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For our tests we will be using a Phanteks PH-TC14PE to cool the AMD Vision A8-5600K APU in the Aerocool Strike-X Air. Our test system also features an AMD Radeon HD 7950 graphics card. We overclocked the system to 4.3 GHZ for our tests using a voltage of 1.45V.
Test System:
Processor: AMD Vision A8-5600K.
Motherboard: Biostar Hi-Fi A85W.
Cooler: Phanteks PH-TC14PE.
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-2.
Memory: 16 GB (4x 4 GB Mushkin Blackline 1600 MHz).
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 7950.
Power Supply: Silverstone Platinum P1000W.
System Drive: Kingston HyperX 3K 240 GB.
Monitor: Viewsonic VX2260WM.
Software:
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit).
CPUID Hardware Monitor.
Prime95 64-bit.
Furmark V1.9.2.
To test the thermal performance of the Aerocool Strike-X Air we loaded our test system for 15 minutes using Prime95 and Furmark and recorded the maximum temperatures reached using CPUID Hardware Monitor. We then restarted the system and left it for 15 minutes before recording idle temperatures.
Room temperature was maintained at 16 degrees C for the duration of our tests.
As expected, the thermal performance of the Strike-X Air is excellent, thanks to the open air design.
To conduct our noise level tests, we decided to keep the fans on our CPU cooler running and didn't use a passive graphics card. The 200 mm fan included by Aerocool is near silent and we want to give you an idea of what you can expect when running an enthusiast system in this chassis. After all, it is designed for enthusiasts.
The acoustic performance of the Strike-X Air is pretty poor. The open sided design means that there is nothing to absorb any of the noise generated by the fans within.
