Fractal Design Vector RS Case Review

Acoustic Testing

Our case testing involves comparing acoustic performance in a number of scenarios with both air and All-In-One liquid cooling installed.

These tests will include measuring sound levels with our sound meter from approximately 300mm from the front of the case, at idle and under 100% CPU and GPU load.

Sound levels will be measured in dBA after 5 minutes at idle in Windows. Load noise levels will be measured by running AIDA64 stressing CPU, FPU, cache and GPU for 10 minutes.

CPU and case fan profiles will be set to their silent operating mode in the Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master’s bios and GPU fans set to their default fan curve. The CPU cooler used in acoustic testing will be a Gamer Storm Assassin III for air cooling and a Corsair H150i Pro with ML120 Pro RGB fans for AIO liquid cooling comparisons. Case fans are the three pre-installed fractal design Dynamic X2 GP-14 140mm fans.

The ambient noise level (noise floor) in our test room is measured at 37.4 dBA.

Thermal Performance Testing

As with every case we review, thermal performance is important, therefore, we shall test this by running another series of tests to measure temperatures both at idle and under load.

To fully stress test the system, we will run AIDA64 for 10 minutes stressing CPU, FPU, Cache and GPU with the case in various configurations. With this data, we can compare how each scenario affects thermal performance.

We will also compare the system’s thermal capabilities with both air cooled and AIO liquid cooled solutions for the CPU. For air cooling, we will be using a Gamer Storm Assassin III and for liquid we will use the Corsair H150i Pro 360mm AIO.

During thermal testing, only stock case fans will be used. All fans and pumps (where applicable) will be set to 100% to test raw cooling performance.

All temperature measurements are presented as deltas – the ambient temperature has been deducted from the CPU/GPU temperature giving us a delta.

The following configurations will be used to test the affect they have on thermal and acoustic performance:

• Tempered glass side panel installed;
• Tempered glass panel removed;
• Tempered glass top panel installed;
• Ventilated top panel installed.

Test System

• Processor: intel Core i9 9900k @ stock frequency and voltage
• Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master
• CPU Cooler: (Air) Gamer Storm Assassin III, (AIO) Corsair H150i Pro 360mm AIO
• Memory: 16GB G.SKILL Trident Z RGB 3200MHz DDR4
• Graphics: Gigabyte RTX 2070 Super Gaming OC 8GB
• Power Supply: Fractal Design ION+ 860P 860W
• Storage Drive: Corsair Force LE 120
• OS: Windows 10 version 1903

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