SilverStone Lascala 10M: An Exclusive Look at SilverStone's Newest Creation

Benchmarking - Thermal

The ability for an HTPC case to alleviate heat from internal components is just as important as any other type of case. Before our expansion to the HTPC case category, we observed the temperatures of only the key components: the CPU, power supply, memory, VGA card, HDD, and the general system ambient temperature. However, we have since learned that measuring temperatures of only those 5 components is not enough to realize the true power and effect of a cooling system.

During our look at the Sun workstation last month, we decided to modify our thermal benchmarks a little to test all areas of the case instead of the limited number of components. We wanted to see how each component affected the areas around it and how well case fans were performing. We drew an imaginary grid against a side of the case and measured the temperatures of each single square area to get a better idea of the effects of the warmer running hardware on the case's ambient temperatures.

We have also drawn out a modified test bed for the HTPC category of cases to fit current and future designs so that we can compare each product effectively without changing out test hardware. Take a look at our changes in hardware:

DFI K8M800 MLV AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Corsair DDR 512MB x 2 Zalman CNPS7000 Copper Seagate Barracuda 120GB SATA ATI 9800XT AGP8x Enermax EG475P-VE 470W PSU

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The thermal readings for the key components and points on the motherboard during operation are described below. The numbers in each square represent the temperature of that particular section of the case in degrees celsius:

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We can see the warmest region of the case is around the CPU and Northbridge area, which are the hottest running components followed by the VGA card. We expected the area above, below and around the HDD mount to also be higher in temperature since there is no active cooling in that section of the case but it remained at a constant 29-30 degrees throughout our benchmark.

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We see here the temperatures of the various key components in the system. Temperatures have been taken directly off of the surface of the hardware this time for an accurate reading of actual component temperatures. We see again that the warmest of components are the CPU and VGA card, followed by the Northbridge and Southbridge. The HDD hit 38 degrees when we ran the defragmenter utility but otherwise temperatures lingered around 32 degrees. The Corsair DDR and PSU ran at a cool 30-31 degree range the entire time no matter how hard we worked the system. Note: The combination of numbers listed for the CPU, Northbridge, and VGA card are of the components' heat sinks and the temperatures of the cores respectively.