Lian Li PC-V2110

Temperature Testing

We encountered no problems installing all of our components. Mounting the Thermalright Ultra-120 prior to installing the motherboard tray in the case was not an issue, and as you can see from the picture there is just enough clearance to allow mounting the fan on the CPU cooler on either side of the heatsink. Testing revealed that using the fan in push configuration was best as we found that the back top corner of the case becomes a heat trap if the fan on the CPU cooler is mounted in a pull configuration. We managed to tuck a few of the cables around the back of the front drive bays to keep things a little cleaner and to prevent airflow restriction to a small extent.

The next step was to fire up the system and check temperature deltas between idle and load during gaming and heavy processor loading. Initial tests were all run with a stock configuration using the 3-speed fan controller on each setting and monitoring for change after 30 minutes of system loading. The stock cooling configuration is fairly quiet at around a 1m distance; the sound of the fans at high is not overly disturbing. Most of the noise we experienced came from the annoying 80mm fan of the OCZ 1000w PSU. We used Prime95's torture test for 30 minutes along with 30 minutes of Codemasters excellent GRiD Racing to simulate a typical gaming session and monitored load temperatures using a combination of Everest and Riva Tuner.

Using the stock exhaust fan, a setting of low is just about able to hold a QX9650 and 3870X2 card at acceptable temps in a 16C ambient room. Higher ambient temperatures or rooms with less airflow may wish to opt for medium to high settings to keep temperatures at acceptable levels for long load durations. For a QX9650 at 4GHz with a processor core voltage of 1.34V, using a fan setting of high really is the only option. Even with the fans all set to high the back corner of the top panel does get quite hot during extended gaming sessions when using ASUS's 4XDVI 3870X2 card - mainly because the custom cooler on ASUS' card dumps all of its heat into the case.

We also tested with a Panaflo 120x38mm fan on high during gaming and monitored temperatures. We were surprised to find a 6-10C improvement in temperatures at the expense of added noise. Mind you, the fan speed controller really does come in handy as the fan can be set to low during light system load with no perceived increase in volume over the stock Lian Li offering.