Thermal performance
As you may have already read, we recently threw out our old hot 'n' toasty test rig and replaced it with some new hardware that's more relevant to the current market.
Gone is our faithful 975XBX motherboard from Intel to be replaced by copper-adorned chippery in the form of an ASUS P5K Deluxe.
And, graphics has switched so that, now, an ATI card powers our pixels. Below are the full specs.
| HEXUS chassis test equipment specification | |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | ASUS P5K Deluxe |
| Processor | Intel Core2Duo E6750 2.66JGHz 1333MHz FSB |
| Memory | 2GiB (2 x 1GiB) CellShock DDR2 PC8000 |
| Graphic card | HIS Digital 2900XT PCIe |
| Power supply | Corsair HX620W |
| Hard drive | Hitachi GST 250GB SATA x 2 |
| Optical drive | Pioneer 110 DVD rewriter |
During testing, the ambient temperature was a moderately toasty 23.4 deg C.
After the system booted up, we let it idle for 15 minutes and then took some readings before putting everything through its paces.
We started off by running SiSoft Sandra Pro's burn-in tests - with ATITool running in the background to ensure that the CPU was going at full tilt.
The 690 managed to return results within the expected boundaries. Given that other cases we've tested with our new hardware returned temperatures a few degrees lower, the peak CPU reading of 34.5 stood out a little - though when the ambient is taken into account, the results seem pretty normal.
With the GPU returning the 71 degrees peak we've seen across the other chassis we have reviewed recently, the 690 didn't do badly but nor did it excel.
Since the ambient temperature on the 690's testing day was a good two degrees higher than for other recent tests, it's interesting to note the almost like-for-like increases compared to other chassis.
The case temperatures were a little different, though, with only a slight increase being noted on the 690 after stressing the components inside.
Overall, we were impressed with the readings the 690 provided - and the noise produced by the chassis was perfectly acceptable, too, with the rear feet and hard drive cradles doing a good job of lessening vibration.
