Installation and Operation:

Mounting our test system was fairly straight forward. The only issue we ran into was mounting CoolIT's Domino ALC CPU cooler. While pre-mounting it into the removable motherboard tray was unsuccessful (due to the cooler's larger sized housing), we had no other issue with any other cooler we had on hand, including the Thermaltake V1 AX.

The NZXT Panzerbox was loaded with our test system using the following components:

» Intel Core i7 920 (2.66GHz) processor with retail Intel cooler
» MSI x58M uATX motherboard
» BFG GeForce GTX 260 MAX CORE 55 896MB PCI Express video card
» Seagate 500GB SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» OCZ Platinum PC12600 1600MHz DDR3 triple channel memory
» CoolerMaster Real Power Pro 750 power supply
» Windows 7 RC 64-bit operating system



Testing:

For comparison purposes, we loaded our test system into an Antec 300 case using only the stock fans. We used CPUID's Hardware Monitor 1.1.4.0 for measuring the temperatures taken after a 30 minute period with only Hardware Monitor running. For load temperatures, we ran a combination of Prime 95 (with all 8 instances), SiSoft Sandra Professional's Burn-In test, and FutureMark 3DMark Vantage. All readings were noted and the average of the four core readings were recorded.

In the chart below, we can see mixed results. While the front mounted 190mm fan did wonders for bringing air flow across the hard drive and GPU, it didn't really do much for the crowded Northbridge/CPU area. In its defense, even with the fans running at 100%, the fan noise could not be heard over the other component fans.

       

In this case, the use of mesh may have hindered the cooling properties of the massive fans.