Storage Benchmark – AIDA64
“AIDA64 Engineer Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for engineers. AIDA64 provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. AIDA64 implements a set of 64-bit benchmarks to measure how fast the computer performs various data processing tasks and mathematical calculations. Memory and cache benchmarks are available to analyze system RAM bandwidth and latency. Processor benchmarks utilize MMX, SSE, XOP, FMA, AVX and AVX2 instructions, and scale up to 32 processor threads. For legacy processors all benchmarks are available in 32-bit version as well. AIDA64 Disk Benchmark determines the data transfer speed of hard disk drives, solid-state drives, optical drives, and flash memory based devices.” Available Here. We run AIDA64’s dedicated disk benchmark of our SATA III Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD. We always ensure we use the native SATA III 6Gbps ports with the most up to date AHCI drivers on the motherboard to ensure optimal performance. We don’t use our boot drive to avoid the effects of long term SSD degradation. Like with all other tests we end all other background tasks and programs that could affect the benchmark result. 
I recently cobbled a mini ITX system together for myself with spare parts I had lying about some of which included a Bitfenix Prodigy case, a MSI R9 290 GFX, i5 4670K CPU and an Asus Z87 Gryphon mobo, a reasonably decent gaming build you’ll agree. While everything worked fine (it was a pain in the ass to hide the full length PSU cables) it all ran far too hot for my liking especially the GFX which reached a toasty and cacophonous 92 deg under testing. Needless to say I disassembled it, packed everything away in their boxes again and returned to my tried and tested ATX system. Mini ITX makes sense in a lot of ways especially in the HTPC arena but it’s not everybody’s cuppa tea and definitely not mine, I’m a gamer at heart.
That’s more to do with the R9 290 being a hot card tbh… if you used GTX 780 you’;d get much better temps I think 😛
It is a very hot running card at the best of times made even worse in small enclosures, add that to the fact that my sample used a reference cooler. On an open test bench I recorded temps of ~ 83 deg. The temps could probably be improved a bit with a quality and correctly applied TIM. Don’t get me wrong, I like the mini ITX form factor but they have their limitations.
BTW. I liked the review. Thanks.
I agree the form factor is limited but what you can do with the form factor seems to be improving significantly every year…it wasn’t THAT long ago that we could only get Atom CPUs in the ITX form factor and the only cases that were available were hideous enterprise-style boxes. I think anyone building an ITX system from scratch (and out of their own money 😉 ) is likely to use an Nvidia card GTX 750Ti-GTX 780Ti depending on budget. And thanks, glad you liked it.
I run an i7-4770K, with the MSI Gaming AC Mini itx board and a EVGA GTX 760 w/ACX in a bitfenix. My temps are perfectly fine. I think its the R9 290. I’ve heard they run really hot
Amazing really, especially when you will learn it still has a fully fetched PCIe x16 slot, KillerNIC Gigabit Ethernet, WIFI, USB 3.0 and heck even four SATA 6 Gbps ports. To make things even tastier we pair it with a GeForce GTX 760 GAMING ITX graphics card, and the combo… well it’s just awesome. http://num.to/457-287-619-226