Table of Contents

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Intro

We’re reviewing the Intel Core Ultra 285K CPU.
Take a look at the giant spiky ATX12V line for the 285K on the chart below compared to the 14900K ATX12V line. This is going to be a problem for testing power today and efficiency. It’s not as simple as just measuring the EPS12V cables anymore, at least not on ASUS.

Editor's note: This was originally published on October 24, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing

Patrick Lathan

Testing, Editing

Mike Gaglione

Quality Control

Jeremy Clayton

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Camera

Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

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We had to build a monstrosity to isolate the power consumption to the CPU for Arrow Lake, because ASUS is pulling significant power down the ATX 24-pin connector and not just the EPS12V cables. 

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If we didn’t do all of this, we would have measured the 285K as the most efficient CPU possibly ever made, but that’s because the power has simply moved to split across 4 phases for the 24-pin and 18 for the rest. 

If it’s been a while since you checked in, you can think of the 285K as the “i9-15900K,” except Intel stopped that naming. 

Intel’s big claim is that power consumption is halved, so we’ll spend a lot of time validating that today. Let’s get started.

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Pricing

We’ll start with a price round-up of the current landscape.

CPU Price Comparison | GamersNexusLate October, 2024

	Newegg Price	Amazon Price
Intel 285K (MSRP $590)	$630	N/A
Intel 14900K	$470	$470
Intel 14700K	$375	$350
Intel 13900K	N/A	$415
Intel 13700K	$350	$290
Intel 12900K	$300	$280
Intel 12600KF	$160	$160
AMD 9950X	$600	$710
AMD 9900X	$430	$430
AMD 9700X	$330	$330
AMD 7950X3D	$600	$600
AMD 7950X	$510	$510
AMD 7900X	$400	$400
AMD 7900	$370	$370
AMD 7800X3D	$480	$480

We put this table together a few days before launch, so the exact prices may be different when this story goes live; however, as Chronomancers haven’t been a core D&D class since AD&D 2e in 1995 with TSR’s publication of the Chronomancer handbook, we haven’t had a way to time travel for a couple decades and regretfully can’t review future prices anymore.

The 285K is $630 with the pre-order pricing, or $160 more than the 14900K (read our review). We don’t care about the launch MSRP of prior parts, only what they’re available at today since that’s when people buy things.

The 14700K is $350-$375, the 13700K is $290 in some places, the 12900K is down to $280, and the much weaker 12600KF is now $160. Buying into these dead platforms isn’t a great feeling, though.

AMD’s direct alternatives include the $480 7800X3D with a rumored 9800X3D in a week, so if that’s true, we’ll have more to say soon. The 285K is 31% more money than the 7800X3D. The 9950X is also cheaper than the 285K’s current pre-order price.

The new 285K is flanked by the best gaming CPU with the 7800X3D (watch our review) -- which is also the most efficient CPU we’ve tested recently -- and the 9950X and 7950X for production.

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Specs & Basics

For the absolute barebones basics, the main thing you need to know is that Arrow Lake and the Core Ultra 200 lineup (so far) move away from monolithic silicon and toward a tile-based approach, including manufacturing from Intel competitor TSMC.

Intel has gotten rid of hyper-threading and is instead moving to just P-cores and E-cores with these CPUs, so the 285K has 8-P cores, 16 E-cores, and 24 threads against the 14900K’s 32 total threads. Frequency is also down, now at 5.7GHz advertised but because the architectures are different, you can’t directly compare the frequency numbers. We’ll review the 245K next, but that one’s at 6 P-cores and 8 E-cores. 

The new platform is LGA 1851 and requires new motherboards. These will not work in LGA 1700 motherboards, and LGA 1700 CPUs will not work in LGA 1851 motherboards. There are also multiple independent loading mechanism options chosen by motherboard manufacturers -- we’ll have a separate video shortly with laser scans and pressure maps of those. More specs can be found in our Arrow Lake announcement coverage.

Not Ready for Launch

First off: Arrow Lake really doesn’t seem ready for launch. Intel told us this about Arrow Lake in a briefing:

“The big change is that every ODM now, without fail, every ODM ships with this [APO] enabled. In the BIOS, the Camarillo device is turned on, there’ll be a yellow bang, the driver will install, and APO will be enabled by default. That’s the out-of-box-experience everybody is going to have. You’d want to mimic what folks are going to see.”

“This is going to be something that is going to be probably just as important as the hardware improvements. [...] All your ODMs, the board vendors, it’s all enabled by default and should auto-install, 13th Gen onward.”

This is important because we don’t test with APO so we had to consider it for this review. 

Intel presented first-party benchmark slides with APO enabled and emphasized with us that not only would it be on by default with Z890, but that it would also be on by default with Z790. Neither was true. We discovered this issue and brought it to Intel only because we weren’t sure if it was our fault, and it wasn’t. The company seemed totally unaware of this failing and, after some back-and-forth, eventually realized it had simply screwed up. As a result of our findings, Intel is moving to publish a list of motherboards that support APO out of the box on by default in BIOS going forward. 

While that’s great for consumers so that it clears up the misleading nature of the original claims, this product is clearly not ready if we’re the ones beta testing such strong statements as “without fail” for a feature that wasn’t present, as pointless as it often is. 

Dynamic Tuning also no longer exists on our board, despite Intel telling us that it should be present and enabled. The option has been renamed to Innovation Platform Framework and was off by default, which meant APO was off.

With the latest microcode and BIOS on Z790 for these reviews, we also found that APO was off by default for those platforms as well.

We consider APO off the default user experience for the product as Intel shipped it to us; however, we tested with both. APO was ultimately irrelevant in our test suite.

This was one of many unforced errors from Intel, with others including BSODs on Windows install due to a driver conflict with NVIDIA devices when the IGP is enabled. This issue did not exist on prior architectures and seems to be a combination of the new IGP claiming the PCIE resources and of NVIDIA’s driver code not having an error handler for 0 PCIE resource availability. You can bypass it by disabling the IGP, but for a lot of people, this will be frustrating.

The platform also has some issues with Easy Anti-Cheat, which Intel will soon be publishing a statement about, but we’ll leave that to Wendell’s coverage, but basically, if you disable security features, you’re able to work around the issue. We just wouldn’t recommend it.

Additionally, Intel sent a statement about power profiles where balanced power on 24H2 results in uncharacteristically bad performance. We test with high performance except where we’re specifically required to use balance in some X3D situations so this didn’t affect us but does represent one of Intel’s launch problems. 

Intel even got its own specs wrong on the slide above where it said the chipset can support up to 32 USB 3.2 devices but actually it’s supposed to be 10. This is all to point out that Arrow Lake is really just not ready for launch.  

Efficiency Testing

Power at 24-Pin & Raw Power Draw (Blender)

Let’s get into the efficiency testing.

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This is really important, but we’ll try to keep it short: On at least the ASUS Z890 motherboard we have, the 24-pin is doing disproportionate work. This is likely a board-to-board thing, not Arrow Lake as a whole.

24-Pin & EPS12V Power: 14900K (Baldur’s Gate)

Proving our work: This plot shows the 14900K’s power draw in a known workload spread across multiple rails. You can see that EPS1 and EPS2 power is similar, both at around 70-80W in this lighter weight gaming workload. The 24-pin has several voltages, including 3.3V, 5V, 5VSB, and 12V shown here. 

The ATX12V rail includes things like fans, the CPU, and if we hadn’t isolated it, slot power, among other miscellaneous controllers on motherboards. 

Slot power is around 30-35W, which is why it’s important to isolate it if capturing 24-pin power. 

Slot Power Problems

Here’s why we isolate slot power: This benchmark was for 7-Zip on the 14900K. The GPU does literally nothing in this test except spit out the display. It does not engage in the test. However, occasionally in any test, we measure seemingly random spikes to slot power. This could be for a number of unpredictable reasons, including innocuous ones like Windows background tasks or NVIDIA’s drivers doing something in the background, such as telemetry.

24-Pin & EPS12V Power: 14900K vs. 285K

Here’s the comparison we’ve wanted:

In 7-Zip, ignoring EPS12V, we noticed that the ATX12V power was exceptionally high on the 285K and Z890 Hero combination compared to the 14900K and Z790 Hero. It’s at about 50W here, whereas the 14900K had ATX12V down around 30W.

ATX3V power is comparable on both and within 2W. ATX5V power isn’t easy to call a simple average since it fluctuates so much: The range is 14-30W on the 285K+ASUS combination and similar on the 14900K, with peaks about 3-5W lower than the 285K. We don’t know if any of that power is getting used for regulators that might feed the CPU, but if any of it is, it’s not much. A lot of it is driving other components, like I/O.

The ATX12V line is clearly important though, as not factoring-in that 20-30W difference in this test would mean representing the 285K as artificially efficient because the power is sort of “hidden” in a cable where it’s not typically meaningfully high. ASUS’ reasoning for this is theoretically better power regulation. We don’t know if anyone else is doing this.

24-Pin Power: 7800X3D vs. 285K ATX12V

Finally, as an example of AMD, here’s the 7800X3D and 285K.

The 285K and 14900K ATX12V remains from last time. The 7800X3D was pulling about 12W ATX12V fixed during this test and didn’t seem to fluctuate based on load at all. It appears fairly isolated. Typically, this gap of 10W comes out in the wash when you’re talking a 280W 14900K versus an 80W 7800X3D, so it’s just part of the usual margins. In this scenario, however, the difference against the 285K really starts to show.

24-Pin Power: 7800X3D vs. 285K ATX3V

Here’s ATX3V. The 7800X3D platform is marginally higher here -- we’re using an ASUS board for this also. This is part of why 5V normally comes out in the wash: Some rails are a few Watts higher, some a few Watts lower. There is always going to be error.

24-Pin Power: 7800X3D vs. 285K ATX5V

ATX5V is about the same between them all. There is possibly spikier behavior on the 285K from the I/O, but that’s about it. 

Software Readings

All this is done with hardware. We also can’t trust various software readings because they can be manipulated heavily by software or motherboards. Years ago, there was an issue where AMD motherboards were underreporting the power in a way that allowed boards to pull more or less power while hiding it in software, thus manipulating the report. We also spoke with Der8auer about his experiences, and he noticed that CPU Package Power is calculated based on VID, so if anything is wrong with voltage, it will manifest in erroneous software readings.

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And that leads us back to our monster we’ve built. We are fairly confident in the results, but we have to caveat that this is a very opaque platform currently and it’s not fully clear how all the power is routed. For the most part, it should be proportional to the VRM split of 18:4 of the 22 phases total, so we were able to use that as a guidepost.

Finally: You might be asking “who measures the measurers,” and the answer is... us. Working with Elmor, we hooked up other current monitoring devices in series to monitor the current monitoring devices, and we also clamped the cables to monitor the monitoring of the monitoring devices while monitoring the software of the monitoring-monitoring devices and the CPU-monitoring software monitor.

Once that was all done and we had tested against calibrated Fluke meters with known current loads, we proceeded with the most accurate combination of monitoring.

Let’s get into the efficiency testing.

Efficiency: 7-Zip Decompression

7-Zip decompression efficiency is measured in MIPS/W, or millions of instructions per joule.

In this test, the 285K ended up in the lower-third of the chart. Intel’s 14900K pulled 273W in this test, with the 285K now at 162W for ATX12V and EPS12V without slot power, or 175W with ATX12V, ATX5V, and EPS12V. We think the 162W number is more accurate, but want to transparently present both since the power split is still not fully clear.

Because performance is lower and the formula relies on both, the efficiency increase isn’t as impressive as the power drop. The 285K runs with an efficiency of 1101 MIPS/W decompression with the reading that includes 5V, or an improvement of 29% over the 14900K. The reading without 5V is 40% improved over the 14900K, which we think is the more accurate one. Whether 30% or 40% is closer, the point is that it’s a big uplift. AMD still dominates here, holding the entire top-third of the chart, though. The 7950X in ECO mode sets a seemingly untouchable score at 1936 MIPS/W. The 7800X3D, which is much slower than the 285K in 7-Zip decompression, is more efficient thanks to its 70W power draw.

Efficiency: 7-Zip Compression

Here’s the 7-Zip compression result. Power consumption is measured across compression and decompression in the same test suite, so those figures are unchanged.

The 285K scored 1051 MIPS/W with ATX12V and EPS12V, an improvement over the 14900K’s 672 MIPS/W of 56%. This uplift versus decompression comes from the higher performance in 7-Zip compression relative to its scaling in decompression.

AMD’s 7800X3D is at the top here. Again, it’s not the best performer, but its 70W power is impressive and allows it to remain the true most-efficient CPU we’ve tested lately. 

Efficiency: Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 could get more complicated, but we’ve isolated out the PCIe slot power by using an interposer to power the video card instead.

The entire X3D lineup continues its domination in this game, and most others. The high framerate and low power land the 7800X3D at 2.3 FPS/W, as it’s pulling only 55W during this gaming workload. The 5700X3D is about the same, with the 5800X3D (watch our review) slightly less efficient. Intel’s new 285K isn’t remotely close to these numbers.

The 285K with ATX12V and EPS12V ran at 1.1 FPS/W, so the 7800X3D is creating over 2x as many frames per Watt of power. The 14900K ran at 0.7 FPS/W here. Looking at just Intel, the 1.1 result of the 285K has at least improved substantially over the 14900K, with an uplift of 57%; if we include the 5V power, since we’re not certain if any of it is being used for the CPU, that would be a 29% uplift. 

Efficiency: Starfield

Starfield is a heavier workload from gaming.

In this one, the 7800X3D is again the most efficient. Its result was 2.1 FPS/W, holding a large lead over the next closest CPUs. The next closest CPU is the 5700X3D, also at about 70W. The 5800X3D, 9700X, and 7700 non-X follow this. We eventually hit the 3700X (read our revisit), then the 285K.

With the ATX12V and EPS12V measurements and without PCIe slot, we end up at about 147W for a 1.0 FPS/W rating with the usual rounding.

The 14900K ran at 0.7 FPS/W here, so Intel has improved by 43%. Its Ultra 9 is now about where the 14600K was previously. Measuring 5V as well had it at 172W, or 0.8 FPS/W. That would instead be an improvement of 14%. As before, we believe the 1.0 figure is closer to reality, but it likely falls in between.

Efficiency: Stellaris

The next game is Stellaris, where we measured simulation time in seconds and power. In order to make this as easy to follow as possible, we’ve done some simple arithmetic to convert this into “simulations per watt-hour,” meaning that a bigger number is better despite the base metric result being lower-is-better.

The 7800X3D has an impressive score here, at 2.7 simulations per watt-hour. The next closest is down at 2.4 with the 5700X3D (read our review).

The 285K ran 1.5 simulations per Watt-hour. That means for each watt-hour, the 7800X3D is able to complete 1.2 more simulations, or about an 80% increase. 

The 14900K completed 0.9 simulations per Watt-hour. That means the 285K’s best entry is an improvement of 67% in efficiency. Remember: Most of Intel’s presented numbers were only for power reductions, not necessarily for efficiency. The 285K’s simulation performance is better than the 14900K’s in this benchmark, so its combination of higher performance and lower power (which was reduced by 46.6W from the 14900K) yields this huge increase in efficiency. 

Efficiency: Final Fantasy XIV

Finally, Final Fantasy 14 for efficiency. In this one, the 7800X3D led with an impressive 42.5W power draw while spewing hundreds of frames per second, allowing it a result of 8.3 FPS/W. That’s great. The 5700X3D keeps its second-place spot at 7.7. The 14900K ran at 3.1 FPS/W, so the 285K is 32% improved by these numbers. This is one where the 285K was regressive in performance against the 14900K -- and by sort of a lot, but we’ll come back to that. The result is reduced efficiency gains.

Frequency Testing

Single-Core Frequency Comparison (14900K vs. 285K)

Next, we’ll validate the frequency behavior to establish how the CPUs behave out of the box.

This chart plots the highest single core frequency per interval during a single-threaded Cinebench workload.

With the 285K, the max single-core frequency is 5700MHz during testing, with frequent drops to 5400MHz. These drops are abnormal on Intel during this test.

The 14900K with the latest microcode held 6000MHz. These are different architectures, so it’s not as simple as stating that higher is better; however, it helps at least illustrate where some of the performance losses are coming from.

The original launch microcode had it at the same frequency.

P-Core Frequency Comparison

This chart looks at P-core frequency averages during a Blender workload. 

The 285K maintains an average P-core frequency of 5400MHz in this testing. It’s relatively flat. That has it higher than the 2024 ASUS test entry, which is what we used for our review comparison today, at around 5100-5220MHz. The 2023 launch entry was higher, at 5280-5400MHz on average. The microcode changes may have affected this since launch. The MSI 0x11D microcode entry had the CPU at around 5000MHz from the same window as the ASUS 2023 entry. The most up-to-date frequency entry sits between the two flanks of early 14900K tests. 

All-Core Frequency Comparison

Finally, this chart shows the all-core averages in the same test. The 285K averaged 4867MHz when factoring-in the E-cores, with the modern 14900K just below 4500MHz and flanked by the two older entries.

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Gaming Benchmarks

Now we’re going to get into gaming benchmarks. We have a lot of 2023 and 2024 games in our test suite along with mainstays from the past.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is up now. This is one of the 2024 titles we added to our suite last time. It’s had updates that affect performance since our last round of benchmarks. APO doesn’t do anything in this benchmark and isn’t supported. We tested with it on and off for both the 14900K and 285K and its performance was the same, so we removed the redundant entries here since they have no impact.

The 285K landed at about 104 FPS AVG, with lows at 64 FPS and 51 FPS. 

This allows the AMD 7800X3D at $480 to lead the $590 285K by 6.1%, with the 14900K at 5% ahead. The lows between these 3 CPUs are functionally identical. The 14700K and 13700K also lead the 285K here, with the 14700K (read our review) far cheaper at $350. The 5700X3D and 5600X3D (read our review) are effectively tied, with the 5700X3D at $230, or sometimes down closer to $200.

F1 24 - 1080p

In F1 24, which, for hopefully obvious reasons, is a 2024 title, we end up with this set of results when fully retested in 24H2 and with new microcode and AGESA.

The 7800X3D sets a high ceiling and establishes a 28% lead over the more expensive and higher power-consuming 285K, at 438 FPS to 344 FPS AVG. The 14900K is also advantaged, this time by 12% with a 385 FPS result. The lows for the 285K were 186 FPS 1%, which is a worse entry than the 14900K’s 250 result. The frametime pacing appears better, in-step with the average, on both the 14900K and 7800X3D.

Looking now at the APO results, toggling APO does appear to do something in this game: The 285K gained 1.3% with APO on. How very exciting -- we can hardly contain ourselves. You’ll surely notice the extra 3-4 frames per second on top of the other 343 before them. We’re so glad we spent half a day troubleshooting Intel’s fumbled pre-launch settings to gain those frames back... Whatever would we have done without the extra 0.0369 ms reduction in frame time?...

The 14900K also gained about the same amount. It’s irrelevant on both.

Using DDR5-8600 on the 285K with Gear 2 and blasted VDIMM boosted it to 359 FPS AVG, a 4.5% like-for-like lead over the 344 result. This is almost enough to get the 285K tied with the two-generation-old 13700K (watch our review) from 2022, but not quite. It does, however, tie it with the AMD’s 2020 architecture found in the cache-bolstered 5700X3D with its lower power.

F1 24 - 1440p

1440p results are mostly uninteresting: The top is truncated heavily by the increase in resolution. Even still, the new Ultra 9 ends up in the middle. It’s fitting that the Core Ultra 9 is in the middle of a cluster.

FFXIV Dawntrail - 1080p

Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is up now. This is another 2024 addition to our testing.

The 7800X3D again establishes the ceiling. It leads the 285K by 31% in this game, at 353 FPS to 270 FPS AVG. The 14900K’s 310 FPS AVG establishes a 15% lead over the 285K, marking one of the largest declines of Intel’s performance in our gaming suite.

The 5800X3D and 5600X3D are also at the top here, showing that Dawntrail just generally really likes cache, at least on these CPUs. The 5700X3D is a little lower down since its frequency is 300MHz below that of the 5600X3D, so these results make sense.

The 285K ends up below the 14700K and 13700K, with APO doing nothing on the 285K. It’s within error. Final Fantasy 14 is officially supported by APO though and is on the games list, and we do see a slight uplift on the 14900K of 1%, basically error. Switching to DDR5-8600 on the 285K provided an uplift of 4%, with it still below the 13700K after that. Of course, the same memory treatment would lift others up also.

FFXIV Dawntrail - 1440p

At 1440p, the limited ceiling is shuffling the stack as a result of the framerate bouncing off of other limits. We saw a 1.9% uplift from APO on the 14900K. The 285K, again, did not benefit from APO, with both entries at 255 FPS AVG +/- 1FPS.

Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 is up now, a 2023 title that we added to our permanent suite this year. We test in Act III in a densely populated city area for a heavy CPU load.

The 7800X3D establishes a 26% lead over the 285K, at 126 FPS to 100 FPS AVG. The 14900K leads the 285K by 4.5%, at about 105 FPS AVG.

The 5800X3D, 5700X3D, and 5600X3D also lead the 285K, as do the 13900K, 13700K and 14700K.

Toggling APO did nothing here and was within variance for both the 14900K and 285K. Swapping to DDR5-8600 memory boosted the 285K by 7.6%, allowing it to pass everything except the X3D CPUs (this also perfectly aligns with why X3D does so well here). Of course, shoving better memory into the 14900K or 9000-series AMD CPUs would also boost them fairly proportionally.

Stellaris Simulation Time

Stellaris is up next. 

APO has no impact on this game. 

The 285K required 32.5 seconds for the simulation, finally putting it ahead of the 14900K. The 285K requires about 1-2% less time than the 14700K and 14900K CPUs.

The 7800X3D outranks the 285K again and requires about 3.7% less time for the work. The 9700X remains the fastest here, which is consistent with our last round of data.

Boosting memory helps in this game, so the 285K benefited from a 4.3% reduction in time to complete the simulation.

Rainbow Six Siege

Rainbow Six Siege is up. In this one, the 7800X3D leads by a much smaller amount, at only 6.6% for 622 vs. 584 FPS AVG when APO is in its default off position that this board shipped in. The 14900K was tied. Enabling APO did nothing on the 285K. The result was within error when considering we’re almost at 600 FPS. Enabling it boosted the 14900K by 1.7%, and this is with Intel’s sh*tty Microsoft Store App confirming that it’s enabled for both CPUs. This boost is reduced for the 14900K versus APO’s launch because Rainbow Six has updated the code that was causing problems.

Going to DDR5-8600 increased performance over the 584 result by 2.6%.

The 285K is at least better than the 14700K in this one, with an uplift of 2%. It’s also about 1.8% ahead of the 7700 non-X, which has been $280-$290 lately when you can still find it. 

As a general note, this game has some serious 0.1% low consistency issues. We noticed that the 12-14 Series CPUs have significantly higher 0.1% lows than AMD’s options and than the 285K alike. It’s easier to look at a frametime plot.

Rainbow Six Siege Frametimes

Here it is. Because Intel noted that Rainbow Six had specifically tuned to reduce reliance on APO, and because of the low advantage of Alder Lake onward, we’re assuming that Rainbow Six Siege has specific and manual tuning for the Alder Lake architecture and its more recent derivatives.

This frametime plot shows the 14900K is overall highly consistent frame-to-frame, with most of the intervals deviating at most by 2ms. There are a few spikes, but only one notable spike to 6ms -- which is a 4ms deviation, and thus wouldn’t be noticed by the vast majority of users.

Adding the 285K, we see several spikes to 10-11ms. By themselves, these frametimes aren’t bad. 60 FPS would be 16.667ms, so this isn’t a huge stall. But it is a big change from Raptor Lake and is objectively worse.

Starfield

In Starfield, another 2023 game, the 7800X3D maintains a 2% advantage over the 285K, at 145.4 to 142.5 FPS AVG. We’re bound elsewhere -- and that elsewhere is obvious: The DDR5-8600 result jumps to the top of the chart, illustrating that at least some of our limit is memory. As a reminder, applying the memory tuning treatment to everything would boost all numbers, so looking at baseline will give you an idea for their headroom.

The 14900K actually falls behind for once, at a slight loss to the 285K. We think this corresponds with the cache changes, based on the memory performance we just saw.

APO, once again, does nothing between the two main 285K entries.

Total Warhammer 3

Total War: Warhammer 3 is up now. The 7800X3D led the 285K by 7.2%, with the 14900K leading by 2.8%. Total Warhammer 3 is on the APO list, so it’s supported. On the 14900K, we saw an uplift of about 1.2%. On the 285K, we measured an improvement of 0.6% -- basically error.

Lows in this game have been historically awful on Intel’s i9 CPUs, which we previously proved is due to scheduling challenges with the thread count. The 285K at least seems to somewhat improve here, possibly by the reduction in threads.

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Production Benchmarks

We’re getting into production benchmarks now. 

Blender

Blender is up first. We’ve updated it, so it’s not comparable to prior results.

The 285K is our second-highest performer on the charts for desktop-class CPUs. The 9950X (read our review) benefits from a render time requirement reduction of 5.6%, while the 285K reduces render time from the 14900K by 16.5%. That’s finally some uplift.

These types of tests are also where AMD’s 7800X3D and 5800X3D show their limits as 8-core CPUs, both falling far down the charts. That’s a known quantity. If you’re only gaming, they make the most sense. If you mix in a good amount of heavily threaded software for work, it may make sense to buy something else on this list.

7-Zip Compression

In file compression with 7-Zip, the 285K completed 170K MIPS and roughly tied the i7-14700K. The 14900K holds an advantage of 8%. The 9950X and 7950X (watch our review) outperform the 285K significantly, with the 9900X just behind. Memory seemed to really help in this test, pushing the 285K up by a gargantuan 18.7%. That’s a huge uplift. 

7-Zip Decompression

Decompression doesn’t benefit as much, posting a 4% improvement. The stack also shuffles, with the 9900X and 7900X both surpassing the 285K here. The memory subsystem benefits don’t translate as much as they did in compression, both stock and with the better RAM.

The 14900K leads the 285K by a staggering 21% in this benchmark, benefitting from its extra threads. The 9950X establishes an impressive ceiling, at 42% ahead of the 285K.

Chromium Compile

Next is our Chromium code compile test. For this test, we double the RAM capacity on some CPUs when they page-out or otherwise fail to complete the compile. This only occurs with the highest-performing few CPUs. This test has been updated since last round, so load on CPUs has slightly changed.

In the situation of the 9950X, there is one disclaimer here, we were not able to get it stable at DDR5-6000 with 64GB when running our usual tighter timings. We experimented briefly with reducing the timings, higher voltages, and altered infinity fabric, but ultimately had to call it for now and run it at DDR5-5600 to accommodate 64GB. That makes the 9950X an imperfect comparison. With that limitation disclosed due to stability issues, the 9950X and 285K are roughly equal. That may change if we can rerun the 9950X and find stability.

For direct comparisons, the 285K leads the 14900K by only about a 3-minute time reduction or a total compile time requirement reduction of 3.8%. As usual, the 8-core X3D parts are lower down the stack, like the 7800X3D and 5800X3D. 

Adobe Premiere

Now for the Adobe software, tested with the Puget Suite. 

Premiere has the 285K as the new chart-topper, at 11,336 points. That’s how this whole review should have been, especially with a power reduction. Unfortunately, it wasn’t this way.

The lead over the 14900K is small, at 2.5% uplift in aggregate. The 9950X is AMD’s top CPU here, at 10,914 points. The 285K has a 3.9% lead.

Adobe Photoshop

In Adobe Photoshop, AMD has a clean sweep of the entire top half of the charts. Those of you who’ve been watching us for at least 5 years will remember an era where it was the opposite. The first Intel entry doesn’t appear until below the 7600X, and that’s the 14900K. 

The 9950X leads the 285K by 22% here and the 14900K leads it by 3.5%.

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Conclusion

Simplifying all of this, our current conclusion is this:

The 285K does not have a particularly strong place in any one market. 

The 7800X3D is far superior in both gaming and efficiency. The 285K can hardly make sense against even the 5700X3D, and AMD’s 9800X3D is days away at this point. For non-gaming, the CPU is more interesting but we still don’t think it is broadly justifiable at the current CPU and platform costs. 

Even Intel’s prior-gen parts are far cheaper right now, like the 13700K and 14700K, which theoretically have been fixed with microcode. If you were to argue that the inefficiency of the prior gen parts counters some of the savings in the form of lower power, it’s just not a strong argument. The 14700K is $350 now, so it’s $280 cheaper than a 285K. 

Power Value - Cheap Power

If your power costs $0.10/kWh like ours, then you’d need to play the highest CPU load games for 8 hours a day for an entire year in order to gain $19 of value in power bill reductions for the 285K against the 14700K. At $0.15, the shut-in gaming levels would give the 285K a savings of $30 over one year of literally playing Starfield or Cyberpunk as a full-time job. At the peak of degeneracy that we all strive to achieve, you’d have to play games at this pace for 10 years to have spent more on power than the cost savings of buying the cheaper CPU (it’s the delta, not total cost). Maybe throw in a cheaper cooler as well since power is down and call it 8 years.

Power Value - Moderate Power

Even at $0.30/kWh, the $280 price savings from the 14700K would require 5 years to wipe-out with the power bill while playing Cyberpunk 8 hours per day for 5 years, or in other words, 14,560 hours of Cyberpunk.

Power Value - Expensive Power

Let’s just say you pay $0.50/kWh. In one standard 3-year upgrade cycle, you can save the amount of money in power you’d save buying the 14700K -- which we still don’t recommend for gaming -- rather than the 285K. That’d be a savings of $92.60 per year (at $307.7 - $215.1).

Or, you go with the 7800X3D and get higher framerates and still a power cost reduction, even at these high electricity prices, of $114 per year at these crazy gaming hours.

And ultimately, no matter what argument is made for power savings, like room temperature or something, you can still point to AMD as an answer.

The reduction in power consumption is important and does mean cheaper cooling is possible, so that’s good. Intel is objectively getting more efficient, but regressive performance in games is hard to deal with. The production performance mostly improved at lower thread count, and that actually is great. The problem is that at $630, there are very few cases where the 285K makes sense right now.

Our approach to reviews is very consumer-oriented and value-oriented. That means for us, we need to see a strong value argument to recommend a part. Even forgetting completely about power as a factor and looking only at performance for the price, it just doesn’t make sense to us despite being an important building block.

The best news out of the 285K is that it might be a fresh start for Intel and that it is genuinely a lot easier to hit higher memory clocks than before, and that benefits it in tests like our 7-Zip benchmark.

But we just think there are better CPUs out there at lower prices.

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Table of Contents

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Intro

The Lian Li Lancool 207 is the new best-performing case on our thermal charts -- and it’s $80. The case shoves the power supply to the front to accommodate 2 shroud-top fans that are closer to the floor of the case, providing intake directly into the GPU. The front of the case has a shaped front inlet for 2x 140mm fans cooling the rest, and the back is entirely ventilation to allow exhaust. 

