Methodology

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 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 the 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 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.

Stress Test

While we usually just test the CPU without any limits in all our scenarios, the compact Noctua L9i is officially rated for 65 W, while our Intel i5-9600K used across all our case review systems has a 95 W rating. To see how the Dan A4-SFX performs, we were so cheeky as to run it at full throttle for the first time around, before setting the Long Power Duration Limit to 65 W in the UEFI BIOS. Even without the limit, the CPU got quite hot, hitting the thermal limit (remember these graphs are normalized to 20°C), and thus had to play a little throttling magic it seems, but the system remained stable and responsive. Naturally, at the limit, things looked perfectly fine, and the whole system ran much cooler as a result without any real world performance degradation. Other possibilities, like down-volting or simply using more potent liquid cooling, are also options to stick within thermal envelopes.

Gaming Test

To measure how the case and our standard hardware stacks up in gaming, we let the system cool down to reasonable temperatures before using Doom Eternal with VSync off at 1080P and full details, which lets the GPU throw everything it can at the system. By turning off VSync, the GPU renders all the frames it possibly can, thus eliminating any bottlenecks because of the monitor refresh rate. Once again, this system was left running for 30 minutes to allow for temperatures to level out. We will include proper comparison bar graphs in the future, once we have a few more results from other enclosures.

Comparison

Noise Testing

Noise levels are recorded with a calibrated REED Instruments R8050 Sound Level Meter, Type 2. It is placed at chassis height on a Manfrotto Tripod. Measurements are taken from a 45° angle towards the case, at a distance of 10 cm to the closest edge of the chassis.