Thermal Performance
The standard thermal kit was fitted to the Antec 900, consisting of the following specification:| HEXUS Chassis test equipment specification | |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | Intel 955XBK |
| Processor | Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 (3.2GHz, Smithfield core) |
| 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 |
With everything booted up we waited a few minutes for the system to settle and set about getting some idle readings.
Pitched up against the similarly-priced Aguila from Thermaltake and the expensive Zalman FC-ZE1, a couple of loops of SiSoft Sandra pro were run, split with a bit of 3D Mark 06 action.
On the day the chassis was tested, the ambient temperature was 3 degrees lower than the Aguila’s, and 4-degrees lower than the Zalman, so bear that in mind when comparing results.
All things considered though, the Antec 900 did pretty well, with every reading coming in under the Zalman and pretty much wiping the floor with the Aguila.
Under load then, you would expect it to continue this trend, and it did, quite convincingly, too. Both the overall case and CPU temperatures are worth looking at, with the 200mm obviously making a big difference to the airflow up top.
Similarly, the increases on the power readings were quite small, with only a 4-degree increase. Overall then, for the thermal side of things, the 900 from Antec seems to be a pretty good performer.