From a usability perspective, it struggles in some key and basic areas: Cable management is challenging. Closing the right side panel isn’t always easy, especially if you have more cables, thicker gauge wire and sleeving, or accessories that add a ton of cabling. The side panel is tool-less and the back compartment is shallow, with the PSU’s orientation complicating power supply length and cable bends.

Editor's note: This was originally published on October 4, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Patrick Lathan

Testing

Mike Gaglione

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

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The Lancool 207 is an exercise in compromise, but some of those compromises didn’t need to exist.

We’re reviewing the Lancool 207 with our new case testing methodology. Previous Lancool cases were similarly priced and also heavily competitive for thermals. Repeating that price in 2024, with the gradual climb of pricing for everything, shows a highly aggressive Lian Li.

The new Lancool 207’s $80 MSRP comes close to the (originally) $70 Lancool 215 that impressed us back in 2020.

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We saw the 207 at Computex earlier this year. We've spotted a few changes to the case since that Computex showing: the weird removable plate at the bottom of the front panel is gone, the bottom intake fans are conventional rather than reverse-blade, and the side panel vent is smaller. None of these changes are meaningful from a consumer perspective. The removable plate never had an assigned function other than to possibly be “DLC” add-ons, the bottom intake fans look basically the same, and the functional area of the side vent hasn't changed.

Lian Li Lancool 207 Specs

Dimensions (DxWxH)	455.6mm x 219mm x 456mm
Color	Black / White
Motherboard Support	ATX (Width = 240mm) / Micro-ATX / Mini-ITX
Expansion Slot	7
Storage	2 x 3.5” HDD or 2.5″ SSD
GPU Length Clearance	410 mm
CPU Cooler Height Clearance	167 mm
PSU Support	ATX (Under 160mm)
Radiator Support	Top: 240mm / 280mm/ 360mm
Fan Support	Front: 140mm x 2 (pre-installed)Top: 120mm x 3 or 140mm x 2Bottom: 120mm x 2 (pre-installed)Rear: 120mm x 1
Dust Filter	Bottom x 1
I/O Ports	USB 3.0 x 2USB 3.1 Type C x 1Audio x 1Power Button x 1
MSRP	Black - US$79.99White - US$84.99

Specs copied from manufacturer materials, please read review for our own measurements and opinions

We like the Lancool 207, and we have a lot of good things to say about it, but we consider the power supply situation to be plagued with oversights. Overall, we’re positive -- so we’ll start with the basics and positives, then spend some serious time talking about the unfortunate cable management and power supply situation.

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For the basics: The case pulls apart in 3 primary panels, including the typical left and right sides and a lower quarter-panel that is perforated for intake into what would traditionally be the PSU shroud. Rather than elevating the floor and pulling through that, Lian Li pulls through the rear and sides. This allows the floor to be available for hard drives and SSDs. Even with a 3.5” drive installed, there’s still plenty of room between it and the sunken fans to pull air through.

The panels are also exceptionally sturdy for a case of its price. The top panel snaps into place with heavy-duty studs and uses folded-over columns of steel to reinforce it. This avoids that cheap stamped steel wobble we see on some sub-$100 cases -- and on Corsair’s $200+ 6500 cases. 

This also appears to be a direct response to issues we found with the Lancool 216, where there was around a half-a-centimeter depression in the top panel. They’ve fixed that issue here.

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The front panel also uses a folded-over steel, which doubles as a catch for the magnets at the top of the easily removable filter. This should make it trivial to clean. We’ve always been advocates for ultra-fine mesh panels rather than dust filters, as these serve the same purpose as a dust filter, but are much better for airflow. 

The entire front panel can be removed, but there's no reason to do so. If you do it anyway, the I/O cables have been screwed down to the corner of the panel for strain relief. 

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The porosity on the back of the case is also at insane levels for mostly good reasons: We typically see much smaller holes with thicker steel, resulting in a lot less breathability. Because this case is fully positive pressure, we don’t need to worry much about dust ingress from the rear of the case. It’ll get pushed out naturally. This shows an attention to detail that illustrates Lian Li actually understands why you’d make decisions like denser holes for intake and wider for exhaust. 

There is one missed point, though: The very bottom of the rear of the case will serve as intake, not exhaust, as it is separately chambered for the shroud-top fans. Lian Li should be filtering these or using ultra-fine mesh.

Overall, Lian Li has come a long way since we criticized some of its older cases for airflow and is really starting to show a mastery of thermal design with the small details.

The only fit-and-finish issue we noticed were some imperfections and scratches in the infinity mirror fan hubs, but these aren't visible while the fans are spinning.

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The motherboard tray is offset from the standard, creating an ATX-sized indent. This means that the case is absolutely not compatible with any so-called “E-ATX” boards and that there's only about 1cm of clearance behind the motherboard tray, but it also means that compatibility with motherboard edge connectors is excellent. Lian Li also claims that the offset better aligns the GPU with the bottom intake fans, but cable routing is the more tangible benefit.

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Front I/O is extremely basic: 2x USB 3.0 Type-A ports, 1x USB 3.1 Type-C port, 1x audio jack, and the power button. The flat, flexible Type-C cable in particular is the least annoying one we've ever worked with. The case also has a convenient all-in-one front panel connector, but we'd actually rather have the old-fashioned two-pin connector here, since it's just for the power button. There is no reset button. Typically, these would combine power, reset, and power LED.

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The case has two vibration-damped drive mounts in the floor for a single 3.5” or 2.5” drive each. The drive mounting holes are suboptimal: SATA cables have to be bent at an uncomfortable angle to fit and the 2.5" mounting holes could easily have been moved to alleviate this. 

Each pair of fans has 1x four-pin fan connector and 1x three-pin ARGB connector, and the two fans within each pair are linked by proprietary connectors. We'll begrudgingly accept this as a compromise since it cuts the number of fan cables in half. The downside is that it's impractical to replace or reconfigure individual fans, contributing to a larger downside of having to go through Lian Li for replacements if one breaks. The front and bottom mounts aren't compatible with any sizes other than the ones that are preinstalled (140mm front, 120mm bottom). On top of that, the front mount is built around Lian Li's 30mm-thick fans, and all four stock fans are attached with radiator screws. If you still want to replace any, Lian Li includes 16 additional screws sized for 25mm-thick fans. All of this is non-standard and will be unfamiliar to experienced builders. It’s workable, but it will impose atypical limitations on fan compatibility if you want to change them. For instance, you’d typically have 120mm options where 140mm fans install. Here, that’s not the case. The upside is that there’s one less set of rails obstructing intake at the cost of flexibility, so Lian Li is going for the focused airflow approach.

Lian Li describes the 207 as a "compact M-ATX-sized case with ATX compatibility," which is only true by Lian Li standards. The Lancool 207 is the size of a normal mid-tower; it has almost exactly the same dimensions as a Fractal North. In fact, it’s really not much different than most of the cases in the comparison image above. The SilverStone 515XR is an example of a truly compact ATX case, or the Easy-Bake Cooler Master Q500L.

Now to the power supply:

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The 207 has an unusual layout with the PSU rotated 90 degrees and placed at the front of the case rather than the rear. This means that there's a 160mm size limit for PSUs, but even our normal 150mm unit was cramped. Without dropping out of the ATX spec, 150mm is about the smallest you’ll typically get.

Because of the rotation, cables are pointed at the tool-less side panel and have to bend sharply to route. Using flat cables helps, but this is a situation where you’ll need to consider how the cables in your power supply are sleeved. We’d also strongly recommend sticking to 150mm rather than using the maximum 160mm under the spec. We’d also strongly recommend modular power supplies for this case.

The PSU shroud is effectively a fan mount, and even if you could find a way to stick extra cables under it, it'd interfere with the intake fans and the entire point of the design. 

All of this would only be an inconvenience, except that the steel side panel is tooless. If you're using bulkier cables with individually braided sleeves like in our example, it is possible to choose power supply and cable combinations that make it nearly impossible to snugly close the side panel. It’s possible, and we did it with our bulky sleeved cables to prove that, but this took a good amount of time to manage and flatten.

We’d strongly recommend flat cables like the ones shown in the 207 at Computex. The more accessories and PCIe power cables you run, the more difficulty you’ll have managing the cables in this particular case. 

Screws for the side panel would have helped this by allowing more tolerance for cable bulge. 

The manual illustrates installing a Lian Li EDGE PSU, which looks like it could help; however, the 207 is $80, and the cheapest EDGE PSUs cost at least $130 to $140. It’s a mismatch of the most likely buyer for the case if Lian Li expects most to use these power supplies.

The illustration also shows the EDGE PSU being installed fan-side-up, which isn't an officially supported option for other power supplies. The usual arrangement of mounting holes requires installing standard ATX PSUs fan-down in the 207, with only 1cm of clearance above the table.

In another major concern, in Lian Li’s quest to move the power supply, it has overlooked both cabling and cooling considerations. With the bottom filter installed, which we’ll come back to, the power supply is given mere millimeters to breathe with a bottom-oriented fan. We don’t currently run power supply thermals during our testing; however, this will cause the power supply to heat up, objectively, and it may result in the PSU fan running at a higher RPM (if it is a power supply that bases fan speed on any internal temperatures).

Removing the filter functionally doubles its breathing room, but ultimately, we think this is a major design shortcoming. Lian Li’s pursuit of minimizing the case size has limited its area for power supply intake. This is making us consider running a thermocouple wire to our power supply for future case reviews.

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The PSU filter is another small design fault: It’s easiest to lift the case to remove the filter, which isn’t a dealbreaker, but could be fixed with a more accessible tab. 

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On the cable management side on the back of the case, the attachment points for the built-in velcro straps are angled so that the straps curl over as they're inserted, which is a much bigger quality of life improvement than it sounds like. The manual describes intended cable paths, most of which are obvious, but there are specific routes for 24-pin STRIMER cables and for CPU 8-pin cables. The 8-pins are held in by plastic hooks, but the hooks might work better if they were flipped. There isn't a suggested path for GPU power cables in the manual. This is something we would have liked to see for new builders.

As for vertical GPUs, the expansion slots are bridgeless, so other vertical GPU add-in kits may work, but Lian Li specifically markets its universal 4-slot bracket. As demonstrated at Computex, using this vertical bracket will block the bottom intake fans, and we don't recommend it. 

It may technically be possible to get a 280mm radiator installed in the front of the case, but it'd need to have exactly the right hole placement. Lian Li doesn't claim any formal radiator support anywhere except the top of the case, and we agree. 120mm-wide rads fit more easily than 140mm-wide ones, which may make the CPU power cutouts difficult to reach.

Lian Li Lancool 207 Thermals

As we've covered, it's inconvenient and pointless to replace the 207's stock fans. Still, we had a couple of alternate configurations we wanted to test that didn't involve altering the fans. We also did a pass with the small mesh section on the steel side panel taped off. The bottom intake fans have a larger section of mesh available on the other side of the case, as well as a wide-open vent at the rear, so we suspected that taping off this little vent wouldn't matter much.

The 207 is one of the cheapest cases on our charts currently. Out of our recent reviews, it lands between the $100 SilverStone 514X and the $68 515XR. We also retested the older Lancool 216, which is still available for around $100. In terms of fan layout, the 207 is most similar to the more expensive Antec Flux Pro.

We only ran basic tests in "standard mode" on the 216. There's also an "air cooling mode," but in our original review, we found that this helped GPU thermals while simultaneously hurting CPU thermals with our bench hardware. Check our Lancool 216 review for more detail on alternate configurations, including an external fan bracket attached to the back of the case.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

The 207 is a loud case with all fans at full speed, but we'll start with noise normalized results. For this testing, all case fans are lowered to reach a target noise level of 27 dBA measured at 1 meter in our hemi-anechoic chamber, with CPU and GPU fan speeds controlled and constant. 

We’ll start with noise-normalized GPU thermals since those bottom fans should help there.

The GPU temperature averaged 42 degrees above ambient, 47 on the memory, and 55 hotspot. That's one degree better than the 216 in each category, but still close. Impressively, the Fractal Torrent remains the leader in this particular test. That’s not always true, but it is here. It has its own bottom intake fans that feed the GPU directly, which help. 

We haven't always seen a benefit from shroud-top intake fans, but cases like the 207 and the Flux Pro that commit to building the case around that concept do show good results. If anything, it's a testament to the 216's cooling that it comes so close to the 207 without any shroud fans.

The Antec Flux Pro's average GPU temperature was about one degree cooler than the 207's.

There's no contest versus the 514X and 515XR, which fall on the complete opposite end of the chart. The 207 is in a different class in many ways, but Lian Li has priced it so aggressively that we have to make the comparison; it undercuts the 514X and is only $12 over the 515XR.

Fractal’s Pop Air is another price-competitive case, but lands at the bottom of this chart. It’s still a good case, and when it’s one sale, it is impressively cheap, but the 207 is thermally superior.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

Here’s the CPU noise-normalized chart: Instantly, the Lancool 207 is tied for chart leader in CPU thermals. The average all-core CPU temperature was 41 degrees Celsius above ambient and 44 degrees on just the P-cores. The 216's numbers round differently, but its results were near-identical to the 207's and within error. The 216 was one of our all-time best performers for noise-normalized CPU cooling when we originally reviewed it, so that's good news for the 207. The 207 technically tops our updated chart within error of the 216, but the Antec Flux Pro is also within a one-degree margin. The Flux Pro is at least $180, though.

In comparison to the more closely price-matched 514X at 48 degrees all-core and 515XR at 53 degrees all-core, the 207 has a massive lead. So far, the 207 looks like another Lancool with an unbeatable price-to-performance ratio.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Full Speed

At full speed, the 207 sounds like a server rack. The 41.6dBA result ties the 216. The 216 is the best performer when allowed to brute force its performance by fan speed, roughly tying the 207 when we remove its front panel to test restrictions. With the panel, the 207 ran at 41.6 degrees for P-cores, or about 2 degrees warmer than without a front panel. As far as restrictions go, that’s pretty good: The panel is not substantially hurting performance, unlike some other cases we’ve tested. If you buy the optional filter, that would change. 

Using two layers of gaffer tape over the small mesh section on the steel panel would affect GPU thermals if anything, so it's no surprise that it had no effect on CPU thermals.

The 207 at 41.6 degrees ties the Flux Pro for performance. Again, though, the noise normalized results are better for case-to-case comparison.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Full Speed

Now for GPU temperatures at full speed. In the same test, the GPU was 38 degrees above ambient. Taping the side panel vent did nothing. We think this is simply because the bottom intake fans have plenty of other ventilation available through the mesh on the opposite side of the shroud and the wide-open unfiltered vent at the rear of the case. If these inlets had been minimized, it might have mattered more. It still doesn’t hurt to have more mesh in these areas, especially if you shove drives down there, but it just didn’t matter for our GPU.

GPU thermals effectively tied the Flux Pro, but with some back-and-forth over the memory and hotspot temperatures. No matter what, though, the 207 sits alongside the Torrent and Flux Pro at the top of this chart. The 216 fell behind here with an average GPU temperature of 43 degrees above ambient, which is still excellent, but not as good as the brute-force bottom intake of the 207.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Standardized Fans

Our standardized fan tests use three Noctua fans, always the same ones: two 140mm front intake, and one 120mm rear exhaust, all at 100% speed. We regularly explain the limitations of this testing. You can learn more in our methodology piece here. This allows us to remove stock fans as a variable and compare just the enclosures. With cases like the 207, the comparison is theoretical (since it doesn't make any sense to replace the stock fans), but people request it, so we wanted to provide the data.

Our standard fan configuration was obviously worse for GPU thermals than the stock configuration. With the standard fans, average GPU temperature was 43 degrees above ambient, 48 degrees for the memory, and 56 degrees for hotspot. 

CPU Full Load Thermals - Standardized Fans

On the CPU with standardized fans, we measured CPU temperatures at 38 degrees above ambient all-core and 42 degrees for the P-cores, within error of the top-scoring Torrent. Mesh fronted cases with straightforward front-to-back airflow patterns do well in this test, and the 207's CPU thermals are particularly good because the front fan slots are biased high, sending more air above the level of the GPU backplate. We usually try to position the intake fans for a better balance with GPU thermals, but that's not an option in the 207.

VRM & RAM Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

The VRM and system memory are located close to the CPU in our test system, so it makes sense that a case with good CPU thermals would have good thermals in those two categories as well. The 207 slightly outperformed the Flux Pro for lowest memory temperature at 21 degrees above ambient, tied with the Torrent. VRM was tied with the Flux Pro at 27 degrees, but that's tied at the top of the chart. The 216 was warmer for both sensors, 23 degrees for the system memory and 28 for VRM.

Lian Li Lancool 207 Conclusion

Like the Lancool 215 and 216, the Lancool 207 is a well-built case with chart-topping performance while simultaneously managing to be one of the cheapest cases on our charts. The cases that perform equivalently are more expensive, like the Flux Pro, and the cases that are in the same general price category perform worse, like the 514X. Lian Li already has some strong competition in this area, including its own 216, but the 207 is even cheaper than the 216.

Phanteks has its new cases from Computex coming out soon and those should give the 207 some competition, but they’re not here yet -- and they might end up a little more expensive, but we’re not sure yet.

The Fractal Pop Air remains a good quality ultra-cheap case when it’s on sale, which has been frequently lately, but it’s just a totally different class of performance. The 207 holds the new crown for the best performance for the price -- nothing else that we’ve tested anytime recently is even close when you factor in the price. Lian Li’s 216 is the closest competitor, but is frequently around $100, making it $20 more expensive than the 207.

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The biggest problem with the 207 is the cable management and power supply fit: The problem with getting the side panel on over the PSU is potentially a huge obstacle for some cable-heavy or thicker cable configurations and is not shared by any of the other cases we've mentioned. If you buy this case, we recommend choosing a 150mm deep PSU rather than 160 and opting for slimmer cables. Depending on your PSU and the cables you use, there's a serious risk that the side panel won't fit and you'll get annoyed enough to send the case back. Flat, slim cables have a better chance of working.

This is its only major issue that we encountered. Build quality of the panels is overall excellent, especially at the price, and thermal performance is among the best. The 207 gets a strong, but caveated recommendation, with the caveat again being related to cable management (especially for less experienced builders). If you plan ahead and have patience to thoroughly route cables, and if you can stick to a shorter PSU, we think this case is one of the most competitive on the market for its price. There aren’t a lot of well-built options in this price class.

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Table of Contents

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Intro

This article is an entry in our GN Mega Charts series. All Mega Charts are listed on the Features page, including these:

• CPU Power Consumption & Efficiency Mega Charts
• CPU Cooler Mega Charts

This section contains disclaimers, limitations of the process, and disclosures relating to data quality control. We think that this is all important for your understanding of how this page works and so that you can adjust your own expectations and potential reliance on the data to calibrate with the two groups (“Active” and “LTS”); however, if you’d like to just jump straight to the charts and ignore all of that, you may bypass the wall of text and auto-scroll down with this link.

This article contains our ‘Mega Charts’ for CPU performance benchmarks, including our production tests (commonly referred to as “creation” benchmarks) and gaming tests. Our power testing can be found on the above-linked page and is isolated, as it tends to be more static.

This page will be regularly updated with the latest of our CPU benchmark performance numbers. It will consist of two types of charts: Long-Term Support (“LTS”) and Active. The long-term support charts have several special caveats, but are intended to be available to help people better determine upgrade paths. The LTS charts are more likely to contain older CPU results.

The page also includes links to CPU reviews and comparisons, such as historical AMD vs. Intel benchmarks. It will be updated on a slower cadence from our latest reviews (so you should always defer to those for the most recent numbers), but will be updated a few times a year with larger charts than are found in our reviews. This is for a few reasons, but one is that we shorten review charts due to video height limitations (16:9 aspect ratio). The other is that it’s just too crowded for the regular updates.

This page is intended to be used long-term for our Mega Charts. You can bookmark this page, as our future updates for CPU Mega Charts will land at this same URL. The update log will be posted at the bottom of the page so that you always know the latest data set. It will be updated a couple times a year, with more frequency updates in the CPU reviews themselves.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing

Patrick Lathan
Mike Gaglione

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How to Use This

Even as data ages, it is often still relevant for comparison -- particularly for older CPUs which mostly stop receiving performance-affecting changes, such as microcode updates or Windows patches. We are constantly re-running our CPU tests to keep data fresh, but unfortunately, this refresh cycle means that it is difficult to stack more CPUs on the charts before some sort of major change comes in. For example, major Windows updates necessitate full re-tests for reviews, but may not be as important for someone who just wants to see their older CPU represented for a “good enough” gauge of where things fall.

That’s why we split these into the LTS (Long-Term Support) and Active charts. It allows us to maintain one older dataset that has more CPUs represented, at the cost of reduced insights gained from our most modern test methods. Active gives you that for more of a modern head-to-head. It’s the difference between precision (Active) and quantity of CPUs (LTS). This is the best balance that a small team can produce, especially since we provide this website completely ad-free (you can support us on Patreon or by buying something useful for your PC builds on our store).

Current Best CPUs (Generalized Recommendations)

The below is a simple list of CPUs that, at the time of writing (dated in the columns below), we think make sense or would make sense with caveats noted.

Pay careful attention to the second column. We may only recommend some parts under certain pricing conditions. Generally speaking, we do not recommend buying CPUs above MSRP. They come down pretty regularly, especially with launch cycles. For instance, when we first posted this, the 7800X3D was about $250 overpriced. It's still on the list so that people are aware of it, but we advise waiting for it to approach that MSRP marker or to be replaced with the pending 9000X3D parts.

For a better and more thorough list of Best CPUs, please check our Best CPUs of 2023 article. We will update for 2024 also.

CPU	Reason for Recommendation	Release Date	Platform	Date of Recommendation	GN Original Review*
AMD R7 7800X3D	The original launch price was $450. We don't recommend buying much above that. Depending on price (fluctuates), this is the best gaming part at the time of writing. It is sometimes the best value gaming part. At the time of writing, value is terrible -- it lands on this list only with the note that you should wait and see. Also, 9000X3D may be around the corner.	2023	AM5	October 13, 2024	R7 7800X3D Review
AMD R7 5700X3D	This is often the best-value drop-in upgrade for AM4 platforms to give a major gaming performance boost without a totally new system. The 5800X3D would be best, but runs higher price.	2024	AM4	October 13, 2024	R7 5700X3D Review
Intel i9-12900K	At the time of writing this, the CPU has a $100 discount code that lands it at $260, which is very good value. The usual listing price is $360 at time of writing, but you'd be buying into an abandoned platform.	2021	LGA 1700	October 13, 2024	12900K Review
AMD Threadripper 7980X	For extremely core-intensive tasks that could benefit from the increased capabilities of an HEDT platform (more RAM, more cores), the 7980X remains overall unbeatable. You can check our review for more details.	2023	TRX50	October 13, 2024	TR 7980X Review
Intel i3-12100F	Alder Lake has been a time-tested architecture without major concerns. The 12100F is frequently one of the cheapest new CPUs (if not buying used) that can still play most games well. It has severe limits in some games. This is not particularly strong, but is affordable and often acceptable as a compromise.	2022	LGA 1700	October 13, 2024	12100F Review
Notes	We are posting this just ahead of Arrow Lake, so we may add some Intel recommendations to this list. Check back in a few weeks to a month to see if this has changed. The older Intel stuff is on here for its price benefit, but with the proximity of Arrow Lake, we'd generally advise waiting a few weeks rather than committing to a dead platform with the more expensive CPUs (such as 14th Series)

Is Your CPU Missing From This Data? Here’s What to Do

We frequently receive questions from people asking where their particular CPU would land on a chart. There are thousands of CPUs that could be tested, so we obviously don’t have all of those listed. The best bet is to approximate the positioning by just thinking through the data that is present and using deductive reasoning. Newer builders may not realize that it is often this simple, so we’ll outline some concepts so that you can at least get a rough idea of where your part might fall. You can apply this to any reviewer’s charts. And of course, if we’re missing a part, there are plenty of qualified reviewers out there who may have something we’re missing (and we likewise try to cover what they miss) -- that’s the value of multiple qualified reviewers.

CPU Performance Interpolation/Deductive Reasoning Examples

Example 1: The Ryzen 5 1600AF is not present on the charts.

Solution: The Ryzen 5 1600AF is functionally an R5 2600, just at slightly different clocks. Looking up original reviews would get you this information, which you can then apply to modern charts. Looking at the R5 2600 in a chart is close enough to the R5 1600AF that you could base your decisions off of that part.

Example 2: The Ryzen 5 2600 is also missing from the charts.

Solution: Pull up a few old/original reviews of the R5 2600 and identify parts that are nearby or adjacent in performance. Look at a few charts, as some games can differ. Once you have found the most commonly comparable part, you can use that as a rough gauge on charts.

Example 3: The i7-10700K is missing from the charts.

Solution: If the i5-10600K and i9-10900K are present, it’s reasonable to assume that the 10700K is between them. Although this can have a relatively wide range, the reality is that, especially upgrading from something older, it won’t matter enough to hurt decision making on new processor purchases (since anything will be a huge upgrade).

Example 4: The Sandy Bridge i7-2600K is present, but not the i7-2700K

Solution: In situations such as these, where the part is basically just a slight change (example: 2700X vs. 2700, 2600X vs. 2600, 7700X vs 7700), you can just look at the one that is present and assume close enough performance to compare. This is again where it’s important to keep perspective: If the goal is to upgrade, being 2-5% off on the estimate isn’t going to meaningfully impact decisions if the alternative is no good modern data as reviewers move on.

As a last-ditch solution: You can look at games or benchmarks which are least likely suspected to have had major patches, such as GTA V, and calculate the percent difference between the target part and mutually present part on both an older chart and the new one. Then apply this to the modern chart to approximate or interpolate the rank. For example, if you pull up a chart from two years ago with the 8700K and 12700K on it and calculate the difference (typically, (new - old) / old), you can then apply that on the same game chart from modern times. This is the least perfect method because newer games may have architecturally evolved and may not be linear and older games get patches. You’d frankly be better off finding it somewhere else on the internet, but if you really can’t, this is a method that helps get at least something to work with.

DISCLAIMER: Data Accuracy Standards & Reduced Vetting Practices

For standalone reviews that receive full video treatment, we run through a quality control process that is intensive and often takes several days to complete. These are time-intensive, cost-intensive, and critical to the accuracy of our mainline reviews. We would never skip steps for the fully produced reviews.

But we want to publish more of the data we collect outside of the reviews process because it’d help people with purchasing decisions. We have been resistant to publishing the extra data because the ‘extra’ data doesn’t go through the same validation processes. It’s still useful and rarely has issues; however, our QC standards are high and we are careful with what we release. Anything we’re uncertain of or haven’t vetted fully is withheld until it clears those bars. 

But a lot of people would benefit from knowing where an AMD R7 1700 lands today, and outside of full revisits, we don’t have a good avenue to release data that is useful, likely up to our usual standards, but just not quadruple-checked. That’s what the Long-Term Support (LTS) charts are for. 

We’ve decided to release the extra data to try and cast a wide net to help people upgrading from older or more obscure parts, but are doing so with the upfront disclosure that the difference between the Active charts and the LTS charts is the validation process. In other words, data which exists on LTS charts but not Active charts should be understood by the audience as more likely to have some sort of data confidence issue or possible deviation from expected results. It is still unlikely, but more likely than Active charts. With that transparency and understanding, here’s the difference in our processes:

Active Chart Vetting Process

One of our biggest hangups for publishing a full list of our “Mega Charts” for CPUs has been that we simply cannot sustain the intensive QC process for a secondary dataset that contains CPUs that haven’t been published on the channel recently. We often still collect data for older CPUs, but may not publish it for time reasons (meaning that it was collected for internal review, but not fully vetted for publication). 

Here’s the full process, with some specialty confidential steps removed:

• The Test Lead for the tests (typically Steve) establishes a strict SOP for the test suite to ensure data consistency. The Test Lead also determines which software is tested, performs benchmark analysis for standard deviation and consistency, and determines the testing methodology
• The Test Lead (typically Steve) establishes a Test Matrix containing all CPUs to be tested, which tests they get, and data exporting practices
• The Subject Matter Expert (Patrick) builds software in collaboration with Steve for the test suite and builds the operating system configurations, establishing a “pre-flight checklist” for testing
• The Technician who runs the tests (primarily Mike, with assistance from Patrick and Steve and occasionally Jeremy) will check the results for correct resolution, correct settings, captures that prove the test completed correctly, image quality, and general errors. The technician performs re-runs as needed
• The Subject Matter Expert performs a secondary quality control pass on data. Any data which looks suspect of a bad pass, which requires manual filtering & removal prior to retests, will be deleted and flagged for the technician to rerun
• The Technician performs re-tests and then re-evaluates the results
• The Subject Matter Expert reviews them again. They are typically resolved at this stage and occasionally rejected entirely to move forward
• A Writer & Technician (typically Jeremy) performs a full pass on CPU export names, the hierarchical stack of the data and whether the hierarchy makes sense, and identifies potential areas where additional data may be necessary to confidently come to conclusions, then passes it to Steve. If Steve authorizes any of the re-evaluations from the Writer & Technician, they go back to the lab again for testing.
• Steve performs final intensive review, including running a variety of formulae for data consistency and evaluating results against archival results for consistency of scaling
• The Writer & Technician double-checks the finals. Any disagreement with what Steve passed is voiced and revisited. Once both are in agreement that it makes sense (or the suspect data is removed until validated), the data is sent to publication
• The video editor, who is often technical enough to identify obvious oversights, performs a ‘passive’ QC while editing and flags any issues. If any are found, they go through Steve for review, analysis, and either sign-off as accurate or correction

You’ll notice that a big part of the process is passing the results through multiple team members -- typically 4-5 people look at it before publishing. This is slow, but important. 

