P182 Special Edition - One of the best cases gets better

Benchmark Setup

Our new mATX test bed offered many advantages over our previous equipment. It provides more reliable temperature figures, more sensors overall, and the dual core CPU does a better job of stressing out a case's cooling ability. In fact, it does such a good job that we feel it is a better solution than our previous ATX test bed - an LGA 775 based motherboard with a Pentium 4 CPU. While the Intel-based DFI motherboard might have offered more typical air-flow patterns for a full sized motherboard in ATX cases, we feel the benefits of more sensors and a higher output CPU outweigh the slightly more standard sized PCB, so we will be testing all cases using this mATX motherboard for the time being.

New ATX Test Bed
Asus A8N-VM nForce 430 AMD 3800+ X2 Dual Core CPU OCZ 512MB DDR2 x 2 Zalman CNPS 9500 Heatsink Seagate 120gb SATA Hard Drive Chaintech GeForce 6600GT Zalman VF-700 Cu GPU Cooler MSI DVD-CD/R/RW Combo drive Zalman ZM460-APS PSU

This new motherboard proved to be an excellent choice for our test bed, as it offered a total of eight temperature sensors - nine including the hard drive. We determined the location of every sensor by trial and error and localized cooling. We found a number of duplicated or at least very similar numbers which we have either averaged out or omitted due to redundancy, and we have tried our best to provide the most intuitive naming of the locations of the sensors, However, with a few - in particular the ones concerning the 6600 GT - we just found three sensors and based on their data and our localized cooling we decided one is truly the core temperature, one is located very close to the core but is probably on the PCB itself, and the third is located further away from the GPU socket but is still on the graphics card.

Click to enlarge

We also found a sensor in a Winbond chip in the top right which works nicely as an ambient motherboard temperature indicator, and will be shown simply as "MB" in our temperature results tables. For the sake of getting the most useful comparisons of the performance of this new case to other offerings, we included numbers from our recent micro ATX roundup, one of which used the same CPU cooler. Unfortunately, with Windows Vista on the new test bed we did not have S.M.A.R.T. functionality for our hard drive, and thus we could not include HDD temperatures. We did gain a sensor however that was finally unquestionably located in the Northbridge, and we have labeled that simply NB in this temperature chart.

Heat

With a completely new set of NVIDIA drivers for Vista, we were not surprised to see a change in sensor to name mapping, but we eventually found the locations of all the same sensors we used in previous tests with this motherboard and named them accordingly. Note that ambient room temperatures are slightly different, but even so it's pretty clear the P182 SE is not performing as well as the smaller cases, which certainly surprised us.


There could be a number of factors at play here, but the biggest one is most likely the simple fact that we ran the test with all three system fans set to low. At this setting the computer still performed flawlessly, and noise was reduced to an absolute minimum. The "MB" sensor in particular gives us a clear picture that all the air in the case is hotter with this small amount of air flow, but even so some components are being kept nearly as cool (or even cooler than) a system that is much louder.

With a heavier heatsink like the 9500 Cu, it is also possible that the vertical motherboard orientation causes the heatsink to have less-than-ideal contact with the CPU surface, thus reducing its effectiveness. Taking all this into account we still consider this case a great performer. Turning the fans up to even medium provided numbers significantly better than the micro ATX offerings, but the key is this was not necessary even under full load.

Noise

To put its performance in the auditory arena into perspective, here are the noise levels as determined using our sound meter. On this day of testing we registered an ambient noise floor of right around 20 dB-A.


Similarly to its previous versions, the latest offering in the P18x line is an outstanding case for those concerned with noise levels. Amazingly, outfitted with undervolted Zalman gear the P182 SE registered significantly quieter than our open air test bed, which actually had the somewhat quieter Zalman 7000 Cu heatsink installed at the time. Antec's success is owed to its well-made multi-material side panels, a good fitting of parts, and abundant use of vibration dampening techniques, employed everywhere from the hard drives to the power supply bracket itself.

Subjectively, the only way we even noticed a difference between our ambient room noise and the computer being on was a dull hum of all the fans moving their considerably small amounts of air. This noise was so transparent it probably would not even bother most sound technicians in studio work. Even as good as these numbers are though, community users have taken great delight in modding their P180s with various applications of tape, additional dampening materials, more exotic, quieter fans, and even suspended hard drives to achieve truly silent computing. Antec's provided Tri-Cool fans should still be commended for their near-silent operation when set to their lowest setting.