Temperature Readings:

While many will only consider the appearance or the published features of a case, airflow and temperature should be a primary concern. The temperature readings on the Zalman Z9 Plus will be compared with temperature readings from the Thermaltake Armor A60 Plus case.

The following components were installed into both test systems:

» ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 Motherboard
» AMD 1090T CPU
» Thermaltake Frio CPU Cooler
» 8GB Samsung Generic DDR3 10600 Memory
» eVGA GeForce 275GTX Video Card
» Kingston 128GB SSDNow V+
» Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB
» Seagate 7200.12 1.0TB
» LG Blu-Ray Burner
» Corsair CS600 Power Supply



Idle temperatures were taken from both cases after a 30 minute period with only Hardware Monitor running. For the load conditions, 3DMark Vantage was used to heat up the system.

As you can see by the test results below, both the Thermaltake Armor A60 and the Zalman Z9 appear to have the same cooling potential. The only difference in temperatures came while the systems were under the load conditions. The 1 degree difference is so minor, it's barely worth mentioning.