Long-Term Support Chart Vetting Process

The Long-Term Support charts will contain data which is not in reviews, but was used as internal gauges for where parts should sensically land. As a result, this is the process it has followed since it has not previously been published:

• (Same) The Team Lead for the tests (typically Steve) establishes a strict SOP for the test suite to ensure data consistency. The Team Lead also determines which software is tested, performs benchmark analysis for standard deviation and consistency, and determines the testing methodology
• (Same) The Team Lead (typically Steve) establishes a Test Matrix containing all CPUs to be tested, which tests they get, and data exporting practices
• (Same) The Subject Matter Expert (Patrick) builds software in collaboration with Steve for the test suite and builds the operating system configurations, establishing a “pre-flight checklist” for testing
• (Same) The Technician who runs the tests (primarily Mike, with assistance from Patrick and Steve and occasionally Jeremy) will check the results for correct resolution, correct settings, captures that prove the test completed correctly, image quality, and general errors. The technician performs re-runs as needed
• (Removed) The Subject Matter Expert performs a secondary quality control pass on data. Any data which looks suspect of a bad pass, which requires manual filtering & removal prior to retests, will be deleted and flagged for the technician to rerun
• (Removed) The Technician performs re-tests and then re-evaluates the results
• (Removed) The Subject Matter Expert reviews them again. They are typically resolved at this stage and occasionally rejected entirely to move forward
• (Removed) A Writer & Technician (typically Jeremy) performs a full pass on CPU export names, the hierarchical stack of the data and whether the hierarchy makes sense, and identifies potential areas where additional data may be necessary to confidently come to conclusions, then passes it to Steve
• (Removed) Steve performs final intensive review, including running a variety of formulae for data consistency and evaluating results against archival results for consistency of scaling
• (Removed) The Writer & Technician double-checks the finals. Any disagreement with what Steve passed is voiced and revisited. Once both are in agreement that it makes sense (or the suspect data is removed until validated), the data is sent to publication
• (Removed) The video editor, who is often technical enough to identify obvious oversights, performs a ‘passive’ QC while editing and flags any issues. If any are found, they go through Steve for review, analysis, and either sign-off as accurate or correction
• (New) Steve performs final quick review, including ad-hoc comparisons between CPUs from which we have a known relative % scaling, to rapidly vet additional information. Data with low confidence is removed rather than investigated. Not every single data point is inspected, unlike reviews

This allows the team to continue work on important next reviews without forcing us to skip more important upcoming projects, but still allows us to get helpful data out. You’ll notice that this approach cuts at least 2 potential internal reviewers from the process, including reducing the amount of times the SME looks over the data, and reduces the review of every single data point down to ad-hoc glances to see if anything “jumps out” as obviously bad.

If you see anything that looks out of order, you are welcome to email us at team at gamersnexus dot net.

We are hopeful that this will allow us to publish more data to help people make upgrade decisions, with a middle-ground understanding going into it as to the limitations of the process.

With all the helpful information on how to use these charts and the disclosures out of the way, let’s continue to the data set.

Long-Term Support CPU Charts (1H24)

LTS DATA SET: Zen 5 Review Cycle (pre-Arrow Lake)

The below CPU charts are those found from our long-term support list. These will be updated only a few times a year, but contain the most data for some of the older CPUs.

Production Benchmarks

This section contains the “production” benchmarks for workstation, creation, and development applications.

Blender 3D Rendering on the CPU

The above chart ranks CPU 3D rendering performance in Blender by best to worst (faster, or lower time, is better). This should help you identify the best CPUs for rendering in 2024; however, GPUs are heavily relied upon and would be a separate benchmark.

7-Zip File Compression & Decompression Benchmarks

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The above charts contain our tests for 7-Zip file compression and decompression. If you frequently work with compressing and decompressing data, such as for large file transfers in compressed formats or for certain game loading tasks, these will give an idea for performance.

Adobe Premiere Video Editing & Rendering CPU Benchmarks

This chart uses the Puget Suite to benchmark Adobe Premiere for video editing and rendering tasks, focusing on CPU performance. Adobe Premiere cares both about the CPU and the GPU, and relies upon a strong combination (rather than biasing toward one component, like 3D rendering might do) for reduced scrubbing or playback ‘lag’ and improved rendering and encode performance.

Adobe Photoshop CPU Benchmarks & Comparison

This chart is for Adobe Photoshop and compares some of the best CPUs currently out for Photoshop. Testing is done with the Puget Suite and includes warps, transforms, scales, filters, and file manipulation.

Chromium Code Compile CPU Benchmarks

This chart looks at a Chromium code compile. It’s a CPU benchmark for programmers and developers, with the caveat that (like any of these tests), we can’t realistically represent all compile scenarios. Because we try to represent a wide range of possible use cases, we don’t cater too much to any one specialty. This should give you an idea for at least how this specific compile behaves. If your workloads resemble this, you may be able to assume some level of linearity.

Gaming CPU Benchmarks & Best CPUs

Even if your specific game isn’t represented here, the best way to use our charts for determining CPU differences is to look at the relative ranking across a number of games. Our intent with this approach is that you can determine the best-value upgrade (our reviews are very value-oriented) by comparing the typical or average gap between two parts.

In most scenarios, the CPUs will scale similarly from game-to-game, barring any unique behaviors of a particular game. If CPU A is better value in Game A, B, and C, it is very likely also better value in Game D (though not always). 

For individual per-game benchmarks, we’d recommend our Game Benchmarks section that deep-dives on new releases whenever we get a chance.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 CPU Benchmarks

This is for Dragon’s Dogma 2, which is one of the newest games in our CPU test suite. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is still getting regular updates, so the CPUs shown on this chart were all run on the same game version. The game remains CPU-heavy in the cities with dense NPC populations, which is where we test. We published a separate deep-dive benchmark of Dragon's Dogma 2 here.

Stellaris Simulation Time CPU Comparison

This chart evaluates simulation time in Stellaris using a late game save file. The number is represented in time, with lower being better. Faster simulation (shorter time required) is noticeable in 4X or Grand Campaign / Grand Strategy games where AI turn processing requires significant CPU effort. 

Baldur’s Gate 3 CPU Benchmarks

Baldur’s Gate 3 is tested at 1080p/Medium in the above chart, which allows us to see CPU scaling all the way up to the top of the stack for the best gaming CPUs.

We test in Act III in the city itself, near a market with a lot of NPCs.

F1 2024 1080p & 1440p CPU Benchmarks

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This chart gallery is for F1 24 and includes both 1080p and 1440p results. Typically, in scenarios which remain primarily CPU-bound, we see roughly the same hierarchical lineup across both resolutions. The top of the chart truncates maximum FPS, which means that CPUs which occasionally bounce off of the GPU bottleneck will be less reliable to differentiate from one another (as they are externally bound).

FFXIV: Dawntrail CPU Benchmarks (1080p & 1440p)

This set of 1080p & 1440p charts is for Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, tested at Maximum quality settings.

Rainbow Six Siege CPU Benchmarks

Rainbow Six Siege is a problematic benchmark as it updates frequently, causing entire wipes of our dataset. This is a list of results that were all run on the same game version. Unfortunately, we don’t have as much data for it as a result of the regular wipeout.

Starfield CPU Comparison

This chart is for Bethesda’s Starfield at 1080p/Low. Despite the game’s memeable launch, it remains a useful benchmark for CPU performance comparisons.

Total War: Warhammer III CPU Benchmarks

This gives us a look at a Grand Strategy / Grand Campaign Total War game, which tend to be CPU heavy. We’re using a battle for the benchmark.

Active CPU Benchmark Charts

ACTIVE DATA SET: AMD R9 9900X CPU Review

The below list of charts is our most heavily-vetted, most recently-published data set. Due to maintenance overhead and our focus on new content, we won’t updated it after every single review, but we will update this upload after major review cycles are fully complete. For example, if both AMD and Intel are launching CPUs across a 2-3 month spread, we’ll update this list at the end when we can breathe again.

These will lack some of the data found on the LTS charts; however, they may contain more recent data (such as newer CPUs).

There may be discrepancies between the LTS and Active charts. They are not necessarily comparable, and often are not. This is for reasons such as Windows version differences, game updates, and test platform changes.

Active Charts: Production

Rather than individually break them out into headings like above, we’ll just dump all the production charts below:

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Active Charts: Gaming Benchmarks

And the same for gaming. You can find each game at the top of the chart:

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CPUs Present on These Charts & Their Reviews

This table includes a simplified list of all CPUs on these charts, including links to the original GN reviews where present. Be advised that CPUs often have several follow-up pieces of content in rapid succession as the landscape changes. To keep things simple, we’ll just link the original reviews. You can still find the follow-ups on the channel.

CPU	Architecture	Release Date	GN Original Review*
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D	Zen 4	2023	AMD R7 7800X3D CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X	Zen 5	2024	AMD R9 9950X CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 9 9900X	Zen 5	2024	AMD R9 9900X CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 7 9700X	Zen 5	2024	AMD R7 9700X CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 5 9600X	Zen 5	2024	N/A
Intel i9-14900K	Raptor Lake Refresh	2023	Intel i9-14900K CPU Review
Intel i7-14700K	Raptor Lake Refresh	2023	Intel i7-14700K CPU Review
Intel i5-14600K	Raptor Lake Refresh	2023	Intel i5-14600K CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 9 7900	Zen 4	2023	AMD R9 7900 CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 5 7600	Zen 4	2023	AMD R5 7600 CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 7 7700	Zen 4	2023	AMD R7 7700 CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X	Zen 4	2022	AMD R5 7600X CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X	Zen 4	2022	AMD R7 7700X CPU Review & Benchmarks
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X	Zen 4	2022	AMD R9 7900X CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X	Zen 4	2022	AMD R9 7950X CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D	Zen 4	2023	R9 7950X3D CPU Review
Intel i5-13600K	Raptor Lake	2022	Intel i5-13600K CPU Review
Intel i7-13700K	Raptor Lake	2022	Intel i7-13700K CPU Review
Intel i9-13900K	Raptor Lake	2022	Intel i9-13900K CPU Benchmarks
Intel Pentium G7400	Alder Lake	2022	Intel Pentium G7400 Review
AMD Ryzen 5 5600	Zen 3 Vermeer	2022	AMD R5 5600 Review
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X	Zen 3 Vermeer	2020	AMD R5 5600X Review
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D	Zen 3 Vermeer	2023	AMD R5 5600X3D CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X	Zen 3 Vermeer	2020	AMD R9 5950X Review
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X	Zen 3 Vermeer	2020	AMD R9 5900X Review
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X	Zen 3 Vermeer	2022	AMD R7 5700X CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D	Zen 3 Vermeer	2024	AMD R7 5700X3D CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X	Zen 3 Vermeer	2020	AMD R7 5800X CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D	Zen 3 Vermeer	2022	AMD R7 5800X3D CPU Benchmarks
Intel i3-12100F	Alder Lake	2022	Intel i3-12100F CPU Benchmarks
Intel i5-12400	Alder Lake	2022	Intel i5-12400 CPU Benchmarks
Intel i5-12600K	Alder Lake	2021	Intel i5-12600K CPU Benchmark
Intel i9-12900K	Alder Lake	2021	Intel i9-12900K Review
AMD Ryzen 5 3600	Zen 2 Matisse	2019	AMD R5 3600 CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X	Zen 2 Matisse	2019	AMD R7 3700X CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X	Zen 2 Matisse	2019	AMD R9 3900X Review
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X	Zen 2 Matisse	2019	AMD R9 3950X Review
Intel i3-9100F	Coffee Lake Refresh	2019	Intel i3-9100F CPU Benchmarks
Intel i5-9600K	Coffee Lake Refresh	2018	Intel i5-9600K CPU Tests
Intel i7-8086K	Coffee Lake	2018	Intel i7-8086K Binning Test
Intel i7-8700K	Coffee Lake	2017	Intel i7-8700K CPU Review
Intel i5-8600K	Coffee Lake	2017	Intel i5-8600K Review
Intel i7-9700K	Coffee Lake Refresh	2018	Intel i7-9700K CPU Review
Intel i9-9900K	Coffee Lake Refresh	2018	Intel i9-9900K CPU Review
AMD Ryzen 7 2700	Zen+ Pinnacle Ridge	2018	AMD R7 2700 Review
AMD Ryzen 5 2600	Zen+ Pinnacle Ridge	2018	AMD R5 2600 Review
AMD Ryzen 5 1600	Zen	2017	AMD R5 1600 Review
AMD Ryzen 7 1700	Zen	2017	AMD R7 1700 Benchmarks
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X	Zen	2017	AMD R7 1700X Review
AMD Ryzen 3 1300X	Zen	2017	AMD R3 1300X Review

Update Log

The below is an update log of changes to this page. The format is MM/DD/YYYY:

• 10/13/2024: Created page with initial dataset following Zen 5 reviews and preceding Arrow Lake reviews

Update process / house cleaning (externally visible, but used internally):

• Apply changes
• Append to update log
• Modify "Data Set" for both LTS and Active charts to identify the replacement dataset
• Modify current recommendations at the top of the page
• Append table of tested CPUs
• Update to link the latest Best CPUs article

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Table of Contents

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Intro

Today we’re reviewing the $68 SilverStone FARA 515XR with 4 included rainbow fans, not traditional cycling RGB. It was intended as an Asia-exclusive case, but SilverStone is experimenting with bringing it to the US as a budget option. We’re also reviewing the SilverStone 514X, this one has 4x traditional ARGB fans and is priced at $100 to $110.

There was a period of time where Silverstone made our #1 recommended sub-$100 case with the RL06 (watch our review). It’s been a few years, but we’re back to see if they can repeat.

Editor's note: This was originally published on October 3, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Patrick Lathan

Testing

Mike Gaglione

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Camera

Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

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The 514X is a conventional mesh-fronted budget case, the kind SilverStone has been selling for years. 

As for the 515XR, SilverStone has been reluctant to bring it over to the US because the company feels this market has different expectations -- primarily for size, as this isn’t as deep as typical towers. This is a unique opportunity for us to compare a normal budget case versus the absolute minimum viable version and see what it takes to shave off that final $30.

Specs

	514X	515XR
Model No.	SST-FA514X-BG (Black)SST-FA514X-WG (White)	SST-FA515XR-BG (Black)SST-FA515XR-WG (White)
Material	Steel, plastic, tempered glass	Steel, plastic, tempered glass
Motherboard	ATX (12" x 11"), Micro-ATX (9.6" x 9.6"), Mini-ITX (6.7" x 6.7")	ATX (12" x 11"), Micro-ATX (9.6" x 9.6"), Mini-ITX (6.7" x 6.7")
Drive bay	Internal: 3.5" x 2, 2.5" x 2	3.5"/2.5" x 2, 2.5" x 2
Cooling system	Front: 120mm x 3 (120mm x 3 ARGB fans included)Rear: 120mm x 1 (120mm x 1 ARGB fan included)Top: 120mm x 3 / 140mm x 2	Front: 120mm x 3 / 140mm x 2 (120mm x 3 rainbow fans included)Rear: 120mm x 1 (120mm x 1 rainbow fan included)Top: 120mm x 3 / 140mm x 2Internal: 120mm x 2
Radiator support	Front: 120mm / 240mm / 360mmRear: 120mmTop: 120mm / 140mm / 240mm / 280mm / 360mm	Front: 120mm / 140mm / 240mm / 280mm / 360mmRear: 120mmTop: 120mm / 140mm / 240mm / 280mm
Limitation of CPU cooler	168mm	159mm
Expansion slot	7	7
Limitation of expansion card	Length : 378mm (Front mounted fans installed inside the front chassis)394mm (Front mounted fans installed outside the front chassis)Width : 174mm	Length : 350mm
Power supply	Standard PS2 (ATX)	Standard PS2 (ATX)
Limitation of PSU	217mm (Drive cage installed at the front position)185mm (Drive cage installed at the rear position)	160mm
Front I/O port	USB Type-C x 1USB 3.0 x 2Audio x 1Mic x 1	USB 3.0 x 2Audio x 1Mic x 1[Ed. Note: There's only one audio jack]
Dimension	220mm (W), x 492.7mm (H), x 458.6mm (D), 49.7 liters8.66" (W), x 19.4" (H), x 18.06" (D), 49.7 liters	204.8mm (W), x 484.5mm (H), x 402.5mm (D), 39.94 liters8.06" (W), x 19.07" (H), x 15.85" (D), 39.94 liters
Net weight	8.6 kg	SST-FA515XR-BG: 6.18 kgSST-FA515XR-WG: 6.2 kg
MSRP	SST-FA514X-BG: $99.99SST-FA514X-WG: $109.99	SST-FA515XR-BG: $67.99SST-FA515XR-WG: $73.99

Specs copied from manufacturer materials, please read review for our own measurements and opinions

The Build (514X)

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We’ll start with the 514X and move to the 515XR to look at what cost-saving they did.

The 514X is doing what the majority of competitive cases were back in 2019, which is shoving four fans into a $100 ventilated box. This is done with careful cost saving and has become more difficult in recent years, though there are still good options: We’ll soon be reviewing the Lancool 207 as a budget high airflow case, as another new example.

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In the 514X, there are several areas of obvious cost-saving, and SilverStone directly acknowledged some of them to us: the expansion slots have punch-out disposable covers and there are no rubber grommets on cable cutouts. SilverStone pointed out that it still made an effort to ventilate the slot covers, even though they're disposable, but disposable slot covers on a $100 case does seem a little bit too cheap even for this configuration.

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As for the lack of grommets, SilverStone advertises that a steel cover plate hides the cutouts and the cables routed through them. That's the theory, at least; we couldn't get the cover installed in its stock position. Fortunately there are two options for placing the cover (or it can be removed entirely, although the built-in GPU support relies on it. It's our policy to leave everything in place as much as possible for stock testing, but we were forced to shift the cover forward to get the 24-pin power cable connected. Moving the cover only requires removing one screw.

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The HDD cage itself is only compatible with 3.5" drives: 2.5" drives must be mounted behind the motherboard tray.

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The fan ARGB hub uses a SATA power connector and takes input from a button on the front panel (for built-in patterns) and an ARGB header (for external control). 

The hub doesn't have PWM speed control (though there are unpopulated pads for it), and even if it did, all four case fans are 3-pin. That’s not something we see very often these days. We always connect case fans to motherboard headers for thermal testing, which always allows speed control via voltage. The only advantage of the hub is that SilverStone uses it to pre-manage the rats' nest of cables.

Each of the fans has a daisy-chained ARGB connector, so if you have one free ARGB header and four free fan headers, you can get rid of the hub and connect everything to the motherboard. 

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The front fan mounts are limited to 120mm exclusively. We’d recommend planning to use the stock fans with the 514X. On the plus side, there's space to move the front fans back into the interior of the chassis, which would give additional intake surface area at the cost of GPU clearance.

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There's support for radiators up to 360mm on both the front and top mounts, but the front mount is easier to work with due to the case dimensions. We had to angle the top in. 

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There are a couple of other minor budget-related points: no thumbscrews for the expansion slots, a loose square of mesh for a PSU filter, and a chassis that was originally built for a different case, evidenced by the unused side panel snaps and slot for a PSU shroud extension that doesn't exist. 

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On the other hand, the 514X's front panel is almost entirely metal, including the snaps, and a GPU support is included with the case. The snaps are good, and although a GPU support in that location isn’t the most helpful, it doesn't hurt. 

In spite of the low price, the front I/O includes a USB Type-C port. The Type-C port in particular is still one of the more expensive case features, so we're happy to see one here.

We've spoken to manufacturers before about colors and pricing. Black has been the most broadly popular color for years, so it's the most common and the cheapest. Low-margin budget cases are the most likely to reflect paint price differences in retail prices, like the King 95 PRO, where it’s a little costlier for white version. The white version of the 514X also costs $110 whereas the black version costs $100. 

The Build (515XR)

Let’s move on to the 515XR, which is the cheaper of the two.

The 515XR is much cheaper than the 514X, about a 33% price reduction when comparing the like-for-like color SKUs. It's not necessarily worse than the 514X, but there are a few reasons that SilverStone has been reluctant to bring the 515XR to the US market, like the case’s shorter depth, which won’t fit longer GPUs. The company has been very open with us about this release being a trial run.

SilverStone is also concerned that the rainbow fans are going to lead to confusion and returns in the US market. In Asia, we’re told that rainbow fans are common and are understood. 

The fans in the 515XR aren't ARGB, which is fine, but since most cases are photographed with a rainbow pattern for RGB now, this will lead to confusion. The term "rainbow fans" combined with marketing images of multicolored fans implies baked-in RGB lighting patterns. 

Instead, each of the fans has a set of static non-animated multicolored LEDs that can't be turned off since they're powered by the fan connectors. This is an older school approach for price. We wouldn't mind some old-school solid-color LEDs with that, or no LEDs at all, but we’re not sure about the rainbow choice. According to SilverStone, rainbow fans are more common in the Asian market from which the 515XR originates.

Out of the box, the fans are all connected to a single 4-pin Molex adapter. We recommend leaving this alone: the fan cables are too short to reach anything on their own, and if you drop fan speeds, the LEDs dim (they run on the same circuit). Those of you who built computers in the early 2000s will remember this behavior from the older LED fans.

The 515XR is nearly identical to the sawed-off form factor of the old Fractal Meshify C. The Meshify C was a case that came out back in 2017 (watch our review), in the brief span after optical drive bays and before really massive GPUs. This is 2024, though, and 4090s exist, so SilverStone is worried that the 515XR is "only" compatible with GPUs up to 350mm long. 

We don't see this as an issue. Most people buying a $68 case are probably not buying super long video cards. We recommend limiting GPUs to ~300mm to give the case fans some space: if your GPU is bigger than that, there are better case options.

Like the 514X, it doesn't make sense to replace the 515XR's stock fans; however, unlike the 514X, the 515XR has 140mm front mounts. 

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The 515XR's drive support is also more flexible, since the drive cage can mount either 2.5" or 3.5" drives. The cage has a removable sled with vibration damping, and the dedicated 2.5" mounts are separate and held in with thumbscrews, all of which are improvements over the 514X. The PSU mount in the 515XR also has foam supports that the 514X lacks, and there's a single reusable expansion slot cover.

The 515XR has two internal 120mm fan mounts on top of the PSU shroud. We generally don't see much thermal improvement from shroud-top fans without careful planning, like in the Antec Flux Pro. The 515XR's shroud is mostly sealed. Still, it's an option that the 514X lacks.

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We do not recommend putting a 360mm radiator into the 515XR. There's only a 32mm gap left in the shroud for a radiator (with the stock fans installed), and the drive cage may also interfere with the available space depending on which drives are installed. The top slot technically fits radiators up to 280mm, but this would make it difficult to use any of the cutouts at the top edge of the motherboard.

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There are some cheap quality of life improvements we'd like to see. First, the cutout nearest the 24-pin power header is almost too small, and the cutouts along the bottom edge of the motherboard are partially blocked by the PSU. Second, the reset and power buttons aren't marked. Finally, the rear fan is positioned so that it needs to be fully removed before installing motherboards with built-in rear I/O covers.

As a final note, we asked SilverStone why the black version of the 515XR is 20 grams lighter than the white one, assuming it could be a typo. Its product manager says that white paint requires a thicker coat, and that the white fans also weigh slightly more than the black ones, so the 20 gram difference is real.

Thermals

We're covering two different cases in one review, so most of our comparisons here will be between the 514X and the 515XR. We don't have many sub-$100 budget cases on the charts yet, so these will serve as a starting point as we add more, like the upcoming Lian Li Lancool 207. Of the cases that have been tested with our current methodology, the aging Fractal Pop Air RGB is the closest match to the SilverStone cases, so we'll be using that as a representative example of existing budget mesh-fronted enclosures. We've seen the Pop Air drop as low as $50 for the non-RGB variant. Montech's Sky and Air cases are usually strong competitors in this space, and we'll add those to our charts as we test them.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

Our first test is for noise-normalized thermals, where we set all cases to the same noise level in our hemi-anechoic chamber. Neither the 514X nor the 515XR offer fan control out of the box, but we were able to perform noise-normalized tests by connecting the fans to motherboard headers as usual.

The 514X averaged 48 degrees Celsius above ambient all-core and 52 degrees for the P-cores, while the 515XR was significantly worse at 53 all-core and 57 P-core. The 515XR's dual-layer front panel is more restrictive, while the 514X's front panel is a single layer of steel mesh. 

The 514X isn't especially impressive outside of its price when compared to the rest of the cases on this CPU thermal chart, but it's tied with the Pop Air RGB (watch our review) -- which has been on heavy sales lately. The 515XR has some of the worst results on the chart, tied with the stock HYTE Y60. This is a letdown, and it's not at all what we expected: we've seen plenty of cheap mesh-fronted cases punch above their weight, like the Lian Li Lancool 215, Montech X3 and Air 1000, and several Phanteks cases like the P400A (read our review) with the mesh front. We’re adding the 216 back to the charts later this week along with the 207, so that’ll help give some perspective as well.

The industry has moved away from using multiple layers of material in mesh front panels, which has led to better performance in many cases. The 515XR could be something special if it had not made this design decision.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Standardized Fans

Our standardized fan test replaces all stock fans in each case with the same set of three Noctua fans: two 140mm intake, one 120mm exhaust. We have explained why there are limitations to this testing, such as worsening performance of cases which include more or larger fans. However, we run this test due to popular demand from the audience. You can find our methodology and limitations of this testing linked here.

This is the perfect chance to see how the stock fans affect the performance of the SilverStone cases, versus the designs of the chassis themselves.

GPU temperature in the 514X averaged 43 degrees Celsius above ambient, 49 on the memory, and 56 hotspot. That puts it in the middle of the chart, tied with several other similar mesh-fronted front intake configurations like the Flux Pro, Torrent, and Pop Air RGB. That's confirmation that the 514X's front panel and general layout are at least as good as other cases in the same category. The 515XR averaged 49 degrees, 57 on the memory, and 64 hotspot, which puts it among the worst results on the chart for the second time in a row. Again, all of these results were recorded using the same set of fans, so the difference comes down to the 515XR's front panel. The 514X seems fine. The 515XR is a let-down.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Standardized Fans

In the same test, the 514X's CPU temperature average of 40 degrees above ambient still came close to the other mesh-fronted cases, but the Flux Pro (read our review), Torrent, and Pop Air all averaged 38 degrees with the standardized fans. The 515XR was again worse at 44 degrees, but the bottom of the chart is stacked with bottom-intake configurations, so it's not among the worst results. Front or side intake is significantly better for CPU thermals with our test bench.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

Back to the noise normalized results, neither of the SilverStone cases did well for GPU thermals. The 514X averaged 50 degrees above ambient, 58 memory, and 65 hotspot, with only two previously-tested cases doing worse, one of them being the Pop Air RGB. 

The 515XR is the new hottest result on the chart. We express all temperatures as degrees above ambient to account for fluctuations, so the average GPU temperature of 54 degrees above ambient translates to a logged steady state temperature of 75 degrees. That wasn't enough to cause any throttling, but in a warmer room, the GPU might lose some boost headroom.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Full Speed

This is the full speed chart with the stock fans.

The 514X's stock fans topped out at 1300-1400RPM, while the 515XR's were 1100-1200RPM. Those limits are a little low for 120mm fans, which makes them relatively quiet, which is important given that both cases are set up to run all case fans at 100% speed out of the box. With all four fans maxed out, average all-core CPU temperature in the 514X was 44 degrees above ambient while maintaining a noise level of 34.6dBA. It matched some louder cases, like the 36.8 dBA King 95 Pro, but only slightly outperformed the quieter 31.3 dBA Pop Air RGB. 

The 515XR tied the Pop Air for noise but had worse thermals, as usual. The front panel design really prevents it from doing as well as it could.

VRM & RAM Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

In noise normalized testing, VRM and RAM thermals aligned with the CPU thermal results. The 514X averaged 34 degrees above ambient for the VRM and 28 degrees for memory, putting it in the middle of the chart, while the 515XR averaged 39 for the VRM and 32 for the memory, the hottest results on the chart in both categories.

Conclusion

The 514X is an extremely normal case: it costs about $100, it has the basic features you'd expect from a budget case, but it also has a full set of four ARGB fans. Thermal performance doesn't look amazing compared to the rest of our chart, but we haven't yet fully populated our chart with comparable $100 cases. Performance is similar to the Fractal Pop Air RGB, so you can look back at that review for a rough comparison versus a wider selection of older cases. The 514X isn't bad, but we aren't excited about it, and we've seen the Fractal North on sale recently for as low as $110. Anyways, the 514X is okay.

We were excited about the $68 515XR mostly for the price, especially after seeing that it has almost every feature we care about from the 514X (except the Type-C header). Sub-$68 is the domain of DIYPC and SAMA, and there are few name-brand options with reasonable ventilation at that price. Unfortunately, it reminds us strongly of the Thermaltake Versa J24 (watch our review). The J24 was extremely similar to the 515XR in several ways, but most importantly it had a layered front panel that hurt its performance. For that review, we were able to remove a filter and improve the J24's performance without changing its appearance, but that's not an option with the 515XR. The 515XR is almost a really competitive case at its price. We’re just a little hung up on its front panel. We have to admit that there aren't easy alternatives to recommend at this price (other than cases on sale, like the Pop Air), but the 515XR could have had a wholehearted recommendation with some alterations to the front panel.

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Intro

The brand new Fractal Design Era 2 ITX case is heavy on the mechanical features.

The entire case disassembles without screws or traditional snaps: Its walnut panel pops up on press, its dust filter acts as a locking mechanism for its shell, and then its shell removes in a single piece on slides. Its spring-loaded latches release the radiator mount to fully open up the case for building, and 4 screws can be loosened to move the central spine between 3 positions to trade-off between GPU and CPU cooler clearance. There’s also a single screw that controls a rail-mounted dual SSD cage.

But the case also does some weird things and has some problems: For one, our wood panel is cracked. This is primarily concerning because it’s a point that Fractal really pushed when it unveiled the case, stating that it had a reinforcement that specifically prevented cracking. Second, the PSU exhaust and bottom intake are in conflict with each other.

Editor's note: This was originally published on September 18, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Jeremy Clayton

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Camera

Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

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We made another 3D airflow animation to help explain the configuration that Fractal created where the power supply fan is fighting the intake fans. We’ll talk about this down below.

So, it’s mechanically complex and costs $200. We’ll go over build quality and thermal performance in this review.

Fractal Era 2 Overview and Competition

Let’s go over the basics and competition first.

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The Era 2 comes in blue, black, or silver and is a sandwich-style ITX case. The case has two pre-installed fans in the bottom for intake, room for a 240mm or 280mm liquid cooler in the top, and a continuing trend of higher cost ITX cases. A good portion of that cost is probably tied-up in the stylized aluminum shell and slotted walnut wood top panel. 

The side panels have ventilation via a hole pattern that ranges from sparse to useless, mixing an artsy approach with at least trying to hit the basics of cooling. These holes are a good indicator that Fractal is looks-first on this case. We’ll talk about thermals later in the review.

The original Era Il ITX predecessor is a smaller case with a similar look, but also one which Fractal has openly told reviewers it felt it had underperformed on. The company is trying to fix its shortcomings with the Era 2. 

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Internally, the Era 2 has a lot in common with the $180 Fractal Terra. The motherboard, GPU, and PSU are in the same basic layout on a moveable spine, but the power supply is rotated 180 degrees in the Era 2. This results in the cables facing up – nice for ease of access – and the PSU exhaust facing down, which is awkward from an airflow standpoint. 

Other than its own Terra, competition to Fractal’s Era 2 would include these cases:

The $150 Lian Li DAN A4-H2O, which is smaller, more rectangular, has no extra fans, and still supports a 240mm liquid cooler. A much larger and cheaper comparison would be the A3-mATX we recently reviewed, but they exist in totally different market segments. We did like that case, though. We also recently reviewed Fractal’s Mood, but would not recommend the case; its thermal performance was overall poor and some of its compatibility choices were odd. The M1EVO (watch our review) is another relatively expensive, specialized ITX case you could look at. 

