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Idle recordings are taken while the system sits at the desktop under minimum load. Our gaming test uses Metro: Last Light – a DX11 title that taxes the CPU and GPU.
Wired2Fire sets the CPU cooler fan speed to Asus' ‘standard' profile.
Thermal Performance
Ambient temperature was maintained at 24°C throughout testing. All fan settings were left on the Wired2Fire defaults.
Idle temperatures are no cause for concern. The CPU cooler and GPU fan speeds run at lower levels in order to reduce noise output.
The gaming CPU temperature level of 60°C is a solid level given the 4.4GHz overclock and modest CPU cooling hardware. GPU temperature, on the other hand, is high at 80°C. This is the point where the Nvidia GPU starts to down-clock the core in order to reduce the core temperature level.
I would suggest downloading a utility such as MSI Afterburner and using it to set a custom fan profile that better maintains the GTX 970 GPU's boost core clock by sacrificing low levels of acoustic emission.
Acoustic Performance
With the case positioned on the floor, our sound level meter is placed where a user’s ears are likely to be located – around 50cm above the system and 100cm in front of it.
At idle, the system is quiet enough to be unobtrusive. The fan speeds, especially for the graphics card, quickly ramp up when a gaming load is applied. The machine noise is noticeable when running a game, however it is far from irritating.
Reaffirming the GPU fan speed profile suggestion, the load fan speed level could be set higher without going into the territory of annoying noise levels.
Power Consumption
Power consumption is measured at the wall, representing the energy drawn by the system.
Given the overclocked CPU, idle power consumption is low at 67W. Even the gaming power draw of 240W is low enough to be considered a good result.
Users placing the system in a small room will be happy by the power draw levels as the low values directly translate into less heat being pumped into the surrounding area.
