Aspire X-Navigator: A High End Gaming Chassis

Benchmarking - Thermal

When benchmarking the X-Navigator, we test the temperatures of key components including the actual CPU temperature, the actual temperature inside the heatsink, the temperatures of the DDR, Northbridge, Southbridge, HDD, PSU, and the ambient temperature inside the case, all during normal operation. During our testing, the PSU and CPU heatsink fans remain on to measure temperatures during normal system operations

Chaintech VNF3-250 AMD Athlon64 3200+ OCZ PC3200 DDR x 2 Zalman CNPS7000 Copper Seagate Barracuda 120GB SATA ATI 9800XT AGP8x OCZ 520W PowerStream

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Since we have updated our test bed motherboard from a VIA chipset board to an nForce chipset board, the Northbridge results should be read as temperatures of the single nForce chip. Southbridge results are obviously not associated with nForce boards and are, therefore, left blank.

The thermal readings for the key components and points on the motherboard during operation were as follows:

With a total of five case fans, one being the large 120mm exhaust, temperatures not only remained at a stable operating temperature, but also competed with some of the coolest cases that we have looked at, SilverStone's Temjin 6 as well as Thermaltake's Tsunami Dream. We believe that fan placement as well as the decision of which fans should be intakes and which should function as exhausts make a world of difference when it comes to thermal performance.