Fractal Era 2 Dimensions and Fitment

Getting into the dimensions and compatibility: The Era 2 is 365mm long, 165mm wide, and 315mm tall, which calculates to a 19L volume and is nearly spot-on with Fractal’s own measurements. 

If you’re keeping track of our ITX reviews at home, add one more to the tally for “not lying on the spec sheet.” That’s not as common a tally as it should be.

The movable spine has a major impact on internal fitment and can be set to three predetermined, stepped positions. This is a big difference from the stepless nature of the Terra’s spine adjustment. 

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Position 1 gives the most CPU-side clearance and fits up to 70mm tall coolers while reducing GPU-side clearance to 48mm (or just 2.4 slots) of available thickness. Position 3 changes those values to 55mm for the CPU side and 63mm (3.1 slots) for the GPU.

Maximum GPU height is 137mm regardless of spine position, but you’ll want to be aware of the cable bend also. Fractal recommends a max GPU backplate thickness of 4mm. Bear in mind that larger GPUs will restrict air movement within that side of the case and power cable management can become problematic with larger cards. As always, just because it fits doesn’t mean it is a good fit.

As another point of reference, the RTX 4080 FE fits, but will have its flow-through cooler heavily limited due to having only 11mm of clearance behind the card in spine position 3. So we’re back to “it sort of fits” but isn’t necessarily a good choice.

For cooling: The top bracket can hold 280mm radiator and fan combos up to 52mm thick. 240mm liquid coolers can be slightly thicker depending on exact placement, but will quickly encroach on power cables and their own tubes.

Both SFX and SFX-L PSUs are supported. Space for cables is greatly hampered by SFX-L, so we’d favor standard SFX.

Internal drive support is pretty good for the size. There are 4x 2.5” mounts in total – two in the rail-mount drive cage (blocking off a large portion of the intake fan below it) and two on the spine behind the PSU, though are only usable with the spine in positions 1 and 2, and would be detrimental to flow-through GPUs. 3.5” drives are not natively supported in the case.

The Build - Positives

Time to run through positives and negatives. We’ll start with positives.

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There are a lot of things the Era 2 does right, and the build process was relatively straightforward for ITX standards. The top radiator mount was a major help, as was the PSU orientation with the internal terminals facing up. Accessibility overall is excellent, which is a major factor in ITX cases.

The GPU side of the case is essentially wide open, and a cutout at the front helps with installation of the longest supported GPUs. You’re able to angle the far end of the card into the hole first, then move the PCIe slot side into position.

Cable management is also excellent overall and is one of the most difficult things for an ITX case to accommodate successfully. There are tie-down points and small channels for cables everywhere – like around and in between the bottom fans. Even in the most GPU-biased spine position (3), you end up with just enough space around the edge of the motherboard to get the job done tidily for cable management. The manual is also well-made and offers actually helpful cable management tips.

Fractal’s attention to detail in the design of the Era 2 is overall great, as it was able to make an objectively complex case remain easy to use through thoughtful engineering.

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There’s a number of other small features that we thought were well done. To quickly go through them:

• Tapered plastic rails at the front and rear ensure that sliding the shell on/off is smooth
• A slight inward angle along the bottom interior edges to help keep cables tucked in
• Flared leading edges on the rail interface for the drive cage and PSU bracket are well done
• The opening at the front of the internal chassis to assist with long GPU installation is rounded over to be completely smooth
• A small strip of fabric glued to the top edge of the front I/O to keep the aluminum from rubbing
• The dust filter doubles as the lock mechanism, causing two spring-loaded plastic lugs at the front to pivot into place
• A bowed-down filter at the bottom to match the bowing of the underside of the case, which Fractal claims gives better access to air

The Build - Negatives

Moving on to the negatives, one of the only difficult aspects about the build was access to the motherboard’s top edge. Since it’s inverted in the Era 2, it ends up down at the bottom. You may want to pre-connect cables there before installation or get comfortable with using a plastic spudger to poke them on after the fact.

The wood top panel on our sample is cracked in one place between the edge and the interior slats. We don’t know at what stage the wood cracked -- possibly at the factory or maybe in storage and shipping as it crossed climates, humidity, and temperature gradients. Either way, wood is a relatively sensitive material, and this makes us concerned about the durability of the part, despite the steps Fractal took to reinforce it. Fractal emphasized in its early meetings that it was reinforcing this panel with metal to prevent cracking in a way that seemed like shots taken at competition, but now we wonder if it was actually because of their own experiences. Using two separate pieces of wood might have avoided this, despite creating a seam. This isn’t extremely noticeable, but it is disappointing. 

By pressing the sides together, we see the crack fit perfectly back into place. This makes us think that Fractal may be better off with 2 crossbars rather than one, as it seems like the wood curing and aging may have pulled apart horizontally. Another crossbar to hold the sides uniform to each other might help.

Also in the realm of build quality, one of the side panels on our sample is Tesla-like, in that it doesn’t line up perfectly with the panels around it, resulting in a visible jump from one to the other. These are both QC issues at the core, and are things Fractal should definitely look out for on a $200 case.

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A final minor annoyance is the fact that the shell has a crossbar at the bottom of the rear I/O area, meaning that you have to remove all of the cables before you can slide the shell on or off. Fractal could have built this in a way where it’d be easier to get into the case for maintenance without that bar, though this may be a sacrifice for rigidity.

Fractal Era 2 Airflow

For the potential airflow downside, we turn to our animation.

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As we mentioned before, the PSU’s exhaust side faces the intake fan. The case orients the power supply for the easiest cable management at the cost of potential airflow conflict between the PSU’s exhaust and the bottom intake. Most modern power supplies stop spinning the fans when load isn’t sufficient, so at idle, this should actually work pretty well. It’ll force air “backwards” into the power supply, allowing it to flow past the PSU’s passive fan and out the traditional “bottom” of the power supply. That air will then exit through the perforations in the side of the chassis. That much is good. When the power supply fan becomes active, it’ll suddenly directly fight the force-fed air from bottom intake, and it’s likely that bottom intake will overpower the power supply fan. There’s enough of a gap where it won’t cause major problems, as opposed to a directly attached opposing fan, but this could still be sub-optimal for some power supplies. It’s going to be highly PSU-dependent. It’s not something we think is a critical issue, but it is one that was a little odd.

Fractal Era 2 Thermals

Now we’ll take a look at the thermal performance of the Era 2. As a reminder for anyone new to our ITX reviews, our current ITX testing methodology prohibits competitive comparisons between cases, but allows us to be much more flexible when it comes to testing a single case against itself in multiple configurations.

For the Era 2, all testing was performed with locked frequency and power on the 13600K, locked fan speed on the 4070 FE, and 100% fan and pump speeds on the 240mm CLC and case fans. We treated spine position 1 as the default, since it’s the intended setup for this size GPU.

CPU Thermals

Starting with CPU thermals, all of the tested configurations resulted in a narrow band of only 2.1C. The stock result has a slight lead with the P-cores at steady state average at roughly 45C over ambient.

Removing the top panel didn’t result in any meaningful thermal change, showing us that despite appearances, it isn’t actually restrictive to flow, at least not in this configuration.

Setting the spine to position 3 hurts CPU thermals slightly, but not significantly. We were curious if the holes on the side panels actually did anything, so we covered them with tape. The answer for CPU thermals is “no,” since it’s tied with the position 3 result.

The biggest impact was from populating and installing the lower drive cage, resulting in 46.8 degrees over ambient on the P-cores. If you have just a single SATA SSD, we recommend mounting it to the forward-most spine mount behind the PSU to avoid this blockage.

Generally speaking, the two sets of fans at full speed are somewhat brute-forcing the situation, but the noise levels aren’t actually that high or unpleasant due to the fans’ middling 2000RPM maximum. 

GPU Thermals

GPU thermals are next and post a wider range. Results are also consistent here and well within normal operating ranges. The stock results have the GPU die at 50C over ambient at steady state, with roughly 68C hotspot and 43C on the VRAM. Removing the top again has no appreciable effect.

The spine position 3 result isn’t meaningfully outside of variance, but suggests that keeping the GPU’s intake fans closer to the side panel is helpful.

Installing the drive cage raises core temperature of the core by about 2C, but could be further exaggerated by larger GPUs that need all the airflow help they can get.

Blocking the side ventilation and moving the spine to position 3 to allow the GPU best access to internal air shows us that the holes do actually help, as the temperature did climb.

VRM + RAM Thermals

For VRM and RAM temperatures, we see actual scaling between configurations. Everything is kept in check by the fan blasting air directly at the top edge of the motherboard.

The stock position 1 result is the best at just 20C over ambient, and moving the spine to position 3 gives the worst result. This makes sense considering the proportion of intake air is reduced on the CPU side of the case when moving from 1 to 3. Interestingly, blocking the side panel actually lowered VRM temperature by a couple of degrees. We suspect this is because taking away those exit routes forces the intake air in that region to flow only over the motherboard.

Fractal Era 2 Conclusion

The Fractal Era 2 has a great combination of features, ease of use, and performance. The single largest downside is the price. $200+ isn’t uncommon for high-end, boutique ITX, but it’s pretty steep for the mass market. A lot of that money is probably in the material choices of walnut and moderately thick aluminum, but it’s also just the ITX world.

ATX cases at this price can be really impressive too, inherently have more flexibility, and they cost more to ship. As always, ITX is all about wanting the form factor.

In terms of construction, we think the Era 2 displays a mastery of stamped steel as a medium. There are numerous features and fine detail touches all over the stamped parts that indicate use of complex, multi-step tooling, and nothing is left sharp. Fractal is reaching an impressive level of tooling engineering maturity.

The exterior aluminum shell and walnut top panel come off as the weakest parts in this regard, with our sample having both a crack in the wood and a misaligned side panel. This shows possible execution issues despite strong fundamentals.

Speaking of the shell, Fractal could use this as an opportunity to make visually and functionally distinct versions of the case by just making new exteriors. That opens up the avenue to do more colorways or seasonal colors going forward.

We were most impressed by the mechanical features and smart implementation of them:

• The top radiator mount is executed well
• The locking action on the dust filter is clever
• The rail system with a single screw for PSU and SSD brackets also worked well
• And the movable spine to fine-tune part fitment is improving with iterations

Thermals are good all around, despite strange PSU orientation.

The Era 2 sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from how tedious and clunky the NCASE M1EVO is. The only thing going for the M1EVO in this comparison is its extreme versatility and ability to fit even the largest of GPUs, making it still a more versatile and customizable solution, but one which we think is less refined. The versatility has benefits, but they’re for a different kind of build.

For the money, we think the Era 2 makes the $180 Terra (read our review) look less appealing on paper, since the $20 gets you two fans and much expanded capability in cooling and drive mounts. That said, the Terra is smaller and has a unique look and its own mechanical complexities that might just be more to some people’s liking. They are different enough, especially in size, that anyone who wants a Terra specifically may find the Era 2 non-viable. But if you think either could work and you’re on the fence, we’d favor the Era 2, at this point.

Those who want similar capability for less money should look at the A4-H2O, but should be aware that it’s more difficult to build in due to its reduced size.

The A3-mATX is also an excellent case (read our review) for relatively cheap (by modern standards). It’s a totally different style and not directly comparable, but you should be aware of it if you’re OK with a larger size and simpler case.

Overall, we think the Era 2 is well-executed.

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Intro

The Corsair ONE i500 is terrible. 

Corsair’s product page calls the i500’s performance “uncompromised” no fewer than 6 times. Except we’d say that running 600MHz slower than stock on the CPU because it’s intentionally power limited is literally the definition of compromise.

In fact, there is no more literal definition of the word. In our view, Corsair is just straight-up lying by calling this uncompromised when referring to thermals and size, because it is actively compromising.

Editor's note: This was originally published on September 29, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Jeremy Clayton

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

3D Animation

Andrew Coleman

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

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Also, in Corsair’s world, “advanced”, “top-tier” cooling means GPU VRAM at 94 degrees Celsius and a 120mm radiator desperately trying (but failing) to cool the 14900K from hitting 100 degrees Celsius.

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We spent over $4,700 on the Corsair ONE i500 pre-built gaming PC because it’s spammed everywhere across the internet a few months ago. We’ve seen nonstop ads for it on social media, videos with influencers and showcases, and it’s... bad.

There are a few positives, like the OS setup. But that’s not really enough.

Corsair ONE i500 Overview

The i500 is available in just two configurations, both using the Intel i9-14900K with the same motherboard, cooling, PSU, and custom case. The ONE we have has an RTX 4090 and 64GB of DDR5-6000 for $4700 (or $4200 on sale at the time of writing).

Corsair ONE i500 Part and Price Breakdown

	Part Name	DIY Equivalent Part	DIY Part Price
CPU	Intel i9-14900K	Identical	$530
CPU Cooler	Corsair 120mm CLC	Corsair iCUE H60x RGB ELITE	$80
Motherboard	MSI MAG B760M MORTAR WIFI CORSAIR	MSI MAG B760M MORTAR WIFI II	$200
Memory	Corsair Vengeance 64GB DDR5-6000 CL30	Identical	$215
Storage	Samsung PM9A1 2TB SSD	Samsung 980 Pro 2TB	$150
GPU	Palit NVIDIA RTX 4090	ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 4090	$1,600
Case	Corsair ONE i500 Custom Case	Any $100 case that fits	$100
Power Supply	Corsair SF1000L 1000W	Identical	$150
Fans	Extra 2x Corsair AF120 Slim	Identical	$50
Pre-built Price: $4,700	DIY Total: $3,075

We did some price analysis using identical DIY parts where possible or replacements where not. We’re not trying to outmatch Corsair -- we want a fair fight, so we stuck as close to the spec as we could.

The i500 ends up with a premium of $1,625 over DIY, or $1,225 if counting the current sale – which, in either of those two situations, is absolutely, completely insane. For reference, some of the Maingear and Starforge PCs we’ve looked at over the last two years have been on the “higher” side of “build fee” and markup, both at around $400-$550 on top of builds that cost around $1,500 to $2,000. 

At this price, we’re disappointed with several of the part choices, including the B760 chipset motherboard (more on that later), the inadequate 120mm CPU liquid cooler, and the capacity of the SSD. 4TB M.2 options start around $220, including Corsair’s own MP600 CORE XT 4TB for $260. Yet, our $4,700 build only provides us 2TB. 

It doesn’t come with any peripherals either, but Corsair’s happy to link its $280 K100 AIR wireless keyboard prominently on the product page.

The case itself is custom and exclusive to the i500. 

It has a solid front, which comes in the dark wood version we have, sourced from walnut, light wood sourced from maple, or black metal.

The top and bottom of the case have really bulky aluminum fins. The top gets warm during operation, but the metal isn’t leveraged for cooling in the way it should be. This was a missed opportunity in such a customized build as this is.

The bottom has holes to theoretically let the PSU get access to air, but it’s so blocked off that there’s only a few millimeters of space for it to breathe so the vents are functionally useless or very close to it. This is bad, and the case should absolutely not be placed on carpet.

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All the fans in the i500 are Corsair AF120 SLIMs that top out at 2,000 RPM and are all stacked-up right against the side. It’s a unique ensemble. Slim fans typically struggle in high resistance applications, like on radiators. The left side fans are entirely intake, but the right side has none and has no real opportunity for airflow.

The i500’s main cooling is handled by two independent closed-loop liquid coolers: 120mm on the CPU as left side intake and a 240mm radiator on the GPU as top exhaust. 

The CPU cooler is laughable for the notoriously power hungry 14900K (read our review). 

As for the GPU cooler, it should be able to handle its job given no major screw ups. Unfortunately for Corsair, there are major screw ups. 

Corsair ONE i500 Thermals

Corsair ONE i500 Thermals - GPU Comparison

Here’s the chart of GPU thermals for the Corsair ONE at steady state under various loads.

GPU thermals are abysmal. The water-cooled Corsair 4090 has GPU VRAM hitting 94 degrees Celsius in a 21C ambient, which is completely unacceptable even if it were air-cooled. TjMax for VRAM, depending on special exclusions and exceptions, is typically 95C or 105C. It depends on the specific memory. In either scenario, the 94C result is deeply concerning and embarrassing for Corsair to even ship out the door with water attached to the block that shares a cold plate with the memory.

We added the ASUS Strix 4090 here just for a high-end air cooler reference and used its stock fan curve. Testing is on an open bench -- it’s not a perfectly controlled comparison, and it’s not supposed to be. The point is a reference.

The i500’s 4090 is warmer across the board, even with liquid cooling. GPU core is also way higher on the i500’s 4090, at 70 versus 63.7 degrees Celsius. Back when we reviewed the Colorful Neptune 4090, its core temperature was about 52C in the same test – albeit with an entirely different liquid cooler. Corsair’s 4090 thermals are disastrous.

Thermal interface material, including pads, will age. Dust accumulates. Liquid permeates tubes. With time, this 94C will easily breach 100C with a little bit of time in the mix or a higher local ambient temperature. 

All Thermals

Liquid temperature inside the GPU loop hit 65C for the i500. For reference, some CLC manufacturers, including Asetek, cite 60-65C as being the maximum safe liquid temperature for the plastics internal to the pump before they start breaking down.

All Thermals - Equilibrium Chart

This chart shows all system thermals at steady state.

We already talked about GPU thermals being not only uncompetitive, but embarrassingly bad and potentially damaging to long-term survivability of some of its components.  

The CPU is next: During a Cinebench workload at steady-state, the P-cores averaged 89 degrees Celsius. The hottest single cores were hitting 100C, only stopping there because they were thermal throttling and hitting TjMax. This is literally compromise, again, despite what we believe is Corsair’s false advertising.

With Blender, which is a completely realistic all-core workload, we still monitored 81-degree results on P-cores and 92 for the hottest single core. VR VCC also measured hot, way up at 85C. The MOSFET measurement from the motherboard was 79 degrees, which is warm, but survivable depending on capacitor temperature (which we didn’t check, since our conclusion is already that you shouldn’t buy this). 

The PCH was fine, SPD Hub on RAM was fine, and the drive was also fine.

These issues point to something being fundamentally wrong with the i500’s GPU cooling setup. And its CPU cooling setup. And just the computer in general -- but we’ll focus on the GPU since the VRAM is so bad.

A large portion of the issue is that the rear fan on the GPU radiator, of which there are two, is actually controlled by the CPU cooler liquid temperature, and it barely sped up during the GPU-only load, like gaming at 4K. 

You also can’t change this fan behavior. If that sounds stupid, it’s because it is.

This alone doesn’t explain the 94C VRAM, so we’ll look for a root cause in the tear-down. Let’s jump over to that now.

Corsair ONE i500 Tear-Down & Disassembly

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Starting the tear-down, we remove the case’s two floppy panels before unscrewing the 2 large metal side panels underneath.

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Removing one of the panels unveils a swinging door, which, as a mechanism, is nice. It houses 2 fans and the CPU cooler’s 120mm radiator, which is too small to effectively cool the PC’s 14900K. We can also see that it has short cooling tubes connected to it in order to reduce clutter, but at the cost of reduced usefulness in future systems. 

Inside the case, we can see multiple clips that manage one of the fan cables. It’s a nice touch, but they are held down by adhesive, which come off easily as a result of the extreme heat build-up within the system. Corsair fully customized this case specifically for this purpose, so choosing not to build metal cable tie points into the case is not only bizarre, but a waste of an opportunity. The point of going fully custom is to not need to resort to glue. 

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Next, we unscrewed the swinging door to get better access to the motherboard and to pull the cooler out.

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Removing the water cooler, we noticed that there were some loose screws on the mounting bracket. The cooler ended up using a pre-applied thermal paste via silk screen application, which is fine and keeps things consistent.  

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Examining the graphics card, we can see that the VRM is completely exposed, forcing it to rely exclusively on air cooling. This approach is a major shortcoming of the design and shows either a lack of care or a lack of understanding of how hot VRMs get.

The GPU uses a 3-slot bracket, which ends up being a wasted benefit since the card simply isn’t heavy enough to rely on it. For heavy air-cooled video cards, 3-slot brackets are a great way to help reduce GPU sag; here, however, the 3-slot bracket provides no value to the rigidity of basically just a blank PCB with a CLC strapped to the top.

Taking the card out of the case, we noticed that its PCB has 2x 8-pin blank spots, which suggests Corsair reused this PCB from another design. 

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We looked at the space between the PCB and the copper cold plate to check for thermal pads and saw that a corner of the memory module had zero contact to a thermal pad. We also saw poor contact around the edges of other memory modules. This helps explain some of the poor performance we saw in our thermal results.

The card’s GPU and memory share the same copper cold plate. The downside to this approach is that the GPU appears to run a little bit warmer as a result. The upside is that the memory can access better cooling because of this design, but unfortunately with Corsair’s execution, it didn’t work based on our testing. We also noticed that the thermal pads are on the thicker side, which hurts performance. They also felt completely dry. We’re not convinced the thermal conductivity of these pads is any good.

The top of the case uses a 240mm radiator, which isn’t sufficient to deal with all of the heat the PC puts out. Going back to the GPU, its solution is very disappointing and we were baffled by how barebones and cheap it is.  

On the bright side, all of the computer’s cables were fully seated, though we did notice 4 pretty loose screws on the motherboard with one of them being completely loose. 

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Removing the motherboard from the case exposes some built-in cable ties that help manage the cables on the back. This is a nice touch as they flatten the cables out, though they are inaccessible without removing the motherboard. 

Removing the PSU, we can see some odd, massive screwed-in steel plates that hold the cables in place. Corsair is investing effort into the wrong areas to manage its cables.

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Finally, during the teardown, we noticed that the case had a strange metal box which clamped the front IO cables together. Corsair used glue and tape here to hold things down, which made it feel like a hack job. We also were uncertain of its purpose. It is neither a heatsink nor an EMI shield.

Overall, the case was frustrating to work in. We understand it’s not meant to be taken apart but some level of serviceability is nice and Corsair doesn’t really hit those marks here.

Corsair ONE i500 Benchmarks

Back to the charts.

Corsair ONE i500 GPU Frequency

For GPU clock, the RTX 4090 in the Corsair ONE i500 initially boosts up to 2655MHz before falling to an average of 2620MHz. It frequently drops into the 2580MHz range. Our air-cooled 4090s typically stay relatively flat and higher than this.

Corsair ONE i500 CPU Power Throttling

Looking now at CPU power behavior, CPU package power shows the CPU hitting the 240W PL2 limit during the passes until Tau expires and drops power to the lower 200W PL1 that Corsair set. There’s still a momentary higher peak at the beginning of every pass, which lines up with the thermals. Normally for the 14900K under Intel Performance or Extreme profiles, there’s no time limit on PL2, and PL1 would equal PL2, rendering Tau meaningless anyway. Here, they’re forced to use it because the cooler is woefully insufficient.

CPU Frequency

To look at CPU frequency, we’re comparing our original 14900K review data for an all-core 3D rendering workload in Blender against the Corsair build. 

The original review data had an average frequency of 5321MHz P-core and over 4600MHz all-core. The Corsair ONE was already 300MHz below this, at 5031MHz, and is already compromising. The problem is that even this only persists for a minute or two, at which point it falls to the 4689MHz entry that we’re seeing. That’s a massive 632MHz across all P-cores to a combination of compromises and poor design. 632MHz against every P-core will have a multiplying effect where the performance loss cascades.

Corsair ONE i500 Airflow Animation

Before moving to BIOS, we’ll look at the airflow situation. We made a custom 3D animation to help visualize the airflow patterns we observed during testing.

First, the side panels themselves already present a lot of challenges for the fans. The plastic and metal supports block a lot of the intake area, meaning those areas for the fans will be dead, as in, they won’t be able to do anything.

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3 fans are revealed from removing the left panel. Some of these are on a hinging mechanism that we actually liked, if not for all the other problems. It’s a good way to get side intake without the panel itself being tethered to a cable. Opening the hinged door reveals the top exhaust fans mounted to the GPU radiator, with one fan attached to CPU liquid temperature.

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Closing the doors again, here’s how the air is flowing: This case will mostly behave in a positive pressure way. The bottom fan blows air in unobstructed. The fan directly above it pulls only past the panel and pushes basically straight into the right-most GPU radiator fan. The fan to its left pushes air in, through a radiator, and then will mostly get pulled up and out. 

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Opening the bottom fan hinge, this air will mostly hit the exposed GPU components. Because the upper half of the chassis is sectioned-off by the card and because there’s a solid steel plate next to it, most of the air finds its way out through the rear PCIe slot covers. There’s a ton of heat in this area from the PCB and GPU and no active way to get rid of it, plus the card is dividing the case, so a lot of the heat will get trapped and pool around the video card. We think this contributes to a lot of the problems.

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As for the upper half: The biggest challenge is for the CPU radiator. The right-most fan will push more air straight into the chassis than the radiator fan next to it, which will struggle with resistance and pressure. The right-most fan is mostly going to feed the GPU exhaust, while the left fan will push warmed CPU air straight into the VRM, then out the GPU radiator. The rear port is empty, but ventilated, and depending on the speed of the various fans, can function either as a passive intake when the system is exhausting more than it’s bringing in, or as exhaust when it is pushing more air in through the side fans.

To support more of these educational animations, visit store.gamersnexus.net. 

Corsair ONE i500 BIOS

Corsair’s motherboard is the MSI MAG B760M MORTAR WIFI, but with a proprietary BIOS that turns it into the “MORTAR WIFI CORSAIR.” We occasionally see this from the larger SIs, and we always consider it a bad thing as it forces reliance on the SI for updates rather than the motherboard manufacturer.

The board’s BIOS has a build date of 2/2/24, and there weren’t any updated versions on Corsair’s download page until September 9th. That means Corsair didn’t take any action to support its customers with new microcode revisions in the face of Intel’s CPU stability and degradation issues until after MSI itself did. In other words, if Corsair had just used an off-the-shelf board, customers could get normal updates sooner.

Some BIOS settings are good: MSI’s software download tool is disabled and XMP is applied. Almost all CPU values were default except power limits. 

PL1 was set to 200W, PL2 at 240W, and ICCMAX CPU current at 350A. Both power limits are lower than Intel’s notorious June recommendations for the 14900K under the Performance and Extreme profiles.

All these values in the BIOS are also totally locked and unable to be changed by the user. This is both an admission of the subpar cooling capabilities, and a hindrance in any scenario where the user might want something else. 

BIOS also lacks any way to control the fans. Only CPU1 is shown, but this is actually one of the CLC pumps. None of the 5 actual fans are attached to the motherboard itself, and therefore can’t be controlled here.

Corsair ONE i500 Packaging and Accessories

The i500’s packaging was good, with dual layer boxes and thick, tofu-like foam that probably has the word “eco” in its name somewhere. Large, clear unpacking instructions are immediately on top after opening the outer box. We liked how well it was secured at least.

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The only accessories included were the wireless antenna. That’s it – no peripherals, no headphone hanger (which was shown in many of the product photos and which influencer videos talked about), and no or extra PSU cables. This is a big negative, especially since the SF1000L PSU inside is a standard part and should remain operational well beyond the useful life of the system as a whole.

There also weren’t any manuals, nor was there a sticker covering the motherboard’s display connectors to help guide novice users in the right direction. And those are the users who will need it because they’re the only people who would buy this. There’s just the most basic setup instructions on the unpacking card and a link to Corsair’s online quick start guide. 

We were surprised by the inclusion of genuinely useful instructions for hardware upgrades: RAM, M.2 and 2.5” SSDs, and an extra PCIe card all get detailed. 

OS Setup and Software

Another positive area for the i500 is in OS setup and software. The Windows 11 out of box experience went as expected and we had zero popups on first boot.

The only actively running non-Windows software was the Corsair One Dashboard. It’s a barebones utility for changing the case lighting and monitoring liquid temperatures and fans speeds; however, it can’t change the fan speeds. It doesn’t even remember your RGB settings all the time. We think it’s strange Corsair didn’t go with the more mature iCUE software here.

The only other bloatware on the system is the Corsair Diagnostics software, a suite of tools from Ultra-X for reading system stats and a variety of stress tests.

As another positive, there weren’t any missing drivers in Device Manager, but the NVIDIA Game Ready Driver was 3 months out of date by the time we bought the system. Some version lag is OK. 3 months is too much.

Acoustics Over Time

The final test is noise testing over time in our hemi-anechoic chamber.

Since we can’t directly control or log the fan RPM on the i500, we have to rely on noise data gathered over time during a full system torture test.

The system is very quiet at idle and during initial periods of load, hovering around 17dBA before briefly rising to about 18dBA at our noise floor of around 14. Then the noise rapidly ramps up during a period of about 100 seconds, reaching about 33dBA, then steadily increasing to settle in at an average of 37.7dBA.

This behavior is due to the fan speeds being set to react to liquid temperature inside the CLCs rather than actual component load or heat. That can work, but the downside to that here is the fan curve is steep, and boils down to basically two modes of operation – slow with hot thermals and relatively quiet or fast and noisy (but still hot).

Here are a few noise samples.

The 2000RPM fans keep this from sounding crazy, but the approach is devoid of nuance, any skill, and lacks a competent configuration. It seems kind of like the “auto” approach to cooling for something that otherwise was supposed to be custom, which is bizarre. Corsair wanted the i500 to be perceived as silent under load, but it’s only quiet as long as the load is sporadic, with heat spikes being absorbed by the liquid. Anything that’s sustained for more than a minute or two will start to get loud. 

Corsair ONE i500 Conclusion

The conclusion here is pretty straightforward: Don’t buy the Corsair One i500. Its price is steep and its value is bad.

If we ignore all of its problems, which are bad across its thermals to its acoustics, it still represents a markup of $1,625 or, if on sale, a markup of $1,225 over DIY.

While we don’t think everyone should build a PC and that there are many valid reasons to buy a pre-built, that’s still too much because you can go to other SIs and get a similar form factor system for less of a ripoff. To top it off, the Corsair One i500 isn’t even designed well. 

Moving on to specifics, the B760 board at this price point is an absolute joke, the SSD should be larger, and the GPU VRAM hitting 94 degrees C is literally insane. The solution they’ve built for the graphics card is woefully inept. It is either the biggest cost-cutting solution in the greediest way possible or it’s incompetent as there’s nothing on the VRM components, which results in thermal issues in this case.    

The Corsair ONE i500 also had limited CPU cooling for the 14900K, which is a terrible CPU choice for the build. A 240mm CLC could have easily fit if Corsair made its custom case a few millimeters larger. Alternatively, Corsair could have simply used a lower tier CPU like it’s done in the past as the company had to downclock the 14900K to perform like a lower tier CPU anyway. The user can’t even change the fan settings at all without rewiring the fans to run straight into the motherboard.

Other complaints include the power supply barely having access to air. It’s also bare on accessories and doesn’t include any extra cables. 

On the bright side, the online documentation is good and the Windows setup was mostly clean. But when you’re paying 5 grand for a computer, if it’s going to be marked up as much as the Corsair One i500 is, it needs to at least perform at expected levels.

Corsair heavily marketed the ONE i500 as offering uncompromised performance, which we view as false advertising in this case.

