Thermal performance
The thermal-performance tests that we run at HEXUS are designed to push cases to the thermal limit of the installed components.
The following components were fitted to the Gigabyte Triton to test thermal performance:
| HEXUS chassis - test-equipment specification | |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | Intel D975XBX |
| Processor | Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 (3.2GHz, Smithfield core) |
| CPU cooler | Intel stock CPU cooler |
| Memory | 2GiB (2 x 1GiB) OCZ DDR2 PC4200 Value Pro Dual-Channel |
| Graphic card | ASUSTek GeForce 6800 256MiB Ultra PCIe |
| Power supply | Corsair HX620W |
| Hard drive | Seagate Barracuda 160GB SATA2 |
| Optical drive | Pioneer 110 DVD re-writer |
With an ambient temperature of 23 degrees in the labs, we set about pushing the Triton to see just what it was capable of delivering. First thing to say is that it's a pretty quiet system under normal usage. However, it fell down in a couple of areas.
The CPU duct was a chronic failure. The CPU ran at 49 degrees at idle - and that's hotter than normal - and things only got worse under load, producing a reading of 65 degrees. Because the duct in the side panel has no fan, it was actually restricting the heat from escaping. The easy solution is to remove the duct but that leaves you with the problem of four ugly holes in the side panel.
Considering the sub-£50 price, though, the Triton performed pretty well in the thermal tests, although the GPU temperatures were on the high side given that no graphics tests were done. It also needs to be noted that when the system was powered down and taken apart, we could feel a pocket of heat directly under the graphics card.