Noise, Power Consumption and Temperatures
Noise
The amount of noise produced by any computer is a vital consideration for most buyers, even gamers don’t really want a noisy PC because less noise is always better. We use an acoustic dBA meter held 2 feet behind our test system at idle and under load to get the idle and load noise levels for the system. For idle we allow the system to sit at the Windows desktop, for load we let Unigine Heaven 4.0 and Prime95 to loop together – we take the acoustic measurements 5 minutes into both of these scenarios.
The Achille’s heel of most pre-built systems comes from ignoring acoustic output in the design process. CyberPower PC have made that fatal mistake here. Out of the box the FANG Battlebox is too noisy with all the fans spinning at 1400RPM or more at idle. At load these fan speeds creep up even higher but the damage has already been done at idle. CyberPower PC need to have a major rethink of the acoustic performance, lower fan speeds will greatly improve the end-user experience.
Power Consumption
To test power consumption we measure the total system power draw during idle and load scenarios. For idle we allow the system to sit at the Windows desktop, for load we let Unigine Heaven 4.0 and Prime95 to loop together – we take the power measurements from the “Killawatt” AC power meter 5 minutes into both of these scenarios at the same point.
The GTX 970 and Haswell i5 combination is as power efficient as you’ll get. We see impressive power consumption numbers but they are hampered a bit by the uncertified Cooler Master power supply. An 80 Plus Gold unit would have knocked off an additional 25 watts or so.
Temperatures
To test thermal performance we measure average CPU and GPU core temperatures during idle and load scenarios. For idle we allow the system to sit at the Windows desktop, for load we let Unigine Heaven 4.0 and Prime95 to loop together – we take the temperature measurements from within CPUID HWMonitor 5 minutes into both of these scenarios at the same point. For load we take the average of the maximum temperatures, for idle we take the average of the minimum temperatures.
GPU temperatures rock: the MSI GTX 970 Gaming is clearly a very efficient graphics card in terms of cooling. On the other hand the CPU temperatures aren’t so good.For a 4.2GHz overclock running Prime95 and Unigine Heaven inside a compact case an average of 90 is acceptable, but I still think the temperatures should be lower. CyberPower PC should consider a less aggressive overclock or a lower voltage. In the long term dust build up (especially from the lack of case dust filters) is likely to increase temperatures further.
