Thermal Stress Test

We usually use the system above to test all cases so that you may directly compare them regardless of their size and motherboard support. With the 65 mm compact cooler, even all the compact cases we have tested to date were able to fit this base setup. However, as the A4-H2O is a very compact SFF chassis with a maximum clearance of 55 mm, we used a 240 mm AIO, which results in incomparable data. That said, we have still included it in the charts for reference, but limited the comparison to ITX and communicated the use of the AIO as well.

Our test setup focuses on four components small enough to fit into every chassis format. This allows us to compare the impact case size and cooling have on a modern system. Each of the four measured components is connected to a REED Instruments SD-947 Data Logging Thermometer with 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.

For the cases, 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.

We let the chassis sit at idle until temperatures reach 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.

Comparison