Performance Testing

One of the conundrums that we reviewers face involves system testing. I have an existing Mini-ITX test system, which has been used on a few ITX enclosures at this point. It utilizes an ID-Cooling IS-55 low profile CPU cooler, with an overall height of 57 mm, which allows for compatibility in the majority of SFF enclosures on the market.

The Fractal Mood can accommodate a much larger CPU air cooler, and even up to a 280mm AIO. Alternatively, one can simply add up to two 140 mm fans at the front to push more fresh air inwards. This brings me to the conundrum of how should I test. Should I use the existing test system to keep the comparison as apples to apples as possible? Should I add extra fans to the front intake? Should I throw all that out and put the largest cooler in that I can?

I elected to utilize the existing test system to keep my numbers consistent. I also decided not to add additional fans to the front of the system, as I wanted to give the readers an accurate representation of performance in stock configuration. I did, however, run the included 180 mm fan at two different speeds to test for both noise, and performance. Spoiler alert, don’t run it at 100 % unless you plan on having it in a different room. It’s annoyingly loud at anything over 1000 RPM.

Specification of Test System:

• Intel Core i5-12600K CPU
• Gigabyte Aorus Z690i Ultra Lite Motherboard
• ID Cooling IS-55 Low Profile CPU cooler
• 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) G Skill Trident Z 3333 (@ 3600 MT/s) Memory
• PNY RTX 3080 12GB XLR8 OC, fan speed set to standard curve

All tests conducted at a controlled ambient temperature of 23.5° C. Motherboard Fan Curve set to “Performance”, Case Fans Set to 800 RPM.

• CPU Temperature Testing: Cinebench R23
• GPU Temperature Testing: Unigine Heaven set to Ultra Detail, Extreme Tessellation, and 8x Anti Aliasing at 1080p for 30 minutes
• Gaming Test: Performed for 30 minutes using Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, 1920×1080, Ultra Settings with Ray Traced Lighting and Reflections on, DLSS set to Quality mode
• Sound Measurements: Conducted using a Dayton Audio UMM-6 calibrated measurement microphone positioned at 20 cm from source

I’ll get started with the CPU testing results: