Thermal performance
Our thermal tests use some of the hottest hardware to come available in recent years, with stress being applied by burn-in tests from the popular SiSoft Sandra Pro application.
The Soprano DX was fitted with the following hardware:
| 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 |
The DX didn't do too well in the thermal tests. A lack of airflow around the centre of the case produced a five-degree swing under load. And, under load, the temperature of the CPU and motherboard also increased beyond our expectations.
Disappointingly, although the rear exhaust did seem to be pushing out a fair amount of heat, there must have been a lot more inside that it just wasn't extracting.
It's possible that removal of the HDD cradle – with or without using a long graphics card - would improve the system thermals overall, since that would produce a clear path from the front fan. But it really shouldn't be necessary to take such drastic action.