Performance
We were expecting to see the Cube chassis pull away from the HTPC, but we didn't expect the difference to be quite so pronounced. Cooling a stock-clocked Pentium G3258 shouldn't be too much of a problem in most scenarios, but the tighter confines of a mini-ITX enclosure can make things interesting. Core 500, with ample ventilation and a good-sized rear exhaust, has absolutely no problem taming this particular setup.
A dedicated graphics card can be even more tasking for a small-form-factor PC. The diminutive MSI Radeon R9 270X struggled to keep cool in the low-profile Node 202, but there are no such problems here. The Core 500's side vent must be serving up plenty of clean air as the GPU has no trouble keeping at or below 65ºC.
And the fact that the CPU and GPU coolers aren't having to work too hard means that noise levels are kept down to a reasonable level. The only catch here is that idle noise is slightly higher than we'd like due to the Core 500's bundled 140mm fan - it's exhausting plenty of air but is never really that quiet. We'd much prefer a four-pin PWM alternative.
