Benchmarks: Temperature and Noise
So far, the Zeus Mini Evo's performance has proven largely indistinguishable from much bigger machines. There is, however, a proviso in terms of temperature and noise. The liquid-cooled CPU runs well within the limits, but the GTX 970 gets hot and eventually begins to throttle - our logs reveal that core speed fell from 1,316MHz to 1,101MHz after prolonged use.
Cooling is without a doubt the biggest obstacle to high-performance systems of this size and Cyberpower has made adjustments accordingly. The MSI graphics card, for example, is one of few GTX 970s whose fans spin at all times, and the system fans are set to full speed in BIOS.
The machine consequently does a decent job of expelling hot air, but does so at the expense of noise output. Our sound meter recorded a reading of 43.8dB when idle and 46.7dB when gaming, making it clearly audible at all times and quite loud under load. As a point of reference, we consider a sub-35dB idle reading to be in line with our expectations of a quiet machine.
