Temperature, Noise, And Acoustic Efficiency
SilverStone’s Precision PS06 offers the lowest CPU temperatures, though its GPU temps are beaten by the similar-sized Cougar Evolution. This makes perfect sense in light of the PS06’s top-mounted, downdraft 180 mm fan.
We could also credit Cougar’s vented side panel for its lower GPU temperatures, though we’ve seen cases that operated better without the vents. That’s because the primary function of the front fan is to feed cold air into the CPU cooler, and vents work both ways.
Nananoxia’s Deep Silence 2 has the best noise suppression, followed closely by the non-silenced Lian Li PC-9N. Thick panels appear to be the PC-9N’s key feature for keeping it quiet, thought we’re sure that capping off its unused fan mounts helps.
Averaging each case’s temperature measurements creates a temperature scale in degrees, and averaging all of those temperatures together creates a group average. Dividing the class average by each case’s temperature average provides an inverse percent scale, with the coolest temperature achieving the highest cooling percentage.
In a similar manner, dividing each case’s average temperature by the group average creates a direct percent scale, with the quietest case garnering the lowest score. Math wizards will instantly recognize that the lower number, when used as a divisor, grants the highest rating. Dividing our first set of calculations (Temperature) by the second (Noise) allows a temperature-to-noise ratio with a 100% group average.
Since nothing can be more than 100% efficient, I offset the scale to zero by subtracting 100%. In this manner, we can see that Cougar’s Evolution provides an average cooling-to-noise ratio in high-fan mode, but drops to 4% below average in low-fan mode. SilverStone’s PS06 is the clear winner in this metric, though Nanoxia Deep Silence 2 is only 1% behind.
