Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 Review

November 22, 2013 | 10:35

Tags: #arc-mini-2 #best-micro-atx-case #matx #m-atx #micro #micro-atx-case #micro-atx-case-review #water-cooling

Companies: #fractal-design

Cooling Performance

It wasn't too long ago that our previous micro-ATX test graphics card died, and almost unbelievably it's happened again. As such, we've replaced the HD 7850 with a Sapphire HD 5770. While not a modern card, it's fit for our purposes here as it can get pretty toasty in poor airflow cases and only has a tiny heatsink and fan itself. For now, we've only got the SilverStone Sugo SG10 as a comparable result using this graphics card.

Apart from the graphics card, our micro-ATX test kit is the same. It contains an Intel Core i7-875K CPU, which has been overclocked from 2.93GHz to 3.4GHz using a vcore of 1.175V and a CPU PLL of 1.86V. This is an admittedly modest overclock, but as some cases that we have trialled previously made the CPU run at a Delta T of nearly 60°C, it's reasonable for a micro-ATX case.

The CPU is cooled by a Gelid Tranquillo with a Noctua NF-S12B ULN 120mm fan. This is a low-airflow fan, so it will highlight cases with poor cooling for the CPU. We also lock the fan speed on the graphics card to 30 percent in order to prevent the automatic speed control from interfering with the results, making them inconsistent.

We load the system using the Small FFTs CPU stress test in Prime95 and the Unigine Heaven DirectX 11 GPU benchmark. After at least 15 minutes, once temperatures have plateaued, we record the temperature of hottest CPU core using Core Temp and of the GPU using GPU-Z. Having recorded the ambient temperature in front of the main air intake of each case, we're then able to calculate the delta T - the difference between the ambient temperature of our lab and the temperature of the hardware.

  • CPU: Intel Core i7-875K CPU overclocked to 3.4GHz (22 x 155MHz)
  • Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 1GB
  • Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2R
  • RAM: 2GB PNY 1,600MHz DDR3
  • Storage: Corsair Force GT 60GB SSD
  • Heatsink: Gelid Tranquillo with a Noctua NF-S12B ULN fan
  • Power Supply: Seasonic M12D SS-850EM


Case performance - CPU Delta T

Arranged by CPU Delta T

  • SilverStone Sugo SG10 (max speed)
  • SilverStone Sugo SG10 (med speed)
  • SilverStone Sugo SG10 (min speed)
  • Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 (max speed; no HDD cage)
  • Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 (max speed)
  • Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 (med speed)
  • Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 (min speed)
    • 40
    • 46
    • 41
    • 47
    • 42
    • 47
    • 44
    • 48
    • 44
    • 50
    • 48
    • 52
    • 51
    • 55
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
°C, lower is better
  • CPU Delta T
  • GPU Delta T

Case performance - GPU Delta T

Arranged by GPU Delta T

  • SilverStone Sugo SG10 (max speed)
  • SilverStone Sugo SG10 (med speed)
  • SilverStone Sugo SG10 (min speed)
  • Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 (max speed; no HDD cage)
  • Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 (max speed)
  • Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 (med speed)
  • Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 (min speed)
    • 40
    • 46
    • 41
    • 47
    • 42
    • 47
    • 44
    • 48
    • 44
    • 50
    • 48
    • 52
    • 51
    • 55
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
°C, lower is better
  • CPU Delta T
  • GPU Delta T

Read our performance analysis on the next page.
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