NZXT Vulcan Case Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and External view3. Internals and System build4. Internals and System build continued5. Test System and results 6. Acoustic Performance7. Closing Thoughts8. View All Pages

Test System

NZXT Vulcan Chassis
Biostar MCP6P3 AM3 mATX Motherboard
AMD Athlon II 255 @ 3.1GHz
Asus EAH5850 1GB PCI-e
Corsair HX850 PSU
4 GB G-Skill DDR III 1600
640GB WD Black SATA II w 32m cache
LG 16X DVDRW

Software

Windows 7 Professional x64
Everest Ultimate
Furmark

Our test system was built from scratch prior to installing Windows 7 Professional as our operating system of choice. Next we visited Windows update to download all of the necessary patches and finally we installed the applications used for our testing.  We run each of our tests for 3 thirty minute cycles and take an average of the 3 tests to obtain our final numbers. When we received the NZXT Vulcan we did not get the 200mm fan included so we delayed the review from being posted until we had the side fan to complete the package.

We will start off with Everest Stability testing and then move on to Furmark to torture test the GPU. The 200mm side fan is attached to a fan header on our motherboard and the front and top fans are attached to the fan controller provided by NZXT. We have disabled the smart fan option in the system BIOS so the side fan will run at maximum speed. Our first set of tests will be done with the 2 speed controlled fans running at low  the lowest rpm with no side fan and then test again at with all fans enabled running at full speed.

Everest Stability Test and Furmark

With just the front intake and top exhaust fans the temperatures we not all that bad other than the motherboard chipset. The chipset with our system idle sat at 56 Celsius and  reached 64 Celsius during the Everest Stability Testing.

Adding the 200mm side fan into the picture took 10 degrees Celsius off the motherboard chipset with our system idle and lowered our CPU temperature 5c as well which is an excellent improvement!  As we continued our testing both CPU and motherboard temperature were consistently several degrees lower with the side fan in place.  We feel NZXT should include the side fan instead of making it optional.

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