The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.
Idle temperatures were measured after 30 minutes of ‘resting’ in the Windows 7 environment. System temperatures were measured by running Furmark with Cinebench R11.5 64 bit in a loop for 30 minutes then recording the maximum temperatures during this time period.
We attached 5 diodes to the internal of the chassis.
1: next to the optical drive at the top of the case.
2: Above the motherboard, next to the CPU radiator.
3: Above the drives.
4: next to the memory, above the graphics card.
5: on the power supply.
The liquid cooler is more enough for this processor, maintaining sub 60c temperatures even under full, extended load. Thanks to the cool running HD7770, the Bitfenix case is never tasked too hard.
I like the case, but i would personally have opted for a cheaper cooler for the CPU, a smaller storage drive, maybe even 4GB of ram. With the money saved on those, it could be put into the graphics card.
Another 7770 would make a lot of difference in regards to the gaming power, but im surprised that the 7770 is quite capable at 1080p anyway with a lot of games. just shows how overkill the really high end cards are for most people.
Good points:
good CPU and cooler choice
case is great.
Bad points.
the machine is really not classed as a gamers machine with a 7770 in it. I think they could have balanced it a little better by lowering the cost of some items as someone else said and by then maybe using a grade up in the discrete department.
Also the case needs more OCUK branding on it. This is why Alienware and Dell sell well for such expensive systems. you are buying something that looks like nothing else. Like Apple.
Shame they couldnt work with a company to do special colours and logos on their system builds. it might attract more attention.