The tests were performed in a controlled environment with the temperature maintained at a constant 21°C. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by running FurMark and Prime95's Small FFTs setting together. As this is a gaming system, we also decided to measure the temperatures while playing Battlefield 3.
Corsair's H100 was utilising its ‘Performance' speed setting, as applied by the DinoPC engineers.
From criticism to praise, cooling potential is exactly where the H100 excels. Being able to keep a hot and heavily-overclocked i5 3570K processor under the 90°C mark is good.
The 2000 RPM limit imposed by the H100's ‘Balanced' mode resulted in an increased CPU temperature of 3°C. This is an impressive statistic because, as mentioned on the acoustics page, noise levels were noticeably lower.
Gigabyte's first-rate WindForce 3x cooler is also thoroughly deserved of praise. At no point did GPU temperatures exceed 70°C, and all this while maintaining inaudible (albeit over the Corsair H100 unit) operation.