Test Setup and Test Methodology

Intel Test Setup
CPU	Intel Core 2 E6400 @ 2.8Ghz (from CSMSA)
Cooling	Coolermaster Hyper TX
Mainboard	Intel 975X Bad Axe (Modded by Piotke)
Memory	2 * 1Gb PC6400 OCZ
Other	XFX Geforce 8800 GTX Antec TruePower Trio! 650W Western Digital 74Gb Raptor SATA HDD

Room temperature was 20°C during testing, ambient noise clocked in at 37.8dBA. Noise measurements were taken at 50cm from the front of the case.

Realtime HDR and Orthos were used to stress the Dual Core system; Core 2 Temp was used to monitor Core temperature (duh) and Speedfan to check the temperature of HDD and Motherboard. Rivatuner’s temp monitor checked the G80 GPU at regular intervals. Maximum values were recorded.

The Intel Bax Axe motherboard features several thermal sensors, the “mobo” values are those recorded by the sensor which can be found between the DDR2 memory banks, marked A in the overview:

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The Antec P182B features excellent cable management features, let this photo speak for itself:




Only the 8-pin power cable for the motherboard had to pass from the front, which illustrates that your power supply needs lengthy cables in order to benefit from the Antec P182B cable hiding feature. The backside of the motherboard panel is less “nice” to look at, of course:



With 3 exhaust fans and no in-take the P182B relies on negative air pressure inside the case to draw in fresh air, which means: dust collector. In order to minimize the effect Antec installed two 120mm sized dust filters at the in-take points of the upper/lower part of the case. These can be very easily accessed from the front panel, and they hide behind these doors, which open with a small push at the right side.



They do their work admirably; 3 weeks of stress testing later the lower dust filter looked like this:



Both filters can be removed without the use of tools and are cleaned and installed again in less than a minute.

Onto the stress testing ->