In Use:
With all of the acoustical foam found inside, and some fairly low speed fans to keep things cool, I was not only interested to see how quiet the system was, but also if the components could stay cool. The thermal performance of the AcoustiCase 340 was compared to the previous home for this system, an In Win BT611 mATX Case. The BT611 only allows the use of the stock Intel CPU cooler, so the AcoustiCase 340 was tested two ways, with the Intel cooler and the Cooler Master Hyper TX shown previously.
With the systems fully assembled, a DVD movie was run in order to simulate the typical use of a system that would demand low noise operation. While not a true stress test like many benchmarks used to get a system really hot, it does generate some heat, and shows how the system could be expected to perform under normal use. The chart below details the results as monitored using SpeedFan software for the hard drive and CPU temperatures, and a digital thermometer used to monitor ambient temperature.
What we see is that while the hard drive stays locked in at 37 degrees Celsius no matter what, the CPU temperature rises when moving from the In Win case into the AcoustiCase. The In Win case places the CPU fan right next to an 80mm exhaust fan and right below a wide open grate that combine to allow plenty of air in, as well as letting out a fair amount of noise. While the AcoustiCase may be able to cool the CPU better with a different configuration of fans and coolers, the results were still quite acceptable to me. You generally have to give up something for low noise operation, and a couple degrees isn't much of a sacrifice.
Until now, I had considered the In Win case to be fairly quiet, but there really is no comparison with the AcoustiCase! The In Win case isn't loud, but its drone can be heard even with music playing and other computers running in the same room. When the system in the AcoustiCase 340 was powered up, I was extremely impressed at just how quiet it was. I had to power off all the other systems in the room, as well as a small desk fan, some fluorescent lighting, and an air conditioner down the hall to really appreciate how quiet this was.
With the Cooler Master Hyper TX CPU cooler installed. there was zero fan noise that I could detect, despite there being a total of five fans inside the case. The only noise was from the drives, and even that was noticeable different than when the same drives were installed in a system without any attention paid to acoustics. The whir of the optical drive was less pronounced behind the case's door and surrounded by foam blocks, and the chatter of an active hard drive had quite a different sound inside the AcoustiCase 340. The hard drive was about the only sound detectable from more than 5 feet away, and it took on a hushed, lower pitched tone thanks to the various features installed around it.
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