB | Mid-tower | November 2016 | £150 | corsair.com |
| Corsair Crystal Series 570X RGB | Mid-tower | November 2016 | £190 | corsair.com |
| EVGA DG-87 | Full-tower | August 2016 | £220 | evga.com |
| Fractal Design Define C | Mid-tower | November 2016 | £84 | fractal-design.com |
| NZXT H440 New Edition | Mid-tower | January 2016 | £90 | nzxt.com |
| NZXT Noctis 450 ROG | Mid-tower | January 2017 | £180 | nzxt.com |
| NZXT S340 Elite | Mid-tower | October 2016 | £90 | nzxt.com |
| SilverStone Raven RVX01 | Mid-tower | February 2016 | £65 | silverstonetek.com |
| SilverStone Redline Series RL05 | Mid-tower | October 2016 | £50 | silverstonetek.com |
HEXUS Chassis Test Bench |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Hardware Components | HEXUS Review | Product Page | |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-3570K (quad-core, overclocked up to 4.40GHz) | April 2012 | intel.com |
| CPU Cooler | be quiet! Dark Rock 3 | - | bequiet.com |
| Motherboard | Asus Sabertooth Z77 | - | asus.com |
| Memory | 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws-X (2x4GB) DDR3 @ 1,600MHz | - | gskill.com |
| Graphics Card | 2x EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SSC in SLI (2x 4GB) | April 2015 | evga.com |
| Power Supply | be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 (750W) | July 2012 | bequiet.com |
| Storage Device | 120GB SanDisk Extreme SSD | March 2012 | sandisk.co.uk |
| Monitor | Philips Brilliance 4K Ultra HD LED (288P6LJEB/00) | - | philips.co.uk |
| Operating system | Windows 8.1 (64-bit) | October 2012 | microsoft.com |
Notes
Our Z77 test platform consists of an ASUS Sabertooth motherboard, an Intel Core i5-3570K processor overclocked to 4.4GHz, a be quiet! Dark Rock 3 CPU cooler, 8GB of G.Skill Ripjaws-X memory and two factory-overclocked EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SSC graphics cards in an SLI configuration.
To find out how well the chassis can cool this particular setup, we log CPU temperature while encoding a large 4K video clip. This task puts full load on all available CPU cores and we extend the stress test by carrying out multiple passes. In order to provide a stabilised reading we then calculate an average temperature across all cores from the last five minutes of encoding.
To get an idea of graphics-card cooling performance, we log GPU temperature while playing Tomb Raider at a 4K resolution with ultra quality settings and SLI enabled. Last but not least, we also measure chassis noise by using a PCE-318 noise meter to take readings when idle and while gaming.
All chassis are tested only with the standard manufacturer-supplied fans (any/all of which are set to 'silent' in the Asus BIOS or low-speed using a fan controller if present), and to take into account the fluctuating ambient temperature, our graphs depict both actual and delta temperature - the latter is the actual CPU/GPU temperature minus the ambient. For the record, the ambient temperature while testing the NZXT Noctis 450 ROG was recorded as 19.8ºC.