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Table of Contents

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Intro

This case has the most build quality and assembly issues we’ve ever encountered out of the box.

There were gouges in the aluminum feet, a corner that was severely bent, deformed fan rails, and other more minor issues -- like the entire motherboard tray and rear panel assembly being bent, bottom support for the hinged door being bent down, and an aluminum plate over the front I/O that was bent. Even if some of these were catalyzed by shipping impacts, Tryx is responsible for not only packing the product in a way they can ship it, but also ensuring that their design is resilient enough to withstand the basics of transit.

Editor's note: This was originally published on September 20, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Patrick Lathan

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Video Editing

Tim Phetdara

3D Animation

Andrew Coleman

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

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At least one fault is inherent to the case design: the top panel sagged down, misaligning the snaps for the side and front panels. 

Its snaps were already loose, but knocked out of alignment, they can barely hold its panels on. There's a reason that cases often have a support pillar in the front corner, or at least something like the Lian Li O11 Vision’s triangular bracket.

So we think the build quality is overall worse than the $34 Zondda-O we reviewed, except the Tryx LUCA L70 costs $240.

Tryx is a new company, which may partly explain why we were given a special, later embargo of today. Today is the launch of the case. Strangely, some reviews were selectively permitted to go live before us, something we were not made aware of until they posted. This doesn’t affect our bottom line since you all come to our case reviews for our work, which we appreciate, but it does reflect on what appears to be teething pains for a new company. Some of those same growing pains are seen throughout the case design, and today, we’re reviewing the LUCA L70 case from Tryx, a company which has major funding behind it despite being new. And our hope is that the company can learn from our review for its future projects.

Some quick backstory: Tryx is a brand new manufacturer that first came on the scene with its Panorama Pro CLC, but it also more recently showed off several upcoming case families at Computex, including the LUCA. The LUCA L70 is the first to market, with a mesh-fronted L70 Air variant likely following at a later date. 

Tryx is a vaguely cosmic-y themed company. “LUCA” stands for “Last Universal Common Ancestor”; as for the other cases that have been revealed so far, Otavia is the name of what could be the oldest known animal fossil -- fitting for a case with a front panel essentially made out of future dust.

But despite being new, Tryx is not inexperienced. The company was founded by former members of ASUS, Cooler Master, and Asetek. Asetek is the forlorn water cooling company that has been largely replaced in the DIY market. Asetek has put some serious marketing effort behind Tryx, which is its premiere partner for the new generation of pump in its Panorama cooler. Tryx also hosted an expensive influencer event for its launch in China, where it featured space-themed set dressing and hosted influencers from Bilibili.

So the company has some money to it and isn’t just some small, fresh startup; in fact, the former Cooler Master General Manager of the Case Business Unit is a co-founder of Tryx.

That’s the backstory. Let’s get into the case.

The L70 is priced at $240 for the two variants, black and white. The FAQ states that "under normal airflow conditions, the case will not experience negative pressure that could cause an explosion," which we really hope is a joke about… spaceships, or something. Regardless, the L70 non-Air doesn't ship with any fans, so explosion danger is minimal.

Tryx Luca L70 Specs

Model	LUCA L70
Size (LxWxH)	(L)540 x (W)262 x (H)572 mm
Material	Steel, 4.0 mm TG, Aluminum, Plastic, Stainless steel
Motherboard Support	E-ATX (280mm Maximum)/ATX/Micro-ATX/Mini-ITX
Expansion Slots	7
Input/Output Ports	1 x Power button, 4 x USB 3.2 GEN1, 1 x USB 3.2 gen 2x2 TYPE C, 1 x Audio/Speaker
Fan Support	Top: 2 x 120 mm / 2 x 140 mm (bottom PSU placement: 3 x 120 mm / 3 x 140 mm)Side: 3 x 120 mm / 3 x 140 mmBottom: 3 x 120 mm / 3 x 140 mm (top PSU placement: 1 x 120 mm / 1 x 140 mm)Rear: 1 x 120 mm
Radiator Support	Top: 240 mm (bottom PSU placement: 240 / 280 / 360 / 420 mm)Side: 240 / 280 / 360 / 420 mmBottom: 240 / 280 / 360 mm (top PSU placement: 120 mm)
Storage	Up to 2 x 3.5" HDD or 9 x 2.5" SSD
CPU Cooler Height Clearance	170mm Maximum
Power Support	ATX, 190mm or less
GPU Support	460mm Maximum
Cable Management Space	63mm
Net Weight	16.2 KG
Gross Weight	19.6 KG
Warranty	2 years

Specs copied from manufacturer materials, please read review for our own measurements and opinions

The Build

The Tryx L70 has an ASUS ROG look to it, specifically reminding us of the old Strix Helios: it's big, it's expensive, and there are huge chunks of aluminum, which is an expensive material. We weren't impressed by the Helios based on its price and thermal performance, but we've also kept one in our set background for months because, like the L70, it's impressive to look at.

If any part of the case's appearance is divisive, we expect it to be the top panel with its toilet bowl angles centered on the shiny stainless-steel nameplate. Or maybe the aluminum side that extends all the way to the floor.

Now with the top panel, there’s a good idea there. We don’t get too much into the subjective, but this case sort of demands it: We feel like a more seasoned company might try to pull this motif across more of the case, but as it stands, it is an almost random-looking assortment of materials and geometric patterns. We do think there’s something in that top panel design and like it overall, despite our issues elsewhere in the enclosure.

We’ll start with a flyover of the negatives. We're going to be nitpicky here, because there are a lot of small problems that are hard to get past at $240.

We already listed the litany of issues with gouges, bends, deformed rails, loose snaps, and caving-in panels near the top of the review. Those complaints remain -- but we do have more. 

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We’ll start with this one: Tryx says the LUCA is intended to use bottom-to-top airflow, but large parts of the bottom of the case are surrounded by an impenetrable aluminum curtain. The bottom fan bracket sits on top of redundant fan mounts built into the case. The bottom vent is a typical design with punched holes backed by a filter, but it would have benefited from being more open, like the Antec C8, to allow those fans to breathe.

Tryx also makes the claim that the case is “-13% smaller desktop footprint.” Now, you might ask, “13% smaller than what?” After asking, we learned that this is apparently in comparison to dual-chamber cases. Now, again, the natural inclination is to ask about which one. It’s made-up. No one knows.

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Regardless of how many percentage points smaller than something imaginary the L70 is, it’s still large. With our test system installed, the whole PC weighs almost 24kg, but the weight is only really a problem because it causes flexing when picking up the case, especially with the lack of support between the two glass panels. We complain sometimes about completely toolless glass panels, but this is the first case we've reviewed in a long time that has felt like a panel might actually fall off. And actually, while we were taking b-roll, the glass side panel did pop-out when we repositioned the case.

We repeatedly had problems with the I/O cables not being long enough as routed out of the box, which is worsened by needing to route cables around the hinged magnetic SSD mounting bracket. The small plate that extends the motherboard tray also made things worse; we installed it because that's what the manual shows, but at the bottom of the motherboard it partially blocks cutouts that are needed for I/O and fans, and at the top it partially blocks off cutouts that are needed for CPU power on non-back-connect motherboards. It seems like this was either never built in or not thought-through.

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There are multiple locations in the case where captive thumbscrews are used inappropriately: On the motherboard tray, they're used to fasten two sheets of steel that are nearly flush, so the threads wedge the two pieces together as the screw is removed. Another is used to fasten the PSU cage in place, but it has to be completely removed in order to move the cage despite being captive. Both the motherboard tray and the PSU cage use tiny flush-head screws in addition to the thumbscrews, so you have to use a screwdriver no matter what.

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There are 9x 2.5" drive mounts in the Tryx, 3x on the "SSD Mounting Bracket" and 6x on the "SSD/HDD Mounting Bracket," which can alternatively mount 2x 3.5" HDDs. Cable covers are unnecessary, but doubly so when you can't even see through the side panel: they chop up the huge 63mm-deep cable management space for no reason, requiring routing around them, and mounting drives to the covers requires leaving cable slack so that they can hinge open. 

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The SSD bracket can either open or close the side vent; in the closed position, the cables point the wrong way, and in the open position, cables can't fit past the other bracket. None of this was designed well in our opinion. If you do get a drive in there, you won't be able to access the cable retention clip. The other SSD/HDD bracket has raised areas that conflict with some of the 2.5" mounts, and depending on the case configuration, the slots at the  back may strain your cables to their limits.

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We'll skim through the rest of our list quickly. The rubber cable grommets are easy to accidentally pop out and harder to get back in. There are no fan screws included at all. The tolerances between the frame that screws onto the PSU and the PSU cage are annoyingly tight and we have to fight to get it installed every time. The listed maximum PSU clearance is 190mm, but that would bend cables at a very sharp angle, and any PSU longer than 150mm will begin to block the cable cutout on top of the cage. The product page notes that the case supports ATX and M-ATX BTF motherboards, but only with the top PSU configuration. Finally, the power button just sucks as it’s really stiff and has to be pressed directly in the center.

And now we’ll get to the neutral aspects.

When we got our first look at the L70 back at Computex, we reported that there might be some engraving service offered for the nameplate, but that's not currently an option. Instead, Tryx told us that there's intentionally space left under the existing engraving so that customers can add their own. There’s some HYTE-style filler about "discovered an unknow" so that customers can add their own. Oddly, this is now the third time we’ve seen a company misuse this word, now ticking the boxes for both misuse as a noun and as a past participle used as an adjective. Intel’s A380 had into the “unkonw” and “into the unknow.”

The nameplate-handle-thing is paired with a hidden handle at the rear of the case. They're sturdy enough to lift the system, but the case is very tall and very heavy, so it's far more practical to lift it from the bottom if you're trying to put it on a desk. We feel the same way about the Helios' weird velcro luggage handles (read our review here).

The PSU cage can be installed either above or below the motherboard: in the top of the case, the PSU can either pull air through the filtered top panel, or (as shown in the manual) pull CPU exhaust out of the case the old-school way. 

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As a result, the whole motherboard tray can be removed, which is actually pretty useful for installing and testing components outside of the case before committing. This is probably the best thing in the case.

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Cable management space is cavernous at 63mm, so that’s good. There's no question that the L70 has enough space for cables. There are smaller quality of life touches as well, like the magnetic top panel, built-in GPU support, and the spring-loaded expansion slot clip (although all the expansion slots include screws anyway).

We don't have information yet on the L70 Air, but there are definitely cutouts for fans behind the glass front panel in the L70. Both the theoretical L70 Air and the existing L70 have hinged front panels that make it easy to access the inside of the case for quick adjustments without clearing your desk and taking the side panel off.

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With the bottom PSU configuration, Tryx claims support for 420mm radiators simultaneously on the top and side mounts. The top radiator and fans would overlap part of the side mount, so tube routing would need to be planned accordingly, but the top mount in particular has a ton of space to work with as long as the PSU is installed in the bottom of the case.

Finally, Tryx draws a dotted line on the outside of the cardboard box for a cat door. There's nothing that makes this particular box a better cat toy than any other, but it's cute, so Tryx gets a point here. We actually liked that.

Tryx Luca L70 Thermals

Although Tryx does sell fans, the LUCA L70 doesn't come with any. Our method of dealing with that is to run all tests with our standardized set of three Noctua fans (two 140mm intake, one 120mm exhaust).

For our baseline test, we ran the case as it shipped with the PSU at the top of the case. We kept the PSU fan-side-down as depicted in the manual, which means it should help with CPU thermals by pulling exhaust out of the case. The PSU's zero RPM mode is always turned off during our case thermal tests.

For tests with side intake through the aluminum side panel, we kept the hinged SSD mounting bracket open. For tests with bottom intake, we kept it closed.

Tryx plans to release a dedicated vertical GPU bracket for the L70 in Q4 of this year, but it doesn't exist yet, so we haven't tested it.

As for competitors, the Tryx is most similar to the over-the-top halo products from ASUS ROG (Strix Helios, Hyperion GR701) and Cooler Master ( "The Berserker" HAF 700, HAF 700 EVO), but it's been a long time since we reviewed one of those. Among the cases we have tested, the Lian Li O11D EVO XL has the most overlap and closest price, followed by the HYTE Y70 non-touch. We're thinking of big, pricey cases without stock fans that are designed to be conversation pieces: cases like Antec's C8 and Flux Pro and Fractal Design's Torrent are more competitive from a price and functionality perspective, but they don't look as crazy.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Noise Normalized

We chose the side intake configuration as a baseline in order to give the L70 the best possible chance. The two 140mm intake fans were positioned low in the case to get some active airflow under the GPU, and the 120mm was positioned as exhaust behind the CPU cooler as usual.

This first test is noise-normalized and for CPU thermals, with noise established at a matched 27 dBA threshold in our hemi-anechoic chamber. The average CPU temperature across all cores was 50 degrees Celsius above ambient, while the P-cores alone were 54 degrees over ambient. That makes it slightly warmer than the Y70, which averaged 49 degrees all-core and and 53 for P-cores in a similar side intake configuration with the same fans and at the same noise level. Despite being OK, the L70 is in company of some of the lower performers on this chart so far. 

The O11D EVO XL under the same conditions was even better, up at 43 degrees all-core -- and that’s with the same fans at the same noise levels, so it’s as like-for-like as it can be. This is a test that favors traditional front-to-back airflow: the bottom-intake C8 is tied with the L70, while the new Flux Pro has a significantly lower all-core average of 41 degrees above ambient.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Standardized Fans

Now we’re moving to standardized fans in all tested cases on the chart, all set to 100% fan speed, with the CPU and GPU fans remaining controlled and fixed as always. This means every case on here has the same fans, which also means some cases -- like the Antec Flux Pro -- will be worse than stock, as we are reducing the fan count. The test is still useful for looking at standard airflow patterns in a controlled way and is one we run specifically because our audience heavily requested it.

With the baseline setup, average GPU temperature was 42 degrees Celsius above ambient with the memory junction at 48 and the hotspot at 55. Moving the PSU to the bottom of the case resulted in temperatures about one degree lower in each category, whereas keeping the PSU at the top and moving the intake fans to the bottom made temperatures significantly worse, with GPU averaging 47, memory junction 55, and hotspot 62 degrees above ambient. This is a massive increase and suggests that it may be best to only have one option.

The change may seem counterintuitive since the bottom intake slots are directly beneath the GPU, but those slots are far more restricted than the side intake ones, to the extent that one of the fans is basically useless. 

Removing the central section of the aluminum base helped a little, lowering temperatures by 1-2 degrees versus unaltered bottom intake, but the side intake results remain far superior.

Using the baseline side intake numbers for comparison against other cases, the L70 actually did fairly well, with the Y70 averaging 41 degrees above ambient for the GPU (versus the L70's 42) and the O11D EVO XL averaging 44. 

CPU Full Load Thermals - Standardized Fans

In the same standardized fan tests at full case fan speed, the CPU temperature averaged 45 degrees Celsius above ambient and 49 on the P-cores in the baseline configuration. The bottom PSU configuration had no significant effect on CPU temperatures: if we didn't already have a dedicated case fan for exhaust, using the PSU to pull hot air would have a more significant impact. Bottom intake was worse for CPU thermals (as it usually is with our test bench), with all-core rising to 50 and the P-cores to 54 degrees above ambient just because the fans are pretty far away from the actual cooler. As with the GPU temperatures, removing the central section of the base improved those temperatures by about one degree, but still not enough to match the side intake results.

The L70 doesn't compare as well on this CPU chart as it did on the GPU one, with the Y70 side intake averaging 43 degrees above ambient all-core and the O11D EVO XL side intake a step beyond at 41 degrees, a relatively large improvement.

In our standardized fan tests, side intake may work well for GPU thermals, but front intake is better for CPU thermals. For example, the Flux Pro averaged 38 degrees here, and almost all of our front intake results are below 40.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

Back to the noise normalized test and with stock case fans where present, the GPU averaged 43 degrees above ambient. That’s better than the O11D EVO XL side intake at 45 degrees and the Y70 side intake at 48 degrees. Memory junction and hotspot temperatures followed the same order. The other cases on this chart used their own stock fans if available, which means cases like the Torrent and Flux Pro that ship with serious out-of-the-box cooling gained back an advantage that they lacked in the standardized fan test.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Full Speed

Finally on the CPU, tested with stock fans where present and at full speed, the Tryx L70 lands far down on the chart. It’s at about the halfway point when tested with a bottom-mounted PSU and side intake, with two of three of the worst results secured at the very bottom, depending on configuration.

VRM & RAM Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

Finishing the noise normalized testing, the average VRM temperature in the L70 was 33 degrees above ambient and the SPD Hub sensor on the DRAM averaged 27 degrees above ambient. That puts the L70 right in the middle of the chart, neither unusually good nor bad, and between the cooler O11D EVO XL side intake and the warmer Y70 side intake.

Tryx Luca L70 Conclusion

We like it when case manufacturers try something different, and the L70 is something different. But it still needs to nail the basics.

If performance is something you're concerned with, you should watch our Antec Flux Pro or Fractal Torrent reviews instead. That's not the L70's focus. It's possible to get decent airflow through the L70 if you don't rely on the bottom mount, but like the HYTE Y70, the performance only needs to be good enough to enable a cool-looking build. 

Looks are so subjective that we don’t want to comment on them much more than we already have. It’s really this simple: If you like the way it looks, and this goes for any case, then that’s all that matters as long as it ticks all the functional boxes. It doesn’t matter much what we think about the looks. This teeters somewhere in the void between “weird” and “cool,” depending on who you are, but one thing it definitely is not is “plain.” If you find that appealing, then great. Our biggest concern is its build quality, where we think the case simply fails. 

We'd only recommend the L70 if you're dead-set on its appearance and you're willing to deal with inconveniences and problems we associate with far cheaper cases, like $200 cheaper. If you have your heart set on this because it fits some theme, and if you can put up with the rest, then Tryx is the only place you’ll get a case that looks like this.

The Y70 and O11D EVO XL are big and flashy too, but they're also way easier to build in and from tried-and-true design lineages.

We don't want to make it impossible for new companies to start up and try new things without all the established resources of a company like Fractal Design. We want to provide good feedback and encourage those companies to improve, and based on how responsive and helpful Tryx has been through this review process, we have hope at least that they might listen. At least on the comms side, Tryx has hired the right person for the job and someone we have faith in. We only know two of the Tryx people from previous companies, and we think both of them do good work. The hard part with a company is getting all those individual pieces to click together, and that only happens with time and practice. We’ll see how things go for Tryx.

While we can’t recommend this one, we hope to see the company refine its design and take this to heart. There are two ways to approach a review like this. Cooler Master, despite its issues with our H500P review initially, did eventually make massive changes that resulted in us fully recommending its fixed variations of that product. Hopefully Tryx launches a revision 1.5 of this case with some changes.

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Table of Contents

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Intro

We liked the A3-mATX enough that we made a custom 3D animation to help explain a peculiar airflow pattern that formed, where we found that adding side intake fans can dramatically hurt GPU thermal performance even though it helped the CPU.
But we liked the case because it’s easy to pull apart, heavily ventilated everywhere, has a huge amount of space in a relatively confined size, and it’s one of the most barebones interiors you could work with -- but in a productive way. It’s also $70 for the plastic-fronted version and $85 for this new Fractal-inspired wooden-paneled one. It ends up being one of the cheapest cases we’ve reviewed lately, which is good, because the budget market is still pretty strong with last-gen parts.

Editor's note: This was originally published on September 12, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Jeremy Clayton

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Camera

Tim Phetdara

3D Animation

Andrew Coleman

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

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And in spite of the $70 price for the base model, the case manages to avoid feeling cheap. The panels are solid and avoid that cheap, stamped steel wobble that you’ll feel on a lot of cheaper case panels. The top gets reinforced by radius at the borders, while the sides are reinforced with nearly 2mm steel along the inner edges. The only thing that really feels cheap is the original plastic front panel.

The above image showcases the case’s original panel (in white) against the newer wooden one. At a distance, the wooden one is almost indistinguishable from Fractal’s North styling. Beyond the wood slats, the panel significantly changes the front characteristics of the case by ventilating it heavily.

Going micro-ATX gives access to a broader range of cheaper components, but also means simpler mechanisms that are cheaper to make. Making a case like the Terra or NCORE 100 requires a lot of fine-tuning to fit everything, but mATX makes things simpler. Sometimes, that’s all we want.

A3-mATX Overview

The A3-MATX is clearly aimed at the budget market: It’s almost entirely stamped steel, has few accessories, and is generally a simple, empty box. It doesn’t include much other than the case itself and some screws.

There are a couple of optional accessories, but they’re all sold as DLC: 

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The new panel can be bought separately for $24 for those who already bought the original case, or $10 more than the price difference. There’s also a vertical GPU kit for $50 (which is a proportionally huge jump for a baseline $70-$85 case) and a glass side panel for $13. 

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We recommend against using both the glass panel and a vertical GPU at the same time, because the GPU would end up too close to the glass and will suffocate for air.

A3-mATX Competition & Alternatives

To get everyone up to speed, some of the price competition looks like this:

Fractal’s Pop Air Mini RGB is $60 on sale and includes 3 fans. This is a much larger case, but competitive on price and still mATX. Sama is a supplier in the industry, but also sells to consumers. Its ARGB Q5 is also $60 with 3 fans. They also have the IM01 Pro at $62 and the AR01-RGB at $70. Montech is selling its Air 100 mATX case for $70 with 4 fans, Thermaltake’s View 170 is also $70 with 3 fans, and ASUS’ AP201 is available at $75 without fans. Lian Li’s own O11 Air Mini is a large, more expensive alternative. Thermaltake’s Versa H18 would be another, this one at $55.

Compared to the preceding A4-H2O at $150, the $70-$85 price of the A3 is aggressive. That’s true too of the SSUPD Meshroom D at $100. Both the A4 and Meshroom are also manufactured by Lian Li, but are limited to ITX motherboards.

A3-mATX Basics

Dimensions for the A3-mATX are 456x194x322mm, coming to 28.5L in volume – larger than the claimed 26L due to the usual suspects of rear protrusions and the case’s feet. 

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The A3-mATX is heavily ventilated across the entire chassis, including the top panel, both sides, and with the wood model, also the front. The back also has large gaps in its ventilation for another fan mount, with even more holes punched out of the bottom. 

The only truly solid panel is on the non-wood variant with its front panel. 

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The A3-mATX technically has 10 fan mounts, but some configurations force giving up one or two fans depending on the location of the PSU mount. Lian Li lists support for 360mm liquid coolers in the top, bottom, and left side – more on that bracket later. If you put a closed-loop liquid cooler in the floor with its pump in the CPU block, that pump will be much more likely to die. The liquid needs to be above the pump so that air doesn’t collect in the pump itself. The bottom could still be useful for open loop radiators or for pump-in-rad and pump-in-tube designs.

We also noticed that some motherboards may collide with 140mm-wide top-mount radiators when coupled with fans.  

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The case also comes with side mount options. We actually observed that the side mount makes it possible to worsen GPU thermals in a way that may seem counter-intuitive, so let’s explore that.

We’ll get ahead of ourselves for the thermal testing later in this review. Here’s a chart showing the side configured with 2x intake fans and a top-exhaust liquid cooler as compared against just the system with just top exhaust (no extra fans) and against 2 bottom intake fans with top exhaust. This is with the plastic front, not the wood front. We’ll get to that later.

The impact to GPU thermals is massive. We measured about an 11-degree drop in average GPU temperature by getting rid of the side intake, extra fans. To help make this easier to understand, we made a custom 3D animation and we’ll come back to thermals later.

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Our animation explains what we think is happening. When the system is configured with only the top exhaust fans, the system is in a negative pressure setup. In PC building terminology, this means there is more forced outflow through fans than intake, from the perspective of the case. As a result, air will naturally find its way in through effectively every hole in the case, but especially the two closest ones: The large, empty fan mount in the back and the empty mesh on the left side panel. This air flows straight in and out the liquid cooler through its fans.

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As for the GPU, its fans are close to the bottom and to the unused PCIe slot covers in the back. This is where the GPU will pull its air in, so it will be fed cool exterior air within mere centimeters of the outside of the case. That’s great for the GPU.

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When we add two side intake fans to this configuration, especially two which will have greater pressure than the exhaust fans, everything changes. The exhaust fans are already battling resistance from the radiator, so the two side intake fans will end up creating a new pressure system. Now, air immediately outside the mesh side panel will find itself pulled toward the fans and shot into the case above the GPU, which will greatly benefit CPU cooling in our tests later. The downside of this is that the lower third of the side panel that was previously feeding the video card intake is now less utilized for the video card, and instead, most of that air will move either directly into the fans or will draft into the case and be pulled up by the currents. The end result is that most of this lower-third side intake no longer feeds the video card, suffocating it for air.

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Instead, the video card is left to pull only from the bottom. It also isn’t pulling air in through the PCIe slot covers anymore and will instead be exhausting air through them as a result of the pressure change. There is more resistance for air to come in than for air to go out, so it will naturally want to find its way out of the computer in that region. Likewise, the flow-through of the GPU is now facing a pillar of air coming in, which will reduce the speed at which it can exit this area of the case. 

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If we remove those two side fans, the original layout allowed a straight column of air to form from the flow-through fan to the top exhaust fans, efficiently removing air from the middle ground.

And as usual, all of this type of testing is heavily dependent on the other components within the case. Your results may vary with different fans, a different video card, or a different CPU cooler. For purposes of why the thermals behave the way they do in our configuration, the above explains it.

The empty layout and relatively large area allows a lot of different air and liquid cooling configurations. This isn’t a true successor to the A4, but it doesn’t appear to be intended as one. It’s doing something else.

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Internally, there’s enough space to install a custom water cooling loop without going completely insane from fitment issues – maybe even with dual 360s. It also fits much larger modern video cards. And, of course, it also brings the price floor down because microATX boards are often pretty cheap. 

Moving to the front panel, the wood version has an easily-removable dust filter retained with magnets. There’s no extra fan mount in front with this new panel, though even if you forced one to fit, most of the mesh is obstructed by the wood. It’s best to view this as a passive area of flow.

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Coming back to the power supply, the case can support SFX and ATX PSUs up to 220mm long on the right or front walls using a slightly clumsy mounting bracket. The vertical rails alternatively support an SSD bracket. There’s also a strange optional way to mount an ATX PSU to the SSD tray using standoffs. This extreme flexibility results in such a complex web of component compatibility that Lian Li created 9 entire tables for it, separate from the manual. All of this was done without a mess of complicated and customized hardware and brackets thanks to the departure from a tinier ITX box.

GPUs up to 4 slots thick and 415mm long can technically fit, depending on where and how long the PSU is. However, when using a GPU this large, be advised that it will effectively cut the case in half and severely change the airflow patterns. The GPU will only be able to pull from the bottom and rear PCIe slot covers, meaning side intake will significantly hurt its performance. When using the vertical GPU bracket, that’s reduced to 3.5 slots and 355mm in length. Again, we’d advise against the glass panel for a vertical GPU configuration. This would also reduce CPU cooler access to air.

The optional vertical GPU mount is good and bad:

On the good side, it’s a pretty universal and easy-to-install design that looks like it could be used in more than one case, as it attaches to the bottom fan mount locations, which are standard 120mm spacing.

On the bad side, we think not integrating into the rear I/O of the case itself is a sub-optimal solution that makes plugging or unplugging display cables an annoying operation, even with how infrequent that is in normal use. It requires removing the left side panel and fishing it through the replacement PCIe bracket grommet. Unfortunately, the pass-through doesn’t line up with the GPU itself, making it that much more awkward. It does work, just not well. 

NVIDIA 40 Series Founders Edition cards have no problem fitting inside. The ASUS Strix 4090 fits, but would require careful consideration to not put pressure on the power connector. The massive Gigabyte Aorus Master just barely doesn’t fit due to how tall the card is around the PCIe bracket. But just because it fits doesn’t mean it’d be a good combination for thermals, and we’d recommend against any cards of that size in this case.

The Build - Positives

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Despite the clunkiness of the SSD and PSU mounting solution, we like how the tabs at the bottom keep them in place while securing the top with screws, and found the design simple and functional. There’s an additional 3.5” or 2.5” drive mount in the front floor of the case, but using it blocks off the forward-most fan mount.

Front I/O is good: It has 2x USB-A, 1x USB-C, and separate mic and headphone jacks – something we prefer over single combo jacks.

A3-mATX Cable Management

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Cable management in general is a weak point. The cable management solution appears to be “it’s huge, so put them wherever.” It isn’t as crafted as some of the competition.

There are no channels or covers and there isn’t really any space behind the motherboard. Tie-down points are limited. We’re left having to just bundle most of them up into a clump. 

Similarly, the front panel USB 3 cable is short enough that it could pose some clean cable management challenges when using a mini-ITX motherboard depending on where the USB 3 header is, but it wouldn’t be a problem with mATX. 

Installing a CLC in the top of the case blocks off access to the top edge of the motherboard, so pre-running those cables first is something we’d strongly advise. This could have been mitigated by the top fan bracket also being removable and allowing for cable adjustments after the fact, but would likely add cost.

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White is known in the industry to be a challenge for color matching across materials. On the white version, the color doesn’t match across some of the internal cables, connectors, and the AC power plug on the rear of the case.

This combined with the competition in the mATX case market pushes us towards favoring the wood version – it at least doesn’t feel cheap. You also got a little bit of a visual flair without going up to the price levels of something like the Fractal North. 

Time to get into thermals.

A3-mATX Thermals

All tests were performed with a Fractal Lumen 240mm closed loop liquid cooler with the pump and fans set to 100%. Any tests with additional fans also have those at 100%. The 4070 FE (watch our review) has its fans controlled for all tests.

CPU Thermals - Full Torture

Here’s the CPU full torture thermal chart.

In this testing, baseline stock testing between the wood panel and plastic panel ended up about the same: 45.5 and 46.1 degrees over ambient for those means they are within error of each other. Testing the base model with a top exhaust CLC and 2x side intake fans boosts its performance massively, with a huge gain over every other configuration. The side fans really help the CPU cooling, despite hurting GPU cooling.

The second best P-core average thermals come from the wood front panel version with the CLC in the top as exhaust, and two intake fans in the bottom. This results in 44C over ambient, with noise levels only marginally raised over the base version with its solid front panel and glass side panel.

It’s clear throughout the results that the wood front panel with its open mesh areas lets slightly more noise escape the case in general. The thermal data leans slightly cooler for like configurations as well, but both the thermal and noise results are indistinguishable and mostly fall within margin of error. 

Removing the two case fans puts the case in “wood stock” configuration, which is 1.5C warmer and not bad, all things considered. Other configurations filter in below, with the base vertical GPU mount and CLC side exhaust setups coming in last at about 48C over ambient. 

GPU Thermals - Full Torture

For GPU thermals, the top non-problematic result from CPU thermals is now the leader in GPU thermals at 47C over ambient. Considering the reasonable 32dBA noise level in our hemi-anechoic chamber, we’ll point to this configuration as the way to go unless your aim is to minimize noise as much as possible.

