Benchmarks: Power draw, temperature and noise
Power draw
Despite the amount of performance on offer, Shuttle's mini-system does a good job of keeping power draw respectable.
Fewer fans than your average system and fewer on-board controllers are to thank for that, yet the gulf in power consumption between our two comparison systems is largely down to the NVIDIA GPU used in the Scan 3XS.
Temperature
Packing high-end components into a small chassis poses a thermal challenge, but while the Radeon HD 5870 runs warm, the temperatures - recorded on a very warm summer day - are acceptable.
CPU cooling, meanwhile, is more impressive. Shuttle's ICE cooler keeps our Core i7 980X chip at 40°C when idle, with the fan remaining surprisingly quiet. Ramping up the load on all 12 threads using Prime95, temperature rises to a respectable 73°C after a 10-minute torture test, at which point the fan becomes clearly audible. Idling for a further 10 minutes brings the temperature tumbling back down to 44°C.
You needn't worry about spontaneous combustion but it's worth noting that parts of the chassis do become hot. With the ICE cooler directing most of the internal heat to the rear, we found the chassis' back panel can become almost too hot to touch in parts. Similarly, the ICE heatpipes become very hot and with little in terms of internal airflow, the X58 board's southbridge idles at a relatively toasty 68°C.
Potential buyers worried about noise should note that setting the fan manually to a full 3,800rpm makes it very loud. Thankfully, during use, the ICE cooler never felt the need to hit full tilt and tends to alternate between quiet during moderate use to audible-but-not-intrusive under heavy load. GPU noise will depend on your graphics card of choice, naturally.
