AntonyLeathertestssixpremiumlargecases featuring E-ATX support,
temperedglasspanels,high-endfeatures and plenty of
water-coolingpotential
Premium cases
LABS TEST
Howwe test
O
ur case testing method is simple – use real, overclocked
hardware in a standard system to see how cases perform in
terms of cooling. Our trusty test gear includes an Intel Core
i7-870 overclocked to 3.4GHz using a vcore of 1.305V and CPU PLL of
1.9V, plus an AMD Radeon HD 5870 1GB. This is installed in a Biostar
TPower I55 motherboard with 4GB of PNY DDR3 memory, a Corsair Force
GT SSD and Antec Signature SG-650. It may be old hardware, but it tells us
what matters when it comes to a case’s cooling performance.
The CPU cooler is a Gelid Tranqullo, which is fairly modest – especially
so, given that we’ve replaced the fan with a slow-spinning Noctua
NF-S12B ULN, to really highlight the poorest and best-performing cases.
We lock the fan speed at 30 per cent on the graphics card to prevent
automatic fan control from interfering with the results. We leave each case
for 15 minutes, using Prime95 v26.6’s smallfft test (mersenneforum.org)
to load the CPU and Unigine’s Heaven benchmark (unigine.com/
products/heaven) to load the GPU.
Results were taken from CoreTemp (alcpu.com/CoreTemp) and
GPU-Z (techpowerup.com/gpuz), and we subtract the ambient
temperature from the results to give a delta T reading that we can use to
test in normal conditions across several days and varying temperatures.
We also use a sound meter to help gauge the noise each case makes, so
we can comment objectively in the reviews.
We test cases in their standard configuration with the included fans.
Adding more fans will obviously improve airflow, but will cost you more.
Where fan controllers are included, we test at the highest and lowest fan
speed levels to see what impact the different fan speeds have on cooling.
We score each case using weighted calculations for their cooling, design,
features and value to give an overall score.Contents
Cooler Master SL600M / p47
Corsair Carbide Series 678C / p48
Fractal Design Vector RS / p49
Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic Razer Edition / p50
NZXT H700i / p51
Phanteks Enthoo Lux 2 / p52