Bottom-mounted fans benefit the GPU, unsurprisingly, with the result at 47 degrees GPU core. We see another appearance at 49.8, showing that the glass panel costs us a couple degrees in this layout.

Mounting the CLC to the side as exhaust shows an interesting 3C split between the wood front and base versions of the case, favoring the wood. 

Unfortunately for vertical GPU enjoyers, that configuration was one of the worst results if not counting the troublesome side intake configuration we talked about earlier. We suspect recirculation is to blame for parts of this, as the exhaust coming out of both the PCIe slot area and the flow-through area don’t have easy paths to get out of the case naturally.

RAM and VRM Thermals - Full Torture

Next we’ll take a brief look at RAM and motherboard VRM temperatures. We’ve started tracking these in case reviews to better understand if any hot pockets -- not that kind -- of air build up around those components.

Surprising nobody, it turns out that intake fans blowing air directly at the motherboard is great for the thermals of these components even in spite of the GPU thermals.

Most of the results are within a narrow band of 2-3 degrees. Mounting the CLC to the side as exhaust raises both SPD hubs and VRM temperatures roughly 5C higher, so we wouldn’t recommend that for users who know they’ll be running particularly memory intensive workloads with hot memory.

A3-mATX Conclusion

The Lian Li DAN A3-mATX has the right ingredients to be a popular case among budget conscious micro-ATX builders. And if you don’t have a specific reason to want ATX, even if that reason is as basic as just liking how it looks or fills the space, then it may be time to seriously consider going micro-ATX. This case gives a lot of options.

It’s fairly inexpensive at $70-$85 and has good build quality (not counting the plastic front on the base version). We also think adding the option for the wood front panel was the right move by Lian Li, raising the perception of quality. We think the execution was completely fine given the $15 price bump if you buy it new. 

Subjectively, we think it looks way better this way. The mesh front doesn’t make-or-break thermal performance, but was a nice consideration.

Despite its larger size, it doesn’t feel like there’s any considerable wasted space or nonsensical decisions (assuming components large enough to use the volume). We suspect this is a product of Dan Cases’ long history of ITX case design, where every millimeter counts. That mindset still shows despite the A3-mATX being pushed into larger sizes than what anyone would consider SFF. 

Not much gets in the way while building, either. It’s a very simple build experience. We think this would make a good beginner case, contrary to what we see in more complex ITX cases.

The cable management is relatively spartan. The size brute forces that aspect, but there are limited pre-fab cable management features. Vertical GPU mounting would have limited usefulness, and side mounting intake fans should be done with care. You also give up easy access to the top of the motherboard in some configurations.

This market segment also has some fierce competition from other cases that may offer more absolute value from things like included fans. Micro-ATX isn’t purely about size, unlike going for ultra-small ITX builds, so some competition is also just larger. A quick list of cases to check out would include the Fractal Pop Air Mini RGB, the Montech Air 100 mATX, the Thermaltake View 170, the ASUS AP201, and the SAMA series of cases, like the ARGB Q5. Other than Montech’s Air 100 and Fractal’s Pop Air series, we do not have personal hands-on time with any of these, so can’t vouch for them; however, we wanted you to be aware of other options to help as you research other reviews.

We’re viewing this case like an mATX-sized spiritual successor to the original Cooler Master NR200P. That case basically became a de-facto standard in online discussions as a simple and cost effective choice for anyone that wanted ITX without too many headaches.

We liked the A3-mATX. It’s easy to work with, fits a wide range of CPU coolers and video cards, and it’s relatively “cheap” (by modern standards) for the quality. Thermals are solid as long as you set up a good airflow pattern and avoid making the fans fight each other. 

Overall, we’re neutral to positive on the A3-mATX. It’s straightforward, the cons are relatively inconsequential with planning, and there’s not much to complain about. The target user for this case would be those who don’t need full ATX size, but also don’t want to pay the ITX tax. It hits the “good enough” mark in just about every critical area. But for a $70 to $85 case, “good enough” becomes “good.”

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Table of Contents

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Intro

The Antec Flux Pro is the newest case using the FLUX platform, whatever that means.

Well, according to Antec, "the definition of FLUX is Flow Luxury;” however, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, Flux is "a flowing of fluid from the body: such as a:diarrhea b:dysentery." 

OK, that doesn’t sound as good on the box.

Editor's note: This was originally published on September 15, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Patrick Lathan

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Camera

Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

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Antec has been making its return lately. We liked the C8 ARGB that we reviewed a few months ago, and we also like this one overall.

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The case has a wood accent along the border, the Pro variant has a digital display on the side, and it’s heavily perforated around the lower edge for better intake access to the PSU-mounted fans.

Both of the new FLUX cases have 3x front intake, 1x rear exhaust, and 1x intake on top of the PSU shroud. The Flux Pro has a second fan on the shroud top for a total of 6, but sticks to the same general layout. The Fractal Torrent might be some of its closest competition. Let’s get into it.

Antec Flux Pro Specs

Dimensions	530 x 245 x 545 mm (DWH)
Form Factor	Full Tower
Materials	Steel + Plastic + Glass + Wood
Mainboard Support	E-ATX (≤285mm), ATX, Micro-ATX, ITX
Front Access & Controls	Power, Reset, USB 3.0 x 2, Type-C 10Gbps x 1, Headphone/Mic Combo Jack, Temp. Display Switch x 1
Side Panel	4mm Tempered Glass
Expansion Slots	8
3.5" /2.5"	4/4
2.5"	2
Fan Support Front	3 x 120mm / 3 x 140mm
Fan Support Top	3 x 120mm / 3 x 140mm
Fan Support Power Supply Shroud	3 x 120mm
Fan Support Bottom	2 x 120mm / 2 x 140mm
Fan Support Rear	1 x 120mm / 1 x 140mm
Included Fan(s)	3 x 140mm Tranquil PWM fans in front + 2 x 120mm P12R PWM reverse fans on PSU shroud+ 1 x 140mm Tranquil PWM fan in rear
Radiator Support Front	120 / 140 / 240 / 280 / 360 / 420mm
Radiator Support Top	120 / 140 / 240 / 280 / 360 / 420mm
Radiator Support Power Supply Shroud	120 / 240 / 360mm
Radiator Support Bottom	120 / 240mm
Radiator Support Rear	120 / 140mm
Max GPU Length	≤ 455mm
Max CPU Cooler Height	≤ 190mm
Max PSU Length	(Include cable) ≤ 180 / 300mm (with HDD)(Include cable) ≤ 470mm (without HDD)(Not Include cable) ≤ 180mm (Side Mount)
Dust Filter	Bottom
Net Weight	13.60 Kg
Gross Weight	16.65 Kg
Warranty	2 Years
UPC#	0-761345-10148-6 FLUX PRO0-761345-10154-7 FLUX PRO_EUV

Specs copied from manufacturer materials, please read review for our own measurements and opinions

Antec Flux Pro Overview

The Antec Flux Pro is a big case, approximately the same size as a Fractal Torrent. Antec bills it as a full tower, in contrast to the mid-tower non-Pro Flux which only includes five fans. The Pro is $180 (or $185 for the white SKU), while the base model is listed around $120-$125.

By price and by size, its direct competition might be the long-standing best airflow case, the Fractal Torrent (watch our review), which is normally $180, but has been on sale as low as $140 lately.

The Build

Antec has hopped on the wooden bandwagon: the black SKU comes with walnut trim on the front panel and the white SKU with birch. We were told that the Pro was originally intended to use ash, but this was changed due to availability. 

Immediately, the attention to detail is good: 

Antec went above and beyond in coloring the white SKU. 

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All plastic and rubber pieces like the PSU supports, drive vibration dampers, velcro straps, I/O cables, USB ports, and even the fan/RGB hub are white, while hardware and written labels are silver. There are a few downsides: the white SKU is $5 more expensive, it makes grime and leftover plastic mold release visible, the color matching isn't always perfect (like on the iShift extension cable), and the silver labels are hard to read at certain angles. Despite that, we think it looks good.

From a function standpoint, airflow is also mostly well thought-out.

There's a small 7-segment display on the side of the PSU shroud that can report CPU and/or GPU temperatures via an internal USB header. It feels like a feature from Antec's heyday back in the 2000s, especially with the retro "Antec iUnity" interface that's required to activate the display. This feature has always bordered on gimmicky and the extra software only to control it is a downside, but leaving it off renders it relatively unnoticeable on the black model, and some people might like it.

The Flux Pro includes an optional "iShift 90° PSU Mount," which allows the PSU to be rotated 90 degrees. This serves the same purpose as rotated PSUs like Corsair Shift, just without the PSU change -- and with an extra letter.

The goal is that modular connections become easier to access and route. There are some situations where this doesn't really help, like the Corsair 6500 series, but using either a side interface PSU or the iShift mount specifically with the Flux platform is a good combination. Moving cables out of the way theoretically allows a better airflow path in some places. The Flux Pro’s wide vents were clearly designed to take advantage of this. We're excited about the solution: it reminds us of Lian Li cases like the Lancool III, but all-in on the shroud-top cooling concept rather than just including it as an option. Of course, airflow would be even better without any bottom shroud at all, but that's what the C8 is for. Lian Li’s new 207 from Computex also looks promising here.

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As we discovered while hunting for the missing rubber PSU supports, the Flux Pro can be disassembled to an impressive degree. Both sides of the shroud are removable, which is helpful when using the iShift mount. The top and front fan mounts are both removable as well, which fully opens up the case. A side effect of all the removable panels is that the toolless glass panel is held in by the toolless metal shroud cover, which caused some initial concern; however, the glass panels on our samples are secure. The front panel is held in place by both snaps and magnets, which is overkill in a good way, but Antec clearly didn't want to risk sloppy tolerances in the most visually important area.

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Radiator compatibility is excellent. Having room for three 140mm fans doesn't always guarantee compatibility with 420mm radiators, but because the Flux Pro's front mount can be adjusted up or down by several notches, there's definitely room. This can also allow extra headroom for big pump-on-rad designs. 

The top 420mm mount is tighter, but the entire tray can be lifted off of the case, and there's a massive 7cm of clearance between the top fan mount and the top edge of the motherboard. 

Antec depicts some ridiculous configurations on the product page, like a dual 360mm plus 420mm setup with one of the 360mm rads on top of the PSU shroud in a push-pull setup. We wouldn't want to encroach on the motherboard that much, but the point stands: you can fit many radiators and many fans into this case, even UNDER the shroud, where there's technically room for another 240mm radiator. It’s comically accommodating.

Cable management is up now:

Using the iShift mount means committing to keeping the cable slack behind the motherboard tray, which Antec’s velcro straps enable. Cable management is more visually important on this case than some others due to the ventilation on all sides of the shroud. Cable cutouts are standard overall, with the exception of a relatively small CPU power cutout up top. 

We also liked the tie points on the rear of the case for external cables, a feature we've complimented Fractal for in the past.

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Using the iShift mount makes connections accessible and benefits EPS12V routing, but we wouldn't go as far as saying that "routing has never been easier." Antec included a card in the accessory kit that describes four types of PSU layouts and the correct way to install each of them with the PSU extension cable. Full credit to Antec for including good instructions, but it isn't "easier." On that subject, we tried to follow the cable routing guide in the manual when connecting our 12VHPWR cable, but the diagram just isn't readable in 2D.

The Flux Pro also comes with a hub. We don't use built-in fan hubs or controllers during thermal testing, but even so, it's strange that the Flux Pro's hub only has five connections available when the case comes with six fans. Five of the stock fans are neatly cable managed and attached to the hub out-of-the-box, but the rear exhaust fan is not. This could be a relic of the original FLUX platform being designed around five fans. The hub is SATA powered and acts as a simple splitter for four-pin PWM fans and three-pin ARGB signals, with five outputs each. The Flux Pro does not contain any LEDs (RGB or otherwise) outside of the temperature monitor.

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For drives: There are 2x 2.5" mounts behind the motherboard tray, 2x 2.5"/3.5" mounts towards the front of the case, and a cage under the shroud that can hold one more 2.5"/3.5" drive inside and another on top. The hardware is freely repositionable for this: We recommend just pulling the whole assembly out and relying on the other mounts if you don’t need that many drives, as it frees up several more fan slots, removes an airflow obstruction, and the remaining two 3.5" mounting locations have rubber vibration dampers.

So-called-E-so-called-ATX, which isn’t a real standard, has support up to 285mm is listed. Larger boards up to ~330mm would technically fit, but only by overlapping the cable cutouts, and there are no standoffs beyond the standard ATX footprint.

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Antec sent us two Flux Pros, one black and one white. The black one showed up perfectly fine, but the white one was bent at the rear. 

Whenever this happens, we inspect the packaging to try and determine if it was the manufacturer’s fault or the carrier’s fault.

Antec’s packaging is at least as good as the industry norm, so the damage comes down to rough shipping. Four sticky rubber PSU supports also popped off and rolled into every corner of the case, so the white case also probably experienced extreme temperatures in shipping. This seems more likely to be a manufacturing issue or problem of adhesive choice not being sufficient. 

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The Flux Pro's accessories include a full set of covers for the top of the PSU shroud, a standard PSU frame (if the iShift system isn't used), and a screw sorter. There are exactly eight screws for the two possible 3.5" drives, and exactly four screws to attach the two additional shroud covers. We'd like a couple spares. There isn't a spare set of dust caps for the top I/O like there was with the C8, but that's fine by us. Taking the top panel off pops every single dust cap out.

Antec Flux Pro Thermals

The Flux Pro has six stock fans and a lot of optional mounting locations. For our baseline, we used the stock configuration with the iShift mount to rotate the PSU 90 degrees, and then we did an additional pass with the PSU in the standard orientation. Theoretically, the iShift mount should be better for airflow. Removing the bottom HDD mount would improve it even more, but we were consciously avoiding going overboard with the additional tests.

We aren't seeing as many regular old full towers these days, like the Meshify 2 XL or the pricey Corsair 7000D Airflow from a few years back. Among cases that we've covered recently, Fractal's North XL is the most obvious comparison; the 2024 redesign of the NZXT H7 is a close match as well, although we haven't had a chance to test it. Antec's own C8 ARGB(read our review) is in a slightly lower price bracket and a completely different form factor, but it obviously shares some Antec styling with the Flux Pro, which makes it another potential competitor. There’s also the Fractal Torrent, which is the high airflow king.  

CPU Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

First off, this is with our new test bench, so we’re still populating these results. 

Noise normalizing all cases to 27dBA and with a full-system torture workload, the CPU averaged 41 degrees Celsius above ambient across all cores and 45 over ambient on the P-cores. This makes the Flux Pro the new chart leader when noise-normalized. This is a great start for the case and shows that its stock fans are effective. 

That's better than the North XL's best result of 46 degrees P-core, but still fairly close, which makes sense given the similar focus on strong front-to-back airflow in both cases. The Torrent sits between the two. 

Bottom-to-top airflow doesn't benefit the CPU cooler in our setup as much, as demonstrated by the much warmer 54 degree P-core averages achieved by the Antec C8 in the same test. Looking at the rest of the chart, the Flux Pro scored the best result we've seen since our most recent case refresh.

This is an incredibly strong position for Antec -- though the Torrent gets credit for hanging on as long as it has and being effectively within error.

GPU Full Load Thermals (Full Speed)

Now on to GPU thermals with the same combined CPU and GPU torture workload, but with case fans at 100% speed. This means that we are letting the systems run at whatever noise level they hit when maxed. CPU and GPU fans are the same controlled speeds as before.

The Flux Pro’s baseline ran at 38 degrees Celsius above ambient for the average GPU temperature, 50 degrees for the hotspot, and 43 for the memory junction. Rotating the PSU won’t have much impact unless you have a ton of cables obstructing flow. In our rotated test, temperatures dropped by one degree across the board but that was by moving it back to the standard orientation. It was at 37 degrees Celsius above ambient on the core, 49 hotspot, and 42 memory.

There are a few factors at work here: our setup uses a modular PSU that's only 15cm deep, and the Flux Pro is large enough that there's not a lot of slack cable, so there's not a lot of cable clutter under the shroud regardless of orientation. We still like the iShift mount, but you should view it as a cable management tool, not something that will massively improve GPU thermals. In this case, it was basically a margin of error with no meaningful difference.

Compared to other cases, the most impressive thing here is that Antec has now chart-topped at 100% fan speed for GPU thermals in addition to its prior noise-normalized result for CPU thermals. At almost 40dBA, it is slightly quieter than the Torrent (at 42.3dBA) in our hemi-anechoic chamber while also running within error of it for thermals, or slightly cooler with the standard orientation. The Hyte Y70 is also somewhat competitive with side intake, mostly because it’s technically quieter than both of these options but still close in thermals. The Antec C8 also fits this, running quieter and slightly warmer. The Fractal North XL (read our review) is much less efficient in thermals for its noise tradeoff if you want to look at it that way.

CPU temperatures were completely unchanged by the PSU orientation, so we'll skip those.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

Moving back to the noise-normalized results at 27dBA, the GPU averaged 41 degrees Celsius above ambient, with 53 hotspot and 47 memory. We haven't always had the best results with shroud-top fans; looking back at our old test bench and prior reviews, in the Lancool 215, adding a fan on the shroud was ineffective. The Flux Pro overcomes this by just adding fans until the problem goes away.

The North XL with its mesh side panel did well here, but the Flux Pro is better by 3-4 degrees. The C8 ARGB is similar to the Flux Pro in that it has bottom fans directly pointed into the GPU, but the Flux Pro beats it as well, with the C8 ARGB averaging about 1 degree higher. In fact, among the limited set of cases we've tested with the current bench, the Torrent is the only one with better GPU thermals. It remains king in at least one aspect for a little bit longer.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Standardized Fans

Our standardized fan test was requested by viewers years ago and has a standalone piece explaining the methodology. It has pros and cons. We have detailed them in the past. One of the downsides is hindering performance of cases that come with more or better fans. Sometimes people request tests where we populate all slots, but those actually make performance worse in many cases and pass diminishing returns.

This test uses three Noctua fans, 2x 140mm intake and 1x 120mm exhaust, all set to their maximum speeds. In the Flux Pro, we set these up in the usual front intake and rear exhaust arrangement. Average CPU temperature was 38 degrees Celsius over ambient and 42 on just the P-cores. We haven't discussed the CPU thermals with the stock fans at full speed, but the results were the same: in terms of CPU performance, this arrangement is basically the same as stock.

The standardized fan test is most useful for case-to-case comparison when cases ship with insufficient stock cooling. That doesn't apply to the Flux Pro or the cases we're directly comparing it against, so we're not going to delve into comparisons here.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Standardized Fans

Now for GPU thermals with standardized fans: Obviously, removing the shroud-top intake fans for our standardized fan tests didn't help GPU thermals. The average temperature climbed to 43 degrees Celsius above ambient, with a hotspot at 56 degrees average and memory at 50. If we needed any proof that the shroud intake fans were doing something, this is it.

VRM & RAM Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

Back to our baseline noise-normalized results, VRM thermals averaged 27 degrees above ambient. The Flux Pro had chart-topping CPU thermal performance, and given the location of the VRM, it's logical that this temperature is chart-topping as well. The mesh-sided North XL came close at 28 degrees, while the C8 ARGB with its focus on bottom intake averaged a significantly warmer 33.

SPD Hub temperature averaged 22 degrees above ambient, still good, but beaten by some cases like the Torrent and King 95 Pro at 21 degrees.

Overall, Antec’s performance is exceptional.

Antec Flux Pro Conclusion

First of all, the Antec Flux Pro is our new chart leader for thermals in a case. We haven’t retested the hundreds of case entries we have from our old methodology, but we have retested the prior leader (the Fractal Torrent). That Antec’s Flux Pro is overcoming the Torrent in many situations firmly establishes it as a new case to beat. Antec’s fan placement and quantity is what’s getting it the rank here. 

Right away then, the Flux Pro lands in our list of recommendations. 

The case isn’t some revolutionary new meta in design, it doesn’t have particularly advanced styling or materials, and generally, it isn’t taking a lot of major risks. It’s just a case that performs well and in a somewhat standard layout. But that’s the key: It performs well, making it instantly worth considering.

The Antec Flux Pro’s looks are subjective. We think it looks good -- or at least “standard.” It's well built overall, and it has better overall thermals than anything we've tested recently. Its main downside is that it has an MSRP of $180-$185, and there are some strong competitors at that price. Fractal Design's North XL carried a launch MSRP of $180, and at that price we'd say the Flux Pro wins, but the North XL is on sale (as of this writing) for as low as $130 for the top-performing mesh sided SKU. The recently released NZXT H7 Flow (not to be confused with the NZXT H7 Flow) has a similar focus on bottom intake GPU cooling for as low as $130 MSRP, but it only comes with three fans and again, we haven't tested it. The 7000D is too expensive to directly compare. The Fractal Torrent remains a direct thermal competitor and, when it’s on sale, should remain on shortlists -- though it is an older case now, for those who care about that.

Cases are ultimately a combination of features, performance, and looks. If you really like the North XL’s use of wood over Antec’s and have your heart set on it, it’s still a perfectly good case. But the Flux Pro is making a strong performance showing.

Sales aside, some of the strongest competition comes from Antec's own C8 ARGB at $150 and the smaller non-Pro Flux at $120-$125. We haven't tested the regular Flux non-Pro, but we can assume that its quality is similar as the spec is similar. Reasons to choose a Flux over the C8 are the traditional non-dual-chamber layout and the shroud-top cooling, if those aspects appeal to you. Going by the spec sheet, reasons to choose specifically a Flux Pro are the multiple larger radiator mounting options (including the top of the shroud), generous clearance on all components, and extra drive support. The iShift mount is cool, but it's not a make-or-break feature. Back-connect motherboard support could be, though, so keep in mind that the regular Flux supports back-connect while the Pro does not officially support it.

This is an extremely strong case and we're happy to see Antec continuing to come back swinging.

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Table of Contents

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Intro

We went undercover again to buy another Starforge pre-built gaming PC to review. For this testing, we had to get help from a local CNC shop to mill a channel into the integrated heatspreader of a separate CPU to validate a curious microcode thermal behavior. 

This allowed us to embed a thermocouple in the IHS to confirm bugs in Intel’s older microcode. 
We also made a custom 3D animation for educational purposes to help explain some counterintuitive thermal behavior, but one which looks like excellent attention to detail for Starforge’s configuration designer.

Editor's note: This was originally published on August 24, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Patrick Lathan

Video Editing, Camera

Vitalii Makhnovets

Animation

Andrew Coleman

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

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We ran acoustic tests in our hemi-anechoic chamber to test for that Fractal Terra hum problem. This chamber allows us to look at the frequency spectrum to objectively identify undesirable noises. 

The last time we reviewed a Starforge pre-built, it was one of the better ones we’d looked at in a while. 

The major points of improvement were screw torque, where multiple screws were loose on arrival, and the peel being left on the SSD thermal pad. Starforge came onto the scene with relatively quick renown due to its ownership by popular streamers and organization from skilled PC builders and defectors from Artesian Builds (watch our documentary chronicling the company’s collapse).

We wanted to make sure Starforge didn’t know where the pre-built was going, so we bought it anonymously. Just before April, we bought this limited Fractal Terra (read our review here) build, a mini-ITX Starforge PC with an i5-13600KF, 4070 Super, and custom paint job, for $2400. You might be wondering what the text on the exterior of the case says, and because we stop at nothing for a review, we hired a Norse rune expert to translate it. It says: Et frf orxmegete mme. We don’t know what that means.

We’re going to get straight into it this time because we have a ton of in-depth testing. Again, as the brief backstory, Starforge functions as a system integrator near Austin, Texas and is owned by OTK, but otherwise operates fully independently. The company carries on a trend of streaming most of its PC builds, but the streamers aren’t the builders.

Although if they were the builders, that’d make the tear-down a lot more... interesting. Speaking of that --

Teardown

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The Fractal Terra ITX case disassembles easily. 

Internally, the first thing we noticed after taking the top of the case off is that the spine is very slightly curved. The reason for this is because this particular case will allow you to shift the spine via screws on either end so that the builder can bias the spine to allow more room for either the cooler or for the GPU. In this case, Starforge decided to provide a little more room for the CPU cooler. 

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One of the first things we noticed opening the case is that cable management is, once again, immaculate. It features great attention to detail. For instance, a SATA cable was cleanly and tightly routed around a case fan’s channel. We also noticed that cables were also well hidden under the CPU cooler. In addition, cables were cleanly tied around the PSU mount. The GPU power cable also featured a nice bend so it could fit cleanly inside. 

Unlike the Starforge Horizon II Ultra, which had a number of loose screws, we didn’t find any with the Lowkey. 

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Removing the CPU cooler, we can see a good application of thermal paste, which is more than necessary, but that’s not going to hurt it. 

Removing all of the cables in the case, we can see that everything was seated fully. This is good and something that we don’t always see in prebuilts.  

Looking at the RAM, it’s exactly what Starforge specifies on its website. A lot of SIs will just ship RAM of roughly the same spec but no specific brand so that’s cool to see.

Another issue that Starforge had regarding the last system we reviewed from the company is the fact that they forgot to remove the M.2 tape. Fortunately, this time around, the company resolved the issue. 

BIOS 

Starforge emailed our undercover customer account on August 16th advising us to update BIOS and run the most recent microcode revision. The email linked instructions, recommended OCCT stability testing, and extended our motherboard, CPU, and RAM warranties for four additional years beyond the purchase date (six total). The instructions are clear, easy to understand, and most importantly, proactive.

This is excellent handling of a problem that Starforge ultimately didn't cause. And appropriately, it’s one that we think Asmongold, one of the owners of Starforge, is now experiencing with his own system on stream.

Once degradation starts, Intel itself has said that the new microcode won’t fix it and that an RMA is the only solution. That’s why it’s important that Starforge gets this message out to customers. They’re doing more for people than Intel.

On the other hand, if Asmongold ends up not needing it, we’d like to bore a hole through Asmongold’s CPU and use a focused ion beam and transmission electron microscope to do failure analysis with a lab contact -- but that might be another story. 

Back to the Lowkey: Our testing was performed with out-of-the-box settings.

CPU LLC was manually set to level 2, which is abnormal, but not a problem. This could be done to minimize voltage spikes if Starforge was aware of Intel’s impending implosion -- and maybe they were: PL2 was left at 181W, but PL1 was lowered to 125W, which is arguably the "normal" setting depending on how you interpret Intel's Byzantine guidelines. Or maybe it’s not normal, and actually Intel wants you to use the Performance profile, except if it’s not supported by the VRM, except don’t use baseline for 13th or 14th Gen K SKUs unless the VRM doesn’t support Performance. And remember that Baseline isn’t Default, because Default is all of the settings, including Baseline, Performance, and Extreme -- and Intel strongly recommends applying these settings, except some prevail over others and so it is impossible to apply all of them. Intel’s guidelines have created an actual infinite loop in some situations, but that loop can be broken if you have a 14900K or 13900K, in which case they recommend the Extreme profile unless the motherboard doesn’t support it, in which case they don’t say what you should use instead, but they say you shouldn’t use baseline, so probably that means performance. But let’s be clear: Intel’s recommended DEFAULT settings aren’t actual enforced guidelines, because then they can shirk responsibility and pull motherboard manufacturers out of its hat of blame for going on a decade now.

The good news is that Starforge chose settings that make sense for this build.

As we received it, BIOS settings were customized more than usual for a prebuilt PC, which is pretty cool. XMP was enabled, which is the first hurdle that most prebuilts fail to clear. Specifically, “XMP I” was enabled, which in ASUS terminology doesn't actually mean “XMP I,” it means some of the primary XMP settings with other timings optimized by ASUS. This is a prebuilt, not a test bench, so that's fine.

The other changes included these:

• ASUS Performance Enhancement 3.0 was disabled, which is the right move
• Intel Adaptive Boost Technology was disabled, which is a more unusual choice and nerfs all-core performance, but proved necessary given the small downdraft cooler and cooling limitations
• Most interestingly, Starforge manually switched microcode version to 0x104 instead of 0x123, which was available on the BIOS version they shipped. 
• With this, there’s a global negative offset of 0.1V on core and cache SVID resulting from the microcode switch

As for why the company might have done this, back in February or March, Starforge probably saw speculation that microcode versions 0x104 and 0x105 keep CPU temperatures lower, and decided that it made sense to use that microcode. Our own testing has shown that temperatures are in fact incorrectly reported on at least MSI and ASUS motherboards with that microcode version. 

To prove this, we brought a 13900K CPU to a local machine shop and asked them to CNC mill a channel into the heatspreader. This allowed us to embed our own calibrated K-type thermocouple into the IHS and remain flush with the cooler, which will give an absolute ground truth for temperature rather than relying on Intel’s internal temperature sensors. We also shoved a thermocouple through a hole in the motherboard socket on our separate MSI test platform, giving us underside readings with a CPU that did not have this milled channel (so we had an unmodified test with a normal IHS and one with a customized IHS).

We’ll try to keep this simple -- we’ll explain it in a future piece. This chart shows two things: The P-core delta T over ambient and the heatspreader thermocouple temperature. The left axis shows the microcode version and BIOS version. If at any point the P-core temperature increases but the IHS temperature does not, that indicates a change to sensor behavior rather than an actual change in temperature. We know this because we also logged power at the EPS12V cables and in HWINFO throughout the testing, and all of these are at exactly 284W CPU PKG PWR, +/- about 1W variance. The deviation between CPU PKG PWR and the external sensors remained constant.

Suffice to say, the numbers are right. We checked them with other methods that don’t belong in this video, but will go out soon. We found that microcode versions 0x125 and 0x10E plotted about a 6C higher P-core, despite the IHS temperature being within variance, which means that this is not an actual change in the real temperature. It’s a change in the sensor. 

Just to prove our work, here’s a chart of the idle temperatures over ambient. It is physically impossible to run below ambient with this cooling setup. Physics won’t allow it. You would need something like liquid nitrogen to do this. BIOS revisions 0104 and 0105 both measured below ambient on the P-core, but above it on the IHS. You can see the IHS was relatively consistent in all these tests. 

Thermals & CPU Frequency

Here’s the chart for the CPU-only test, meaning no GPU load yet. The max core temperature spiked to 95-96 degrees Celsius during the initial PL2 boost period with the room temperature at about 21 to 22C. You can see a sharp curve indicating that the CPU was seconds away from thermal throttling. Putting Thermal Velocity Boost aside, which has a dumb threshold of 70 degrees but only applies to higher-end CPUs, the hard TJMax of the 13600KF is 100C. The boost period expired just in time to avoid that 100C limit in each test pass, with the maximum core temperature then leveling out around 80C after it hits the limit. 80C isn’t bad, but forcibly limiting frequency is an unfortunate downside of ITX and small coolers, but it’s better doing it this way than just running it unrestrained entirely.

