Thermal performance
With our new test kit at the ready, we got building. There's plenty of room inside the case, so the overall process was pretty easy. However, we were reminded why we like modular cables on our PSUs. The fixed cables on the included 500W power supply are pretty stiff and it's quite hard to route them - and tuck unused cables away - to keep the interior tidy.
The Sonata III 500 was fitted with the following hardware:
| HEXUS chassis-test equipment specifications | |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | ASUS P5K Deluxe |
| Processor | Intel Core2Duo E6750 2.66GHz 1333MHz FSB |
| Memory | 2GiB (2 x 1GiB) CellShock DDR2 PC8000 |
| Graphic card | HIS Digital 2900XT PCIe |
| Power supply | Included 500W Antec unit |
| Hard drive | Hitachi GST 250GiB SATA x 2 |
| Optical drive | Pioneer 110 DVD re-writer |
Working in an ambient temperature of 21.2 deg C, we set about running SiSoft Sandra Pro's burn-in tests while also having the ATITool in the background to keep the processor at full tilt.
Our new testing regime means that, rather than just quoting the maximum temperature of the components we will, where possible, provide you with the average, too.
The Sonata III 500 managed to do pretty well in the CPU tests, with the average temperature coming in at 32 deg C - two degrees better than the recently-reviewed Lian-Li PC-A12.
Under load, the GPU managed to return an average temperature of 67.6deg C, topping out at the strangely-familiar 71 degrees.
The Sonata III 500 managed to perform well in the case temperature readings, reaching just 25.2deg C under load.
Overall, it returned some respectable thermal results, given that only a single 120mm fan is fitted as standard.
We don't know how much noisier things would get if a front fan were fitted - and whether it would hurt Antec's low-noise selling story - but we'd like to have had one come as standard for even better cooling performance.