That's amazing. I mean I know how toasty my SF600 can get in the NCase M1 with a fan directly feeding it from the side bracket and having a direct exhaust path. Here you have a solid wall up against the PSU exhaust with an intake fan on one side and another wall on the other. It really doesn't have an impact? I'd imagine under medium to heavy load that front wall gets very hot, PSU fan gets up to full RPM and CPU temperatures are significantly impacted.
I mean I trust your testing, you are obviously a professional, but would you mind sharing some details of the testing? That boxed in PSU really concerns me. Otherwise, absolutely love the case, especially in clear acrylic.
I understand your concern, it was something that I thought about when finalising the layout, along with considering placing some exhaust vents next ot the PSU. But after testing the first prototype I concluded that it wasn't necessary, temperatures and noise were very good, adding extra side vents to the side panel would negatively impact the aesthetics.
Just to be sure I have carried out some new testing on the latest prototype today. The test system setup includes an i7-8700k @stock settings, GTX 1080Ti, SF450 PSU, Noctua NH-U9S cooler, Prolimatech Vortex 14 case fan.
To stress the system I used Prime95 with 8 threads maximum heat setting, whilst also running Heaven Benchmark @ max settings in the background. I set the fan profiles to what I would consider "medium" settings, i.e. they are not running at full capacity, but also not in "silent" low RPM mode.
The testing has been running over an hour flat out, I'm going to leave it going a few more hours just to be sure. The CPU is currently sat a steady 71C, the motherboard is sitting at 43C and the GPU is bouncing between 60C - 65C. The system is audible but not loud, the CPU fans are running around 1150 RPM, the case fan is running at roughly 700 RPM.
The PSU fan was off during idle, but is spinning during this testing. I am not sure how fast it is spinning, but it looks fairly slow to the eye. Putting my ear to the system with the top panel removed I cannot pick up any obvious fan noise coming from the PSU, whereas I can clearly hear the Prolimatech case fan and the GPU fans.
In terms of heat, touching the PSU after an hour of the stress testing it feels warm to the touch, but not hot. The CPU cooler however feels very hot! On the outside of the case, the side panel where the PSU exhausts against does feel what I would describe as luke-warm, whereas touching the front and top panel vents where the GPU exhausts feels very warm to the touch.
I hope that sort of answers your concerns? Sorry I can't provide specific PSU temps as I don't have any equipment to measure this, but my conclusion is that the PSU is comfortable to run in this configuration. Whilst the components I am using to test the system aren't the most demanding that you could build into this case, I feel they are tipping toward the higher end of the spectrum and so should give a good indication of the level of performance the average user can expect to achieve.
Here are some photos of the setup from the testing:
Testing was performed with XL-Vent Top Panel installed, here is view inside with panel removed (taken whilst system was idle - hence PSU fan off):
Is there an option for the back IO and front IO to be on opposite sides rather than at a right angle to each other?
Unfortunately the IO position is hard baked into the design of the case and cannot be moved.
Also, did the dimensions change between this and the prototype or did you keep it under 10L?
It has grown slightly to give a bit more clearance for GPUs that are slightly longer than reference.
The first prototype was exactly 10 litres, but the EVGA 1080Ti SC was touching the front panel. The case has since been extended by a further 10mm to give a total GPU length clearance of 278mm. The LZ7 XTD case volume now sits at 10.4 litres.
Oh, and whilst I know the price is a placeholder, what kind of pricing are we looking at for this?
Price has not been confirmed yet, but if all goes to plan it should start at around 10% - 15% higher than the LZ7 depending on the options you pick, for instance the FUSION panels (half etched gloss/smoked) will cost more due to the amount of extra time they take to make.