Fan Response

Here’s a look at the fan response, plotted on the right axis for the same chart. You can see a heavy ramp initially, blasting up to 1880 RPM during the heaviest load period (and being unable to keep up with the heat). It’s expected again that a small downdraft cooler won’t keep up, and part of the power limiting is not only for thermal, but also noise. The fan drops and rises a few times, mostly steadying out around 1600-1700 RPM.

Frequency Comparison 

The initial load period prior to the PL drop already showed frequency throttling, with boosting to 5100MHz for AVG P-Core and rapidly falling. You can see the red spike, representing maximum single-core temperature, corresponding with the frequency decay to 4870MHz. 

At steady state, after the PL barrier expiry at 250 seconds (or about 60 seconds after load start), clocks dropped to a fairly steady 3300-3400MHz range on the E-cores and 4400-4500MHz on the P-cores, with the all-core average at 3860MHz. 

Frequency vs. “Standard” 13600K

This chart shows the frequency of Starforge’s configuration versus the original guidelines offered by Intel during the review cycle for the 13600K. This would be for a CPU running at a higher power budget about 2 years before Intel’s concerns became public.

Starforge’s configuration is down by 500-600MHz from the completely flat 3900MHz E-core and 600MHz from the 5100MHz P-core clocks we saw in our original review sample 13600K (as well as the 20x 13600KFs we tested for our "Not Enough Samples" video). This is due to the limits set in the BIOS. Considering that this was an intentional decision to keep the CPU within thermal limitations of the small Terra case, this isn’t inherently a bad thing. It’s the nature of ITX -- but we do have some other thoughts on this that we’ll revisit in the conclusion.

GPU Temperature

The full torture workload is next. 

Starting with GPU thermals, the 4070 Super leveled off around 67 degrees Celsius with hotspot and memory temperatures around 79 and 73 degrees, respectively. GPU temperature peaked at 73 degrees before the GPU fans ramped, resulting in a peak GPU fan speed of 2400RPM (70%), but as the system reached steady state, the speed dropped to around 2100RPM. These are completely acceptable temperatures; there was no abnormal, non-Boost behavior throttling and the GPU remained strictly power constrained at its stock 220W limit, which is good.

Animation 

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Starforge swapped out the stock DeepCool fan for an Arctic P12 Slim PWM PST, with an identical fan added to the bottom of the case as exhaust. Both of these fans use ASUS' default curve, which maxes out at a reported CPU temperature of 70C. The placement of the bottom exhaust fan isn't ideal, but that's due to the case design. Starforge's setup aligns with the recommendations made in our Terra review.

Alternative Fan Position

We also did an A/B test with the bottom exhaust fan flipped to intake. The chart shows that Starforge’s chosen configuration of bottom exhaust performs 3 degrees better for CPU thermals than bottom intake when looking at delta T over ambient results. That’s a big difference and shows someone at Starforge chose the ideal setup, and the one which is less obvious. That’s great.

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Here’s an educational 3D animation we made to help explain why this behavior happens, since bottom intake would be the natural inclination, but is worse. After all, cooler air is closer to the ground.

If the bottom fan were flipped to intake, the entire system would be heavily biased towards positive pressure. A positive pressure configuration means that more air is forced in than forced out, and so to achieve some level of equilibrium, the pressure system dictates naturally that outflow would occur at every single hole in the case that doesn’t have active intake. This can cause some recirculation of warmed air and means that you’d lose control over where precisely the exhaust is. In this situation, the CPU tower cooler has vertically oriented aluminum fins for the heatsink. That means the finstack is pushing some of the exhaust out the bottom of the case. With a bottom intake fan, this air would be immediately pulled back in and recirculated, raising internal ambient. That’s why it performs worse. It would also get pulled in through the side panels as it exits the bottom. 

With bottom exhaust, that warmed air jettisoned from the bottom of the case would get pushed away from the system by that extra bottom exhaust fan, which will not only prevent recirculation at the bottom, but also limit recirculation at the sides. That’s why this unconventional setup is so successful for Starforge’s build. And if you find these animations helpful to understanding the science behind performance, please support the extra work on the GN store.

Noise 

Now we’ll get into noise testing in our hemi-anechoic chamber.

Here’s the dBA over time chart.

The Lowkey was extremely quiet when idle, especially for an air-cooled system in a case that had acoustic issues in our original review. Measured at 1 meter and in a noise floor of about 14dBA, the noise level at idle was indistinguishable from the noise floor, which is awesome. In the first 170 seconds of this test, it is effectively totally silent when idle.

When the torture load started, the fans ramped immediately to a peak of about 29dBA SPL at 1 meter, synchronized perfectly with the CPU and case fan speeds. As the CPU's initial boost expired and its temperature dropped, the noise level dropped back down to 26dBA, then gradually rose back to 29dBA over the next five minutes.

Frequency Spectrum

Here’s the frequency spectrum plot. During the steady state portion of the noise test, the major peaks in the audible range were around 370Hz and 633Hz. Smaller peaks appeared around 223Hz and 844Hz. The Terra is prone to producing an annoying hum, but since the case doesn't come with any stock fans, the noise produced is completely dependent on what hardware is installed and where. So while the Terra can influence this, the fans can change it. Starforge used the same DeepCool AN600 that we did in our Terra review last year, and we heard the usual hum resulting from the CPU cooler pulling air through the Terra's side panel. However, Starforge successfully dropped noise levels by replacing the cooler's fan. As shown on the frequency plot, this completely altered the character of the noise. We’re not sure if they saw our findings with the original Terra, but this is absolutely what we would have recommended. Starforge did well to work this out.

Power

Power testing is our last benchmark.

For this test, we used a logging wall meter during thermal testing, which resulted in a very clean graph of three full-system torture passes followed by two CPU-only blender passes. During the full system torture passes, peak power draw for the whole system was approximately 490W, which dropped to 415W as PL2 expired. 

With load on the CPU alone, shown in the last two passes here, full system power draw peaked around 286W and then held steady at 264W until PL2 expired. After that, it remained at 194W for the duration of the test. All of these numbers are well within the limits of the Corsair SF750 power supply that Starforge decided on for this build. They have left an appropriate amount of headroom without going completely overboard on the PSU capacity so that’s good.

Software 

And now we’re on to software setup. 

Fortunately, the system is free of any third-party software. BIOS and drivers were up to date as of March 28th, which is when the system was set up for a shipping date of April 1st. That means they’re not letting images sit too long.

The Windows key is stored in a text file in the C drive, which is hugely appreciated as certain BIOS or microcode changes can sometimes trigger deactivation. Some scraps of Starforge's automated setup process were left behind, but nothing big other than some unused desktop backgrounds. 

The only problem we noticed was that a Realtek audio device was shown as missing in the Windows device manager before connecting to the internet. Starforge should be ensuring that all drivers are installed and working without needing to first connect to the internet. This should have been caught in a final check. The onboard and front panel audio jacks worked fine regardless, but it’s just good system hygiene to make sure devmgmt.msc shows everything as installed.

Packaging

Now for packaging and accessories. There are some hits and some misses in this section.

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Starforge reused the Terra's original packaging for the Lowkey, except nested inside a larger cardboard box with a layer of bubble wrap in between. The Terra's packaging was fine, including a cloth bag to protect the painted surfaces, so reusing it was appropriate. 

As delivered, the only external damage on the Lowkey was a small area of missing paint on the front panel. It's about a 7mm long strip that just fell off at some point. It's definitely visible. We couldn't find any paint residue in the packing material that would imply it was shipping damage, so it may have been damaged at the warehouse or improperly painted. 

Some downsides: There was no documentation whatsoever included with the system. We found this to be a positive in our original Starforge review and were disappointed to see it gone. There was no quick start guide, or QR code for an online guide, and no sticker over the motherboard's video ports, or manuals for any of the components, or warranty paperwork for any of the components. The only thing left was a piece of cardboard with some Terra concept art, which is included with the Terra. Weirdly, so are other things: Fractal includes 10mm PSU standoffs with the Terra that can drastically impact thermal performance, as we saw in our review, but these were not included in the packaging. 

Our last system at least came with an instruction card, so we assume it was left out of this one by mistake, and unfortunately, that is a mistake that will create one of the few marks against the system in this review. 

As a positive, accessories like all unused PSU cables, the GPU 12V-2x6 adapter dongle, and the wireless antenna were kept and packed tidily. 

Conclusion

The positives and negatives are pretty clear with this one. We’ll go through them line-by-line:

Starforge exceeded expectations with the BIOS configuration choices. They, overall, made good, manual decisions. The microcode choice stands out as something we wouldn’t advise since that version is just broken for its temperature sensing, but given the information that they had back in March or April, we think the choice made sense in the context of the time.

Starforge also exceeded expectations by extending its warranty on top of Intel’s screw-up, which is exactly what SIs have to do to separate themselves from competition.

The build itself shows general physical skill: Assembling this in a way where no cables droop into the fans, even in shipping, took some care.

The fan orientation illustrated clear attention to detail on the specifics of the build. They weren’t just randomly throwing fans in -- they thought to orient it in a way that might seem counter-intuitive, but is actually better. We saw similar attention to detail with the choice to swap the fan on the CPU cooler, which reduced some of the humming you’d hear with the stock fan.

All of these, but especially the choices around the fans, illustrate to us that whoever designed this configuration is clearly plugged-in to the enthusiast community. This comes across as a company actually researching and trying to do well with its builds, rather than any number of SIs that sometimes seem to choose parts at random. That’s refreshing to see.

Now for the criticisms and feedback:

The damaged paint was the first thing that greeted us out of the box. Given the limited nature of this specific build, it was a huge let-down. Starforge needs to take extra QC measures to make sure limited builds leave the warehouse pristine. We couldn’t find evidence of the paint damage happening during shipping or in contact with packing materials, although it’s possible. If that were the case, we still think Starforge should consider a protective strip of something in front of custom vinyl, sticker, or paint jobs. 

We also would like to see the instructions and manuals included again. Our last Starforge prebuilt had an included card with setup instructions and that was missing here. Likewise, although Starforge included the extra PSU cables, we did not see the 4x PSU standoffs normally included with the Terra. 

Finally, the thermal situation is brutal in this case. There’s not a ton that can be done about that. Starforge also customized the fans, which helped deal with the small box as well. The reality is that there are physical limitations to cooling in this case. We think Starforge’s overall balance is good, but that they should have customized the fan curve. This is something we scrutinized last time as well. There is room in the fan curve to improve this balancing act further.

Looking at prices, the price of a like-for-like build without the custom case would be about $1,750. Adding in the cost of a Windows license and miscellaneous accessories, let’s call it $1,850. At this pricing, extra cost beyond DIY was about $550 to maybe $600, depending on sale prices. The Starforge Horizon II Ultra we reviewed last year had prebuilt overhead of about $450. It looks like Starforge’s to-customer price difference is about the same, except with maybe $100 to $150 added for the color customization. 

This still puts Starforge in the middle of the pack: It’s more markup than Cyberpower or iBUYPOWER and less markup than brands like Corsair. You’re ultimately paying for thought to be put into the configuration, competent assembly so you don’t have to build it, and support. We think on many of these fronts, Starforge has nailed it with this system.

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Table of Contents

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Intro

Here are some Zen 5-related comments we received in response to some of our recent AMD CPU reviews:

“First time I have completely disagreed with Steve's take. Same price, same performance, 30+% less power is huge.”

“That power reduction is HUGE. I feel GN didn’t give enough emphasis to that.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I really like what GN is doing. But am I alone in thinking that it’s a problem if reviewers complain about power consumption, then when a corporation decides to take a generation where they instead reduce consumption, 90% of the review is spent harping about how the part using less power has no meaningful performance upgrade?”

Editor's note: This was originally published on August 13, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing

Patrick Lathan

Jeremy Clayton

Testing, Video Editing

Mike Gaglione

Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

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We dove into Zen 5 efficiency because of dozens of comments like this and we found that, actually, Zen 5 isn’t universally more efficient than Zen 4; in fact, our new testing indicates it’s sometimes worse. 

This chart shows the max VID of our 9700X vs. our 7700 when both are locked to 60 FPS, with the 9700X running higher voltage. 

This one shows the power over time, and while we see our Zen 5 CPU drew far less power in the loading screen for the game, it also draws significantly more power at times in gaming scenarios (which comprise more of the total experience). 

This chart shows the FPS/W in Phantom Liberty, where the 9600X in particular gets crushed by not only the 7800X3D but also by the 7600 and only barely equates the 7600X. 

This one shows simulations per watt-hour in Stellaris, establishing again that the 9000 series surprises everyone with its lack of efficiency.

CPU efficiency isn’t a simple thing to measure because it’s so massively variable. We talked about this last year in a dedicated deep-dive methodology piece, but gaming workloads can consist of times when a CPU is both efficient and inefficient, depending on what it’s doing. Loading is different from playing, and likewise, 100% isn’t 100%. “100% load” can mean different things at different times: A CPU might be 100% bound on a single thread in a game, or could be 100% bound on all cores during a production load. It could be 100% cache limited in some compile tasks. All of this means that efficiency is complicated to evaluate.

But now, having spent a week evaluating only the efficiency of the AM5 CPUs, we have come to the new and updated conclusion that they are not universally more efficient. They are sometimes, but those scenarios are restricted largely to something like rendering in Blender.

Today’s goal was scientific: We wanted to know how the lineup shifted with efficiency testing across gaming, not just production workloads. 

A quick recap first:

Our stance on the Zen 5 CPUs so far was that you generally shouldn’t buy them. Our reasons for this were these: The value is worse than Zen 4, we experienced memory compatibility and BIOS issues, we had a completely broken chip off the line following AMD’s recall (creating uncertainty if they can’t even get a reviewer a working chip after a recall), and the performance was sometimes regressive from Zen 4. Worse performance and higher price is already enough to generally advise a 7800X3D (watch our review) instead, but we said there was one upside: Efficiency, which we saw specifically in our all-core rendering production test. 

That’s true, but the bad news for Zen 5 is that in gaming scenarios and even some other production workloads, it’s not more efficient. In fact, in a lot of gaming scenarios, it’s worse.

The short version of today’s testing is that we are now hardening that stance: We still think the 9700X (read our review) qualifies as “meh,” but in gaming scenarios, it also loses that efficiency advantage in most situations. Not all, like sometimes in loading, but in most.

Methodology

Here’s how this works.

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For this benchmarking, we’re testing by analyzing the power drawn at the EPS12V cables that go into the motherboard. We use an interposer between the power supply and motherboard and combined it with custom software we wrote that automates the test procedure to collect the same data at the same points in each test. This allows us to create these nice charts where the start and stop times, as well as the game loading times, perfectly align to allow us to analyze every aspect of the game.

We’re testing 7 games and 2 applications using an Elmor PMD, or Power Measurement Device, of which we bought about 8 from Elmor’s Lab’s websites. 

We use a current clamp and HWINFO to evaluate each PMD.

The metric is FPS/W for gaming. FPS is frames per second, whereas a Watt is 1 joule per second. Because that’s frames per second per joules per second, we can simplify that to just say “frames per joule,” or FPJ. This is the same as FPS/W, but with unit cancellation.

We ran a poll on our Community page asking you all if you’d prefer us to use Frames Per Joule or FPS/W, and the overwhelming majority voted for FPS/W. Reading the comments, the primary reason was that it’s easier for most people to understand and instantly relate back to power consumption. Our preference was for frames per joule, but after reading the reasoning from our viewers, I agreed with their reasoning and we’ll primarily use FPS/W language. We will put both on the chart labels, though.

Stellaris’ base metric is simulation time in seconds, where lower is better. In order to stick with “higher is more efficient” and to make it algebraically easy, we are converting the Stellaris data into simulations per hour. We take the average simulation time in seconds and see how many of those will fit in 60 minutes, then use that to calculate the simulations per watt-hour.

We are defining “efficiency” as completing the same unit of work with less total energy or achieving more work with the same or less total energy. We use 3 variations for this: Stock / out-of-box testing, 60 FPS locked, and 50W PPT.  The 60 FPS lock gives us a fixed unit of work that allows us to evaluate the 7700 non-X and 9700X on even ground. The 50W PPT normalizes for power, but allows FPS to be unlocked.

There are limitations to this methodology:

The biggest one is that we can’t analyze transients of the CPU with this method. It’s much faster than using an oscilloscope, but it also means we aren’t polling the data on the microsecond scale. 

The second limitation is that we are not using complicated combinations of tests to evaluate a total aggregate platform-wide efficiency. For example, assuming equal characteristics, a CPU hitting a GPU bottleneck can’t be fully leveraged and will pull less power than one which is otherwise the same but runs at a lower framerate and is CPU bottlenecked. That means that there are scenarios where a high-end, high-power CPU could feasibly underdraw power because it can’t keep up with the GPU. We tried to eliminate this possibility by picking games that are heavily CPU-bound.

One other limitation of methodology is that we don’t have any insight into GPU power behavior. If there is a key driver or other characteristic of the platform that fundamentally changes how the GPU behaves, we are not capturing that power data. In general, this shouldn’t happen; however, it is a possibility, and we wanted to be transparent about the limitations of our tests here. 

We believe in the scientific method and disclosures.

OK, with all of that understood, let’s get started.

Efficiency

Blender Power Efficiency

As a reminder, this is where we started. This is the Blender workload, which is 100% loaded on all threads constantly. Because of the way PPT or power limits behave, this can manifest in different efficiency results than in games where we’re more likely to have power headroom to boost higher (and potentially run higher voltages on some cores).

We added the 7700 (watch our review) here. The 9700X at 19.2 Wh remains more efficient than even the 7700 non-X at 21.2 Wh, which remains a great and very positive result for AMD’s 9700X. It’s clear that the CPU absolutely can be efficient, and even with the addition of the non-X 7700, that remains the case. Limiting the 7700 to 50W PPT and 9700X to 50W PPT has them functionally tied and within error, although the 9700X burns more of its PPT budget on voltage.

As for the 9600X, its efficiency here is also better than that of the 7600 (by a lot, actually) and the 7600X by even more. This chart remains the most positive for AMD’s Zen 5 and is what makes it not as simple to just call it “inefficient,” because that’s not accurate. But in other tests, it’s not as positive and can be less efficient.

Phantom Liberty Power Efficiency

Here’s Phantom Liberty for a heavy gaming workload. We’ve removed the Intel results from this chart as we are still collecting data for this game.

The 7800X3D is a clear leader for stock CPU performance at 3.3 FPS/W, followed by the 5700X3D at 2.7. Both are at about 65W, making them again directly comparable and functionally power-normalized. The 7600 (watch our review) is also nearly power normalized, at 2.5FPS/W. The 9700X pulled 80W in this test, resulting in 2.2 FPS/W. It ties the 5700X3D for framerate, but is less efficient. The 9700X was technically more efficient than the 7700 non-X here (by a fraction), but they’re functionally tied. The 7700X trails the 9700X at 1.8 to 2.2 FPS/W.

Locking the 9700X and 7700 both to 60 FPS but allowing power to do whatever it wants, the 7700 ends up achieving the same framerate for less power. We think this might have to do with voltage -- we’ll look at that in a moment.

Although the 9700X is more efficient than the 7700X and, on a pure and irrelevant technicality, more efficient than the 7700 stock here, the 9600X ends up less efficient than the 7600 and about tied with the 7600X.

As for PBO Max, it didn’t do much for framerate, so the power went up to about 100W (from 80W), but efficiency fell.

When locked to 50W PPT, the 9700X became instantaneously more efficient. It pulled about 2W more than the 7700 at 50W PPT, but even if we called that “margin of error” and brought its power down by 2W, it’d be at 3.9 FPS/W against 4.1 on the 7700. As is, it’s 3.6.

[NEW] Phantom Liberty 10 & 30-pt Highs

Before the research charts explaining the interesting behavior here, we need to see some of the 10-pt and 30-pt highs. For this, we are doing a very simple average of the 10 highest spikes and the 30 highest spikes during the entire test. This means that we’re including not just the gaming itself, but the loading period. Loading screens can sometimes run higher power consumption than gaming itself.

This is not an efficiency chart, it’s just pure power consumption. 

Here’s what’s interesting: In favor of Zen 5, the 9700X at 80W average had 10-pt and 30-pt highs that averaged much closer to baseline, at just 81.7 and 80.8W. The 7700X (watch our review), meanwhile, had highs up at 121.4W and 115.2W. The 7700 non-X has slightly lower total power peaks than the 9700X. Looking at the 60FPS-locked 9700X, interestingly, we still see the same spikes (but fewer of them) as the 9700X under stock conditions. That’s because these spikes happen in loading, so an FPS limit has no bearing on them.

PBO MAX absolutely blasts the power here. As for the 9600X, it’s functionally tied with the 7600 for 10- and 30-pt highs. These are within variance. 

The 7800X3D deserves recognition for its relatively low spikes.

Phantom Liberty - 9700X & 7700 Research

This chart shows the CPU power over time for each of the CPUs in this load. Before each averaged power period, we can see large spikes in power consumption that correspond with the loading screen. These will show up in our 10-pt and 30-pt highs later. You can see the 9700X and 7700 both spiking to around 80W in these periods.

During gaming, the 9700X is consistently higher in power consumption than the 7700, despite being locked to 60 FPS on both and having the same TDP.

Phantom Liberty - 9700X & 7700 Research (VID)

If we plot the Max VID, the 9700X is running higher point-to-point when looking at maximum per interval. It’s in the 1.32-1.38 range, whereas the 7700 is in the range of 1.27 to 1.32.

Phantom Liberty - 9700X & 7700 Research (VDDCR)

Looking now to VDDCR_VDD SVI3 TFN voltage, the 9700X ends up in the 1.33-1.34 area, whereas the 7700 was typically around 1.29 to 1.30V.

Phantom Liberty - 9700X & 7700 Research (Vcore)

Looking now at Vcore from the motherboard sensor in software, we see another 1.30 to 1.34 difference favoring the 7700 with the lower Vcore.

Phantom Liberty - 9700X & 7700 Research (Frequency)

Finally, for frequency, the 9700X was frequently spiking toward 5400-5500MHz in this game, with expected fluctuations based on the game load. The 7700 ran a lower frequency on average. It appears that the 9700X is pulling a higher voltage across the board, even when locked to 60 FPS, as it tries to sustain these frequencies. Also, in situations where the older CPUs become architecturally bound, such as in Final Fantasy, which we’ll take a look at in a bit, the 9000 series is able to run a higher framerate and bypass some external binds. This also leads to higher power. In this instance, though, the voltage is largely to blame.

That gives us an explanation for what we’re seeing. Let’s move on.

FFXIV Dawntrail CPU Efficiency

Here’s Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail.

In this one, the 7800X3D returns as the most efficient CPU -- and by a longshot. The next closest stock CPU is the 5700X3D (read our review) at 7.3 FPS/W to the 7800X3D’s 8.5. Behind that, the 5600 is next at 6.8 FPS/W. The next stock CPU is the 7600, then the 7600X. These two are about tied. The 7600X (watch our review) is slightly more power-hungry, but also slightly higher framerate. 

Skipping down to the new CPUs, the 9600X ends up less efficient than the 7600 and 7600X alike. Despite an increase in framerate that was actually meaningful when compared to the 7600X, power consumption went up more. Even though the 9600X has a TDP of 65W and the 7600X has one of 105W, you can see that the 9600X is pulling more power during gaming but isn’t always the case. You’ll see that the 7600X  can pull more when loading the game. It makes this comparison very messy and difficult to really nail down which one is more efficient because they change. This is something we spent a day investigating. We’ll get to our best explanation of that in a moment. The data is repeatable and, referencing our data from last year, appears consistent with games like this one.

Locking PPT to 50W gets the 9700X and 7700 closer to each other, with the 9700X pulling ahead even in spite of a slightly higher EPS12V power consumption. This is a game where its FPS lead is meaningful, at 9% over the 7700, just like the 9600X saw around 14% over the 7600X and 21% over the 7600. In the rare scenarios where the newer CPUs are actually able to get more than a 3-6% improvement, it seems that the efficiency scales more favorably than we’ve seen elsewhere when normalized for power.

Intel’s performance here is unfortunate: It’s at the bottom of the charts once again.

FFXIV Research (Power)

Here’s the research into that behavior of the 9600X and 7600X, which we’re plotting because it has a higher TDP and PPT than the 9600X, but pulled less power in the same test when gaming.

First, for power over time, you can see the 7600X does actually burst significantly higher than the 9600X in some loads. That load is at the start: When we’re loading the game, in that first 40 seconds or so, the 7600X pulls around 115W at the peak when it’s first launching and loading the benchmark. The 9600X is pulling around 80W in the same scenario, so in fact, it is far lower power in this workload. This doesn’t show up in the gaming averages, because it’s not during gaming, and is also a shorter time window.

In subsequent loads, the intensity is reduced, but you can still see the 7600X spiking to around 100W in the second pass, whereas the 9600X is around 78W. 

Once we get in game, it’s a different scenario: The 9600X pulls around 20W more power in many of these sections of the game test.

FFXIV Research (VID)

Here’s the Max VID chart for Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail. In this test, the 9600X plots 1.36-1.37 maximum VID point-to-point. Keep in mind that this is done with software logging, not an oscilloscope, so we aren’t catching any spikes that are on the scale of microseconds. We can’t see transients here.

Even still, the 9600X maintains a higher max VID than the 7600X for the entire test sequence. The one exception is during our initial load of the game and its assets in that area before 40 seconds: The 9600X has far lower max VID, way down to 1.14 to 1.18V, whereas the 7600X is in the 1.34 range.

FFXIV Research (VDDCR_VDD)

Looking at VDDCR_VDD SVI3 TFN, the behavior is replicated: The 9600X is lower in the loading screens, but higher in the game. We think this is to do with CPU core utilization, where Final Fantasy has a known favor to CPU frequency on fewer cores. In other words, a 6-core CPU can outperform an 8-core CPU from AMD in this game if the frequency is a little bit higher and here we're seeing that higher frequency come into play.

FFXIV Research (VCore Motherboard)

Here’s the motherboard Vcore sensor in HWINFO. In this one, we see a repeat of the behavior: The 7600X generally is lower for Vcore as measured here. 

FFXIV Research (Frequency)

Here’s the frequency chart. In this one, The average all-core frequency has the 9600X basically pegged to 5450MHz, which explains the behavior we were seeing entirely. The 9600X is holding a higher clock, whereas the 7600X is fluctuating constantly with an average of around 4900 to 5000 MHz.

The 9600X is getting most of its 9-14% performance bump, depending on which R5 you compare against, as a result of this behavior. It’s also running higher power consumption because of it.

Stellaris Efficiency

Let’s move to Stellaris. This one is interesting because it’s one of the games that plots a larger difference favoring the newer CPUs. The 9700X had an actually meaningful gain over the 7700X and 7700 here for the simulation time.

This chart shows the simulations per watt-hour. The base metric in this is time, not framerate, with the original test data being simulation time in seconds. 

In this test, the 7800X3D is again supreme at 3 simulations per watt-hour. The next stock CPU is the 7600 at 2.5, then the 5700X3D. In this test, the extra cache on high-performance CPUs does not affect performance as much. The 5600 is tied with the 5700X3D for simulations per watt-hour, as is the 7600X. The new CPUs are further down: The 9700X is less efficient in this game than the 7700X and 7700 alike, and the 9600X is likewise less efficient than the 7600 and 7600X. In the case of the 7600, the 9600X falls far behind. The 7600 is 32% higher in rank here.

Intel lands at the bottom again, as predictable for its power consumption. 

As for AMD, locking to 50W PPT caused the 7700 and 9700X to be equal in this test, contrary to the stock performance where the 9700X trailed the 7700.

F1 24 (Stock CPU Efficiency)

Now for F1 24. This one is good because the high framerate makes it easier to work with some of the numbers.

The stock 7800X3D crushes everything else on this chart -- and that includes the 9700X. Despite its all-core efficiency in some workstation tasks, the 9700X pulled on average 79.6W in this test against the 7800X3D’s 55W, and since it was also lower framerate at 380.2 FPS to the 7800X3D’s 458.1, the 7800X3D is a clear winner. It really is the best gaming CPU right now. Not only is it higher framerate, but lower power.

Even the two-generation-old 5700X3D is leading most of this chart. What’s super cool is that they run at the same average power, which means we accidentally end up with an additional controlled variable. That means that we’ve isolated for only FPS, so at the same power (or power-normalized), the newer 7800X3D is 28% more efficient. Actually, the 7600 non-X also ends up power normalized by pure coincidence. At 54.9W, it runs a 5.8 FPS/W average and is the most efficient out-of-box CPU without X3D that we’ve tested in this game so far. The 7600X is basically tied with it since the power draw went up slightly. The older R5 5600 (watch our review) is also in this area.

The 9600X CPU is a 65W TDP part, and yet compared to multiple generations of both the X and non-X R5 CPUs, it is less efficient in the actual gaming workload.

Intel sits at the floor here, but notably, you can see that the 14900K doesn’t draw the insane amounts of power it does in an all-core production workload. This goes back to what we were saying about games being generally lower intensity or at least more volatile.

F1 24 (PPT Limit & FPS Limit)

Now we’re adding a few entries to the chart. We’ll highlight the additions of the 50W PPT R7 7700, 50W PPT 9700X, and FPS-locked 9700X and 7700 non-X.

The 50W PPT entries run at almost 311 FPS for the 7700 and about 316 FPS for the 9700X. With the 50W PPT setting in BIOS, the CPUs end up at about 35-37W for EPS12V. This boosts their FPS/W above the 7800X3D, but obviously you could play this same game with the 7800X3D to leapfrog them. The point though is that the CPUs can be more efficient than stock, but you start losing a lot of performance. Here, we dropped 17% FPS from the stock 9700X.

Locking the framerate to 60 FPS still has the 7700 as above the 9700X. These two shouldn’t be compared to anything else: The efficiency appears much lower because we’ve just cut hundreds of FPS off the framerate, but a baseline level of power is still necessary to even run the CPU. Once again, it appears that the 9700X only deserves efficiency credit in some specific workloads. 

Starfield Efficiency

We’ll look at another heavy gaming load next with Starfield.

In this one, the 7800X3D is again the leading stock CPU. The 7700 is distant behind it and tied with the 5700X3D, both at 1.6 FPS/W. The 7700 and 9700X were pulling similar power in this one, nearly power-normalizing them. If you were to fully power normalize them, they’d be equal. Here, they are functionally equal but with the 7700 technically more efficient.

As for the R5 SKUs, the 9600X is about tied with the 7600 and 7600X, landing right between them. After this, the PBO MAX 9700X boosts its framerate, but pulls so much more power (33W more) that it predictably loses efficiency.

Intel pulls nearly as much power in this game as it does in full production workloads, but the baseline numbers show that this can be reduced with more limited PL1 and PL2 numbers.

As for the 60 FPS locked comparison, the 7700 ran more efficient again than the 9700X. The 9700X pulled more power to do the same work, making it less efficient. This is related to the same voltage and frequency behavior we described a moment ago.

Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 is up now.

