Temperature Testing

We measure several temperatures and the system noise level across all cases. Every test is performed with the same set of components installed. The out-of-the-box fan setup is used, connected to the motherboard, with the board adjusting the fan speed automatically. This puts the onus of noise and performance on the case manufacturers and motivates them to actually care about thermal performance instead of simply using active cooling as a marketing bulletin point.

On the software side, the test setup includes Windows 10 Pro with Furmark and Prime95 both running at the same time to put maximum load on both the processor and the graphics card.

While Real Temp offers excellent and repeatable temperature results, we employ a REED Instruments SD-947 Data Logging Thermometer with four K-Type sensors that have been placed as closely as possible to the benchmarked areas of the CPU, GPU, M.2 SSD, and motherboard chipset. A fifth sensor is used to monitor the room temperature for an accurate delta T result.

We let the chassis sit at idle until temperatures have reached equilibrium. Next, our stress-testing load is started, and it continues to run until temperatures are stable. The temperature result for each section of the case is the highest value measured during the test run. All reported temperatures are normalized to 20°C room temperature.

We have tested the Cooler Master MB311L ARGB for temperature and noise as well, with the specific mATX hardware set. As these numbers are not directly comparable with our ITX and ATX setups, we have not published them at this time until we have at least one more mATX enclosure to compare it to. When we do, we will update this review with comparison graphs accordingly.