The Cooler Master Elite 430 Black Case

The Final Build and the Cooling Test

For our case cooling test, we used AMD’s Phenom 955 X4 which has a stock core speed of 3.2 GHz and a TDP of 140W.  We actually conducted two separate tests.  The first was conducted with a single GTX 480 which is an extremely hot running video card at full load.  For the second case temperature test, we used our GTX 480 plus a second card – 8800 GTX in NVIDIA’s PhysX configuration. Either video card will heat your case and together they are a real test of a case’s ability to move cooling air past your hardware. What makes ours far more intense of a test than usual, is that our 8800 GTX is an open cooler design which dumps this mini-furnace’s heat right into your case and further roasts the GTX 480 above it.  To make matters far more difficult, we used 10 minutes of FurMarks “Hot-as-Hell” burning test at 2560×1600 with 4xAA and every detail maxed to get our GPU cooking and we saw 90s Centigrade on the GTX 480 temperatures.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• AMD Phenom II 955 X4 (reference 3.2 GHz)
  
• ECS A890-GXMA (latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire 8x+8x; onboard audio).
• Kingston HyperX 4 GB DDR3-PC18000 RAM (2×2 GB, dual-channel)
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (768MB, reference clocks)
  
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 (1GB, reference clocks)
  
• Thermalright Ultra Extreme CPU cooler/Scythe 120 MM
  
• 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drive
• Philips DVD rewriter
  
• 850 watt OCZ power supply unit
• Elite 430 Black (case supplied by Cooler Master)
• Radio Shack dual digital thermometer
  

As you can see the temperature sensor is placed below the DVD rewriter in a relatively cool portion of the case.  It will read the inside temperature of our closed case while we compare it with the ambient (room) temperature.  For the second part of the test, we added the 8800-GTX as a PhysX card.

First, we started off with our Elite 430 and the hardware cold and compared the ambient temperatures in front of the case with the sensor’s reported temperatures from inside the open case. A little variation is to be expected as shown above in the images, and we kept out room at 78-79 F for the entire duration of our test; rather warm as it is Summer. On the digital thermometer, “outdoor” is the sensor inside the case and “indoor” is our ambient room temperature just outside the case.

Now it is time to run FurMark’s “hot-as-hell” test.  Here you will load you GPU like no real world game can and it will register absolutely worst case temperatures.

Then, with our overclocked CPU and two hot video cards pumping heat into our closed Elite 430 case, we registered the maximum temperatures on each sensors – inside vs. outside. Please note that this test is run with only the Elite 430’s single included cooling fan; the 120 MM intake fan in front with the blue LED. We had an unusually warm pre-Summer night in our desert location and the ambient temperature hovered steadily around 79 F – 80F, plus or minus a couple of tenths. Here is what we saw after about seven minutes of running FurMark continuously:

It is too warm for the single fan and the temperature was still climbing.  But to make a point, we will do what many enthusiasts will do with GTX 480 and that is to add a second card for PhysX.  Let’s start over again and let everything cool down.  Then we will see how much warmer it gets after 7 minutes with 2 hot cards and only one cooling fan.

111 Fahrenheit, ouch!  The ambient temperatures even went up a degree as our sensor was only about 18 inches from the case.  We do not like the idea one bit of roasting the insides of our case and hardware so we added a single 120 MM fan to the side case panel and ran the test once again – beginning with a cool case and 79 F ambient temperatures again.  Here is what we observed:

We notice that by adding a single side case fan, the inside case temperatures drop by 7.4 degrees.  It would be quite logical to add two more fans to the Elite 430 for a total of four case fans – two intake and two exhaust – to get the inside temperatures down much further.

Now you must also realize that as your ambient temperatures climb, your inside case temperatures will also tend to climb a bit faster as in our rather warm room.  Our additional case fan recommendation would be to buy Cooler Master case fans as they are not only inexpensive but very quiet and efficient.