For this one, the 7800X3D again leads the chart, now at 2.4 FPS/W. The 5700X3D follows it at 2.0, with the 5600 next. A large group of devices scored the same, with everything from the R7 7700X at 1.3 FPS/W to the 7600X at 1.4 FPS/W functionally equivalent. The 9700X lands in here, tying with the 7700 and technically more efficient than the 7700X. This is one of the tests where the newer 9700X is about the same or slightly better in some cases against its direct predecessors. Locking the 7700 and 9700X to 50W PPT produced the same result, and if the 9700X were fully power-normalized and shed the last 2W, it’d have a technical 0.1 lead over the 7700 at 50W PPT, but basically they’re the same.

This is one of the better scenarios for Zen 5 in gaming, and it’s still generally not more efficient than the 7000 series in this game.

Rainbow Six Siege

Rainbow Six is pretty interesting. This one runs such a high framerate that we finally get some double-digit numbers for FPS/W.

The 7700 and 9700X are remarkably efficient when locked to 50W PPT here, which is thanks to the fact that the game is so easy to make spew hundreds of frames per second even when extremely power limited. The end result is that we’re still soaking the base power requirement for operation with those large FPS numbers, enabling the gap that forms between the 7800X3D and the 50W PPT-limited CPUs.

The 7800X3D is next, functionally power-normalized with the 7600 and 5700X3D, but outperforming both. The newer CPUs improve in framerate over the prior generation, which helps the 9700X outrank the 7700X for efficiency -- but it’s still behind the 7700. Once again, the 7700 is running at a lower voltage and pushing lower clocks, which obviously contributes to a slightly lower performance, but also makes it more efficient.

The 9600X is beaten by both the 7600X and 7600. The 60FPS-locked 7700 and 9700X had the 9700X pulling significantly more power, again for reasons described earlier.

Despite Intel’s overall good framerate in this game, its high power consumption pulls it down in this chart.

7-Zip

We’ll close this out with 7-Zip before we move to the 10-pt and 30-pt highs for each test. 7-Zip is represented in millions of instructions per second per watt. This could be simplified as millions of instructions per Joule, if you preferred. Same idea.

This one is intensive, but not in the same way as Blender -- it’s also a lot shorter, which can skew numbers the other direction.

The most efficient CPU in this test is the 7800X3D. It’s not the best performer, unlike the gaming tests where it is both the highest framerate and most efficient, but it is the most efficient on this chart. The 7700 and 9700X are next and are tied with each other. These two are within margin of error; so, at best here, the new CPU is the same efficiency as the prior 65W TDP part. It remains more efficient than the 7700X by a significant margin, with an uplift of 39%. But again, the difference is about 0% against the 7700. If the 9700X were fully power-normalized at the same 77.6W -- which is really hard to dial in that much -- they’d be even more equal.

As for the 9600X, it’s equal to the 7600 and within error. It’s not worse or less efficient, but it’s not better. It is better than the 7600X.

Intel remains the most power-hungry here, approaching 300W in some tests.

10-pt & 30-pt Highs (Stellaris)

Here are the last few charts of the 10-pt and 30-pt highs that we previewed with Cyberpunk earlier.

In Stellaris, the data between the highs and average is much wider overall (with the exception of the PPT-limited tests at the top). The 14900K had a 160W high against its 112W average during the game itself, which again accounts for loading during this benchmark. The 7800X3D also deviates from its average, but has results low enough overall that it doesn’t matter much.

We saw higher spikes on the 7600X and 7700X than the 9700X and 9600X, which makes sense for their rated TDPs. The 7600 and 7700 had lower highs, though, which correlates with the lower voltage that we observed earlier (in further correlation with the frequency differences).

10-pt & 30-pt Highs (FFXIV)

The last one we’ll look at is Final Fantasy. This one gets time in the story for being so different. We already talked about how the game has some unique behaviors for average power consumption in-game, but what’s also unique is the loading power. The gap between the 10- and 30-pt bars here helps illustrate how infrequent some of these spikes are. 

The 7700 ran at 53W on average in the testing, but spiked to about 80W in some of the loading in between. The 9700X ran at 73.1W in testing on average, but spiked to 83W in loading -- a smaller percentage increase than the 7700, but more in total. This is also why it’s so difficult sometimes to have a short answer for whether a CPU is efficient or not. To fully analyze this, we’d probably need to measure the total loading time or something as well.

Cost

Finally, as for what this all means, we’ll put this into perspective with a simple chart. This looks at the heaviest gaming workload we tested (Cyberpunk), calculated as a measurement of kWh for energy cost. Because the cost for just a CPU is so low, we went with the extreme: This is total shut-in, 8 hours a day of gaming for a full year.

Our electricity is nuclear where we’re at and is $0.10/kWh, but we know that in Europe or even California with variable rates, it can go even beyond $0.40/kWh. We’ve scaled up to $0.39 here, using some online tools to look at common prices.

This highlights the difference in cost per year if you used each of these CPUs to play the heaviest possible game for 8 hours a day. 

For our electricity cost, the difference is basically a rounding error -- especially if you aren’t using the system this much.

If you were to use the 5700X3D for 8 hours of gaming a day for a year, it’d cost you about $19 at our electricity rate.

For the 7800X3D, those numbers would be about the same. The 9700X would plot at $23 for the floor in these conditions, or $91 for the ceiling. Obviously, all of these numbers decrease with less use, or could increase with higher electricity cost. This isn’t a benchmark, it’s just math -- so you can apply this to your own situation by looking up a kWh cost calculator and estimating your usage.

Likewise, if you were building a rendering machine and running it literally nonstop, the 9700X would be a lower cost per unit of work completed -- but it’d be easily beaten by Eco Mode parts like the 7950X or Threadripper, as we’ve shown in the past.

Conclusion

We’re not going to recap the results here: If you want to see them, you can check through the charts. 

It’s a complicated subject and we’ve already walked through it. The shortest version is that we are hardening our stance against the 9700X (and now adding the 9600X) that they make less sense to buy than Zen 4. Previously, this was primarily because the value of Zen 4 was better, the performance was sometimes better, and functionality (as in actually working). Patrick fought the platform for a few days and had this funny quip the other day: “I believe AMD that it was an ‘architectural overhaul’ because on Zen 4, the memory worked and now it doesn’t.” As a reminder, and this was overshadowed by people demanding we praise the efficiency more in the 9700X review, our 9600X didn’t even work with EXPO on literally a single kit. It was broken. Our new one works fine.

Those were the reasons we didn’t recommend Zen 5. But now, it’s also because the efficiency isn’t as good as just Blender shows. The Blender result is accurate, but what we’ve learned from this situation is that there is enough of a demand for efficiency testing now that we clearly need to overhaul our representation of it. As a result, we immediately have added gaming efficiency benchmarks for our next reviews coming up. That’s the lesson we’ve learned. The downside is that the reviews get longer or other tests get cut as a result for practical reasons.

Behind the scenes, AMD gave reviewers almost no time with these CPUs, especially when factoring-in that we received two CPUs that required 2 days of troubleshooting to even get running. This meant limited time to expand testing, as our test suite already required every hour of that review window to complete. Now that we’ve had another week to work on these parts, it’s made us cynically wonder if AMD’s decisions were strategic to limit time reviewers would have. Less time means a reviewer is less able to explore all the branching problems with a product. We explored the memory compatibility issues and confirmed them on our parts, but that meant we lost two days that could have been used on this task. This comes after AMD had already strung us along for 3 weeks with missed promises of CPU delivery for reviews, leading to an unpredictable schedule.

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Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

Today, we’re reviewing the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X. This is a 12-core, 24-thread CPU that follows the other Zen 5 launches. We recently reviewed the flagship 9950X, which is a 16-core part. Before that, we reviewed the 9700X. The last one that remains will be the R5 9600X.
This CPU has a current price of $500, flanked by the 9950X at $650 and the 9700X at $360. The 9600X is a $280 part. Competing CPUs include AMD’s own alternatives: The R7 7800X3D is $366 right now, so about the same as the 9700X, the R7 7700 non-X is $289, the R9 7950X 16-core CPU is $525, and the 7900X is $359. The 9900X’s closest competition at $500 would be AMD’s own 7950X or Intel’s 14700K at $400, with the 14900K at $546 or so. The 14700K will be the most direct alternative, pending results of ongoing Intel microcode and customer support issues.

Editor's note: This was originally published on August 16, 2024 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

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Credits

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Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing

Patrick Lathan

Mike Gaglione

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

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As we’re now 3 stories deep in Zen 5 analysis, we’re going to make these progressively simpler and focus increasingly on the product-level and the value. Let’s get into it.

Test Suite

GamersNexus CPU Test Suite 2024 (9900X Review)

Power & Efficiency	Frequency & Thermal	Production & Workstation	Gaming
All-Core Power	Frequency: All-Core	Blender (Rendering)	Dragon's Dogma 2
Efficiency: Blender	Frequency: Single-Core	Chromium (Compile)	F1 24
Efficiency: Compression	Thermal: All-Core	7-Zip (Compression)	FFXIV: Dawntrail
Efficiency: Decompression		7-Zip (Decompression)	Stellaris
Efficiency: FFXIV		Adobe Photoshop	Baldur's Gate 3
Efficiency: Stellaris		Adobe Premiere
Efficiency: Phantom Liberty		SpecWS: Financial Modeling
		SpecWS: RodiniaCFD
		SpecWS: LAMMPS Biomed

The 9900X review and 9950X review both contain more production benchmarks than gaming. This is because gaming is well represented in our 9700X review, but also because for these CPUs, we firmly believe that the only real reason to test them in gaming is to ensure that they work. The gaming benchmarks are basically just to validate that there are no major unforeseen issues as a result of the core count; once they pass that barrier, we move on.

Tested, Unused

Power & Efficiency	Frequency & Thermal	Production & Workstation	Gaming
Efficiency: Baldur's Gate 3	N/A	Cinebench NT & 1T(Only for validation, see Blender)	Starfield(Pattern represented)
Efficiency: F1 24		SpecWS: 7-Zip(Represented by separate test)	Total War: Warhammer III(Pattern represented)
Efficiency: Starfield		SpecWS: CalculiX CFD(Still validating)	Rainbow Six Siege(Game update & new data needed)
Efficiency: Rainbow Six		SpecWS: Handbrake(Still validating)	1440p Tests(Represented in 9700X review)
		SpecWS: Kirchhoff(Still validating)
		SpecWS: LuxRender(Represented)
		SpecWS: NAMD(Still validating)
		SpecWS: Octave(Still validating)
		SpecWS: Python36(Still validating)
		SpecWS: RodiniaLifeSci(Still validating)
		SpecWS: CalculiX CFD(SRMP)

We also have a list of unused tests. These are tests which we conducted, but haven’t put in the review for one reason or another.

As a reminder, we have over 50 CPUs benchmarked right now, and frequently have 20-30 on the charts. Each of those CPUs undergoes multiple test passes per benchmark, so there are over 4,000 averaged data points that we have collected in the last month for all of these tests. These test suites currently require a few days of testing and analysis per CPU. While we are trying to continually add tests for the audience, we are also eliminating tests which either are redundant and show the same thing as another one.

GN CPU Review Game Tests

Game	Year Released
Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail	2024
Dragon's Dogma 2	2024
F1 24	2024
Baldur's Gate 3	2023
Starfield	2023
Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty	2023
Total War: Warhammer III	2022
Stellaris	2016
Rainbow Six Siege	2015

And as one other quick update, this is our current list of games and their release dates for our test suite. 

As a note, we are aware that there is a new line of commentary along Windows and administrator permissions. Our testing is applied equally to all products and we’re evaluating these as users would use them. If AMD or Microsoft make any changes that affect CPU performance, we will re-evaluate at that time.

Frequency

Frequency - All-Core

All-core frequency starts us off to validate that the CPU is performing as expected. To first re-establish the other recent numbers: With all threads loaded rendering, the 9700X was averaging around 4440-4480MHz all-core, mostly limited by its power budget. The 9950X measured around 5000-5100MHz, commonly around 5000MHz. This was a big jump from the 9700X and is enabled by the higher power budget.

The 9900X plots above all of these so far, typically in the range of 5200-5300MHz. It seems to be striking a balance between the core count and a higher frequency. The CPU has a higher power budget than the 9700X, but less than the 9950X (but it also has fewer cores than the 9950X, which benefits its boosting).

For reference, we’ve provided the results for the 7900X. This one runs around 5150MHz all-core, so reduced from the 9900X. That’ll be good news for the 9900X, as it’s both lower power and higher frequency. The 7900X’s TDP matches that of the 9950X. 

Finally, the 7900 non-X runs around the levels of the 9700X, just with more drops in frequency from bouncing off of the barrier more. This is a 65W TDP part, so the behavior is expected.

Frequency - Single-Core

Single-core frequency boosting is next, tested using the Cinebench 1T test. This plots the maximum frequency of any single core during the interval.

The 9700X started this generation at 5525MHz single-core, followed by our 9950X review with a slightly more variable result of around 5700MHz, with some peaks to 5725MHz. This keeps up the tradition of holding a high frequency on modern Zen architectures and is what enabled the 9950X to pull ahead in some gaming tests.

The 9900X holds at 5625MHz single-core, right between the other two that we’ve reviewed so far. The prior R9 7900X ran a higher single-core frequency of 5700MHz and is benefited here by its higher power budget, so expect to see some back-and-forth with the 9900X in scenarios where only a few threads are loaded. This may be the case in gaming, where sometimes the higher frequency can claw back ground. It’ll depend on architectural improvements, IPC, and what AMD gets done per clock on Zen 5.

Finally, the 7900 maxed-out at a flatlined 5450MHz, below everything.

Thermal Results

We’ll briefly look at thermal results with the same all-core workload. We’re using a Liquid Freezer II 360 at 100% fan speed for all of this testing. We try to emphasize this regularly because temperature is probably the one result with the absolute most confusion and misinformation around it, and always has been.

Temperature is ultimately a manifestation of the power we push through a chip. Because of that, indirectly, one of the best indicators of the temperature is always going to be power. Temperature can be a tough metric to use when basing off of internal CPU sensors because they are not comparable: We see reviewers and users comparing Intel and AMD CPU thermals all the time, and you really can’t directly compare them. It’d make more sense to compare the power draw head-to-head, but not thermals. The thermal sensors are in different places; in fact, just this generation, AMD moved its Tdie sensor in a way that makes the 7000 series not directly comparable. We talked about that in the 9700X review.

Anyway, here’s the result with the same Liquid Freezer II 360 at 100% fan speed in all tests. The 9700X and 9600X are the lowest power of these. The 9700X ends up cooler on Tdie than the 9600X (that much is like-for-like) because it has more cores to spread the same power and heat across. 

The 9700X ran at about 51 degrees Celsius in a 21-22C test environment. The 9600X ran at 58 degrees in the same controlled conditions and at steady state. The 9900X ran at 70 degrees Celsius, with the 9950X at 81 degrees Celsius. Under identical conditions, we’d generally advise a 360mm liquid cooler for a 9950X if you want some room to drop fan speeds for noise levels. The 9900X would do fine with a high-end air cooler or a 280mm liquid cooler. The 9700X and 9600X can use any number of affordable air coolers on the market.

Power Consumption

In a worst case, peak power consumption load where all cores are engaged with rendering, the 9900X pulled 176W at the EPS12V cables. The 7900X that it replaces required 13% more power at 199W, so AMD has definitely improved in all-core power consumption for workloads like this. 

Here are some generational comparisons: The 5900X pulled 133W in the same test and the 3900X (watch our review) pulled 150W. The 5000 series is when AMD really dropped power consumption in big ways and seemed to have the 12- and 16-core CPUs correlate with better voltage bins.

The 7950X required 251W in this test, with the 9950X improving with its 223W result. Overall, this is an area that AMD has been improving in total power consumption, despite setbacks in gaming power efficiency and total power draw that we looked at in our video from a few days ago.

Also, just for fun, we threw Intel’s own 9900 on here -- except it’s the 9900K from 2018 (watch our review) and it pulled 94W. The company also had a 9900X, but it seemed extreme to buy a 6 year old CPU for one joke.

Power Efficiency

Blender Power Efficiency

Power efficiency is up now. We’ll start with the best-case scenario that relates to the prior power consumption chart, which is rendering.

For this one, factoring in total render time in Blender of a frame from our GN logo animation, the 9900X ranked at 22.6 Wh. That puts it about equal with the 9950X, so it’s overall more efficient than the 7900X (which had a 29.9 Wh result). The improvement is huge, as we’ve seen consistently in this test: We’re seeing a reduction of 24% in Watt-hours used during the test, with comparable improvements from the 7950X (watch our review) to the 9950X that we looked at yesterday. The 9700X kicked this all off by achieving the top score for an out-of-box CPU (at 19.2 Wh, behind only the 7950X in Eco Mode and the PPT-limited demo tests). This was a big improvement on both the same-TDP 7700 and the higher TDP 7700X. Zen 5 is looking good in this comparison. 

The 9900X continues the trend of improving on efficiency in this all-core scenario.

7-Zip Compression Efficiency

Testing efficiency with 7-Zip, we’re looking at the millions of instructions per second compressed per Watt. This could also be reduced to “Millions of Instructions Per Joule.” Like the others, this measures power during the test, but then calculates it against the MIPS compression score instead of FPS or minutes.

The R9 9900X completed 1041 MIPS/W, which has it equal to the 7600X for efficiency. The 9950X completed 1003 MIPS/W, where it pulled about 204W during the testing. The 7800X3D is remarkably efficient here, with the 7700 (watch our review) also doing well. 

We don’t see the same gains as we saw in the Blender test and the Zen 5 CPUs are overall less efficient than their preceding counterparts when analyzing compression, which partly has to do with limited ability to continue pushing the performance higher (since efficiency is a metric including performance). We’re adding decompression efficiency now (a first for this suite), which is about the same power consumption, to help demystify this.

7-Zip Decompression Efficiency

Decompression gives the 9950X incredible performance in MIPS, so it’ll be helped in MIPS/W as a result. The 9950X ends up at the top of the cluster behind the 5700X3D. The 9700X does relatively well here, up at 1662 MIPS/W. It’s still behind the R7 7700 with the same TDP, and both are behind the impressively low-power 7800X3D (watch our review). The 7800X3D’s ability to operate at only 70W here is what lets it lead charts so easily. 

This is also a matter of the voltage bin for each CPU, which is a topic we recently talked about in our standalone efficiency video. Check that out for more information.

The new 9900X that we’re reviewing ends up in the middle, about the same efficiency as the R5 5600X and R5 9600X, not distant from the 9950X, and notably better than the 7700X and below. Intel’s CPUs bomb this test thanks to their extremely high power consumption.

Gaming Efficiency - Stellaris

We’ll look at gaming efficiency now, starting with Stellaris.

In Stellaris for simulation time, the 9900X ranked at 1.5 simulations per Watt-hour. Predictably, it is less efficient in gaming workloads than the 9600X at 1.9 Sims/Wh and the 9700X at 1.8 Sims/Wh. The 9900X pulls a little more power but isn’t intended to outrun the R5 and R7 CPUs in gaming, and so it’s ranked instead alongside the 9950X. This is expected behavior; the 9900X and 9950X are really only meant to be capable of gaming, not outperform AMD’s other CPUs.

The 7800X3D is once again a feat of engineering and productization, hitting its stride with a 3.0 simulations/Wh score.

Intel’s CPUs mostly cluster around a 1.0 scoring, with the 14600K finding a much better balance at 1.5.

Gaming Efficiency - Phantom Liberty

Phantom Liberty had the 9900X at about 105W during the test, which landed it at around 1.6FPS/W. That ranking has it functionally tied with the 9950X, which pulled 119W here, and the 5800X, which pulled 90W. The 9700X is a better balance for Zen 5, up at 2.2FPS/W. The 9700X is tied with the 7700 non-X and outperformed by the preceding R5 CPUs and the X3D CPUs.

We don’t have Intel CPUs on this chart yet.

Gaming Efficiency - FFXIV

Final Fantasy: Dawntrail had the 9900X at 4.3 FPS/W, which aligns it with the 9700X and 14600K. AMD’s architecture is still more efficient than Intel’s for out-of-box settings, but it has defeated itself with some of its past CPU choices.

AMD R9 9900X Production Workloads

As in our 9950X review, we focus our 12-core and 16-core reviews on production workloads because these CPUs are more likely to be used in those tests. We still test gaming just to make sure things work properly, but we focus on non-gaming scenarios for these “mini-HEDT” parts.

SpecWS: RodiniaCFD

First up is RodiniaCFD, which we added after working with Wendell of Level1 Techs, a neutral third-party, and AMD to validate our findings. We had to get some external help validating our findings before publishing this chart because the numbers were so distant from other charts, and we always want to make sure any outliers are confirmed valid test results. In seeking peer review, we were able to confirm our findings between the 7950X and 9950X shown here, where the 9950X posts an uncharacteristically large 28-29% uplift over the 7950X. This was confirmed by both Level1 and AMD, both of whom sent us their test results for our own verification.

The 9900X sees a smaller uplift closer to 10% over the 7900X here, but consider that it’s at a 50W lower advertised TDP. This would be another situation where the Zen 5 CPUs may offer better efficiency and also better performance. We’ll talk about this chart in more detail in our HW News episode, but we wanted to shove it in here as well since the 9950X does phenomenally as compared to the other 21 or so tests we ran on it. The 9900X is also a good performer here when considering the power drop. Just as one note, this chart is not 100% confirmed yet. It is still what we consider an experimental test, which means we’re leaving some room here for changes in the event we find something related to the benchmark software or how it’s executing that drops below our standards in the future, but we did want to share this because we think it’s an important data point and we did some basic peer review with it and our numbers aligned with theirs.  

Blender

Rendering in Blender is up first. For this, the 9900X completed the work in 7.7 minutes. That has it just ahead of the 14900K’s 7.9-minute result for our intro animation and benefiting from a 14% reduction in time required from the 7900X’s 9-minute result. The 7900 (watch our review) is slower still, at 10.6 minutes, with the 9700X at 13.2 minutes. That allows the 9900X a render time requirement reduction of 43% against the 9700X, which makes sense with the core count increase. 

Generationally, the 5900X required 12.4 minutes, giving the 9900X a reduction of 38% in total render time for this one frame.

The 9950X and 7950X both lead the 9900X, with the 9950X offering a render time reduction of 23% total time required. If you’re debating whether the extra cost is worth it, that should help form a decision.

Chromium Code Compile

Up next is Chromium code compile. As with all tests, a single benchmark of a workload can only truly represent that workload. This is what we use for compile testing right now. Other compile workloads can and do differ.

The 9900X required 80 minutes to complete this code compile, which has it tied with the 14700K (watch our review). The 9950X completed the compile with a total time reduction of 17.6% with its 66-minute result, with the 7950X leading the 9900X with a reduction in total time of 8.5%.

The 7900X required 87 minutes for this work, giving the 9900X a 7.7% time reduction. That gap grows with the 7900 non-X and its lower power budget.

Generationally, the most interesting improvement is a 33% time requirement reduction against the 5900X (watch our review), dropping from 120 minutes to 80 minutes.

The only Intel CPU ahead of the 9900X is the i9 lineup of 14900K (read our review) and 13900K options.

7-Zip Compression

In 7-Zip file compression, the 9900X completed 168.9K MIPS, landing it between the 7900X (3.5% improved) and the 14700K (itself 3.4% ahead of the 9900X). The 14700K looks to be the direct competition to the 9900X, assuming Intel resolves its issues without collateral damage.

There aren’t many upgrade options without going to true HEDT: The 9950X would grant a further uplift of 21% in MIPS, just ahead of the 7950X. The 14900K at 188K MIPS would improve about 11%.

Generationally, the jump over the 5900X is large: The 9900X moves to 168,992 from the 5900X’s 123,278 MIPS.

7-Zip Decompression

In file decompression, the 9900X completed 217.5K MIPS and landed between the 13900K and the 14900K CPUs. It’s actually below the 5950X here, so we’re seeing more benefit from just raw core count in this particular benchmark than some others. Another example is the 5800X outperforming the 7600X, or the 3950X outmatching the 5900X, which is just a prior generation representation of the same thing.

The 9950X and 7950X set a high ceiling in this test, with the 9950X leading the 9900X by 29%.

The 14700K remains a good competitor, but it allows the 9900X to gain a lead of 8% in this benchmark.

Adobe Photoshop

In Adobe Photoshop with the Puget Suite, the 9900X’s completion of filters, scales, warps, blend modes, blend layers, and other functions gave it a score of 11,385 points. That ties it with the 9950X, where both see a slight loss in performance compared to the 9700X. This test is more thread-limited and will not benefit as much from huge core counts, unlike what we just saw in decompression. That’s OK, but that’s why we run so many tests: It allows us to show all kinds of different software scenarios.

The 9900X still does well if this is a side task you might do on your machine, ultimately remaining among the best. In this test right now, the Intel CPUs fall below about a quarter of the total entries we have, which are AMD. This appears to have shifted from an Intel favor in years past to an AMD favor today.

Adobe Premiere

Adobe Premiere is up next, also with the Puget suite. In this one, the 9900X scored 10380 points, again roughly tying it with the 14700K. In Premiere testing with the extended workload, the 9950X pulls ahead by 5.5%. There’s not a big benefit to the cores here, but the lineup makes a little more sense than in Photoshop.

The 9900X outdoes the 7900X only marginally, at 2.8% total uplift. The lead over the prior 5900X is 26%.

SpecWS: Financial Simulations

Spec Workstation is up now. This is testing financial simulations like probability calculations, options modeling, and similar tests. This is a workstation task scored in aggregate.

The 9900X scored 7.27 in the Open Spec testing, which improves it upon the 7900X by 8.8%. The 9950X leads this chart currently, at least until we run Threadripper through again, at 9.47 (a 30% uplift over the 9900X). Intel’s 14700K trails the 9900X here, with the 14900K ahead of it.

SpecWS: LAMMPS

The next Spec test is for LAMMPS biomedical modeling. In this benchmark, the 9900X scored 6.06, which ranked it as tied with the 13700K. The 14700K leads by 8%. If you’re considering the 9900X vs. the 9950X, then the improvement of the 9950X would be about 14.4%.

Uplift of the 9900X over the 7900X is 4.5% here. Not bad since the power also went down.

AMD R9 9900X Gaming Benchmarks

We’ll keep the gaming tests short for this one, just like we did for the 9950X. The goal is to verify that it works properly. The 7800X3D will predictably remain the top choice for new gaming machines.

GN CPU Review Game Tests

Game	Year Released
Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail	2024
Dragon's Dogma 2	2024
F1 24	2024
Baldur's Gate 3	2023
Starfield	2023
Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty	2023
Total War: Warhammer III	2022
Stellaris	2016
Rainbow Six Siege	2015

Here’s the list of games we’ve been testing this time around. We made it a point to undergo a massive overhaul to our game benchmarks, so most of what we use now is from 2023 and 2024. This has been pretty awesome since some of the newer games are starting to really scale with core counts 8 and above.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is up first, a 2024 title.

In Dragon’s Dogma 2, the 9900X ran at 90 FPS AVG with lows spaced proportionally, based on neighboring results. Cores are parked for the 9900X and 9950X, so they’re basically 9700X CPUs -- but with a higher power budget. This has the 9950X ahead of the 9700X as a result, for reasons we showed in our 9950X review. The 93 FPS AVG result is repeatable. The 9900X is tied with the 9700X and 7700X (watch our review). Uplift over the 7900X is 2.7%.

As before, the leader remains the 7800X3D. In a gaming scenario, you can expect an uplift in our custom testing in the big city here amounting to about 21% for the 7800X3D over the 9900X.

The 14900K is also up top, but technically behind the 7800X3D. The 14700K that the 9900X was neck-and-neck with in many production tests is also shown favorable gaming performance.

F1 24

F1 24 is another 2024 title, clearly, and has the 9900X at 383 FPS AVG, just ahead of the 9700X and behind the 9950X. These 3 CPUs are functionally about the same. The 14900K lands alongside them.

Chart leaders include not only the 7800X3D, but the two-generation-old 5800X3D CPU at 400 FPS AVG.

The 9900X is at least running properly and without a performance sacrifice.

FFXIV: Dawntrail

In Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, the 9900X ran at about 333FPS AVG, which roughly ties it with the 9700X and 5600X3D (read our review). The 5600X3D is enough alone to demonstrate that there are better value pure gaming parts, as we’ve been saying, but it doesn’t scale anywhere close to the 9900X in the production strengths we saw earlier. It all depends on your use case.

The 7800X3D sets the ceiling at 363 FPS AVG in this one. The 9950X leads the 9900X on a technicality. The 7900 underperforms here: Its 65W TDP is limiting its power availability to boost, and so the 7700 non-X at the same TDP is better able to leverage that power budget across fewer cores to boost higher, which Dawntrail favors.

Stellaris

Stellaris simulation time is next. Despite being among the oldest two games in our bench suite, and the only ones that pre-date 2022, Stellaris remains remarkable as we test simulation time rather than framerate.

The 9900X required on average 30 seconds to complete the simulation. Leaders here remain the 9700X, 9950X, and then 7800X3D. Some of these are within error of each other. The 14900K entries are both near the 9900X, though it has a technical lead over both the 14900K with standardized RAM and the 14700K, the two of which are within run-to-run variance of each other. Improvement over the 7900X is about 10% less time to simulate.

Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 is last for games. Tested at 1080p, we found the 9900X to run at 104 FPS AVG, which is 2.9% ahead of the R9 7900 and exactly equal with the 7900X. There is no improvement in this situation.

AMD R9 9900X Conclusion

We have other games tested, but we’ll stop there since the focus was on production, power, and thermals. We’ve established that its gaming performance is predictable.

For the 7900X vs. 9900X, performance across the board illustrates improvements in the range of 0% to 10%, depending on the use case. Production applications commonly see 3% to 7% uplift, with some at 10%. 

Efficiency was explored in our deep-dive a few days ago and it’d be great if you check it out. That video got buried algorithmically when we posted our 9950X review so close to it, so we want to make sure people are aware it exists. You’ll get a deep-dive on this topic there.

Broadly speaking, currently, it makes more sense to buy AMD’s previous generation CPUs. The 14700K is also worth consideration; however, we are still on pause for our recommendations of Intel pending exploratory testing of its new microcode and support processes.

There are a lot of angles to consider for a new product. Some consumers focus on value and performance for that value, and people who fit that camp will find our reviews the most productive. From a value standpoint, we think that Zen 4 currently offers better value at comparable efficiency in many use cases. While we are aware that some heavier number crunching workloads, like AVX-512 work in Linux, may present higher performance, it is not anything that shows up in our suite that we presented earlier with perhaps 1-2 exceptions.
As a consumer-oriented review outlet with a focus on value, our recommendations would currently be Zen 4 alternatives. This includes the 7950X for core-bound workloads, as its price is extremely competitive with Zen 5, and the 7800X3D for gaming-focused builds. The 14700K is competitive in many cases with the 9900X, but again, we are currently undertaking a full test of Intel’s microcode before resuming recommendations.

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