NZXT Nemesis and Nemesis Elite

Benchmarking - Thermal

Describing the cooling equipment that comes with a case just doesn't cut it for us. We need to see how it actually performs to see if it is actually as effective as what the manufacturer's say it is. We have hand-picked a full system, which we believe is the current system setup for the average user.

PC Mid-Tower Test Bed
Chaintech VNF3-250 AMD Athlon64 3200+ OCZ PC3200 DDR x 2 Zalman CNPS7000 Copper Seagate Barracuda 120GB SATA ATI 9800XT OCZ 520W PowerStream	Click to enlarge.

The thermal readings for the key components and points on the motherboard during operation were as follows. The numbers in each square represent the temperature of that particular section of the case in degrees celsius:

Nemesis
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Nemesis Elite
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It was obvious from the beginning that the Elite model would perform better in our thermal benchmarks, since it had three total 120mm fans whereas the steel model of the Nemesis had only two. The ambient air in the Elite model was 1-2 degrees cooler, on average compared to the steel model. And we can safely assume that the extra case fan made a difference, since it is proven that aluminum has no effect on thermal conditions.

Take a look at the temperature readings of each critical component in our test rig.

Nemesis
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Nemesis Elite
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Though not as drastic as the ambient air, the temperatures of each component were, on average, about 1 degree lower when testing the Elite model. Again, the extra case fan managed to help out a bit. The missing fan at the front of the steel case added a few degrees to the HDD during peak churning times as you can see from our results.