Thermal Performance
For all our reviews we now have a preset component list designed to push any chassis to the limit in terms of its thermal performance.| HEXUS Chassis test equipment specification- MATX/ATX | |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | Intel D916GUX/Intel 955XBK |
| Processor | Intel Pentium 4 570J (3.8GHz)/Intel Pentium EE 840 (3.2GHz) |
| Memory | 2GiB (2 x 1GiB) OCZ DDR2 PC4200 Value Pro Dual-Channel |
| Graphic Card | ASUSTek GeForce 6800 256MiB Ultra PCIe |
| Power Supply | Antec Neo HE 430W |
| Hard Drive | Seagate Barracuda 160GB SATA |
| Optical Drive | Pioneer 110 DVD Re-Writer |
In order to put the system under the maximum load a double run of 3D Mark 06 was executed and followed up by 3 consecutive burn-in tests using SiSoft Sandra Pro 2007.
In order to give a comparison we pitched the X11 up against the recently-reviewed Antec Fusion.
At idle the X11’s internal thermal performance is, on the whole, better than the Antec Fusion – with the exception of the internal temperature.
Considering the back of the X11 is fitted with dual 80mm fans the temperature at the rear exhaust was disappointing: not removing nearly enough hot air from the inside of the chassis as we’d like.
Under load the X11 improves somewhat. The power reading and the general mainboard temperature especially. Maybe the size of the X11 has become useful after all?
The CPU temperature, on the other hand, gave cause for concern, and although most HTPCs won’t feature an Extreme Edition Pentium 4, it does prove there is insufficient airflow around the CPU area in the Origen X11.