Idle temperature and acoustic recordings are taken while the system sits at the desktop under minimum load. Then we run 3DMark's FireStrike 1.1 and take the measurements again once the temperature or sound has settled to its maximum. All fans were left to the Mesh-supplied defaults. We recorded audio from a 1m distance from the base unit at approximately the same level.
Thermal Performance
It was quite a warm summer's day during testing, but even taking this into consideration the idle temperatures were a little high. Nothing to worry about, though, as the maximum temperatures under load were perfectly acceptable. There shouldn't be any problems during a heavy, lengthy gaming session.
Acoustic Performance
The system noise doesn't change much at all under load. However, it's also rather loud, considering that most systems will produce 30-40dB these days, even under load in some cases. You could easily reduce this by putting some of the many fans onto lower settings, as there really are a lot of them and you clearly don't need this amount of cooling when the system is idling.
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