Corsair Graphite Series 600T: Cool and Quiet
by Dustin Sklavos on November 26, 2010 2:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- 600T
Thermal and Noise Testing
For testing the 600T, I actually used the components from my personal system in the Antec P182. Noise was measured using an Extech SL10 sound meter, while temperatures were measured conventionally using HWMonitor. The test system specs are as follows:
| Test Configuration | |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-930 overclocked to 3.6GHz, undervolted to 1.125v |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R rev. 2.0 |
| Graphics Card | XFX Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 |
| Memory | 3x4GB Corsair Value Select DDR3-1333 |
| Drives |
Memorex DVD+/-RW Combo Drive LG HD-DVD/Blu-ray/DVDRW Combo Drive 2x Western Digital Caviar Blue 640GB (RAID 1) 2x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB (RAID 0) Kingston SSDNow 64GB |
| CPU Cooler | Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283 w/ Nexus Silent 120mm Fan |
| Power Supply | Corsair 750HX Modular Power Supply |
My machine isn't particularly noisy to begin with, but it's reasonably powerful and the Core i7-930 can still generate its share of heat. To generate load temperatures and noise, I ran 3DMark06 in a loop with Prime95 in the background and left it running for fifteen minutes at a time. The system was tested with the fan controller at its lowest and highest settings, and the sound meter was positioned one foot away from the tower, on a tripod, pointed directly at the side of the case.
Right away we can tell the fan noise isn't appreciably higher with the controller maxed, but these numbers are also excellent. Subjectively, it has to be nearly dead silent in the apartment for me to be able to hear the tower running, idle or under load. And for those that are curious, the Nexus 120mm fan produces temperatures comparable to the Xigmatek's stock fan at substantially lower RPMs and noise levels.
Once we move into temperature testing, we can see that temperatures are generally pretty solid and that yes, all the other reviews are right: the fan controller and differing fan speeds just don't matter that much. The 200mm fans do seem to move enough air to keep everything fairly cool given the extreme load the system was placed under for stress testing. Since the hard drives are directly behind the front intake, they also remain exceptionally cool. As Martha Stewart would say, it's a good thing.
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philosofa - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
As I have nothing better to do.. ;)- Anandtech is a site that seems to draw its reviewers primarily from, and is geared in large part towards, the US audience.
- England is not a sovereign nation, the country is called the United Kingdom, or Britain. - If you need help locating this nation on a map you could ask your grandparents :P
- Britain officially measures in the metric system, with the exclusion of distances, which are denoted in miles (aka a 'funnny' measurement). There is the odd exception (e.g. heights are still often given in feet colloquially), but if Anandtech were a British site, you'd be finding the measurements in metric.
killerclick - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
They should also have fan diameters in Imperial.Folterknecht - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
I don't have to ask my (grand)parents where to find GB on a map. On 27th of june this year we sent them back to their islands :-)But I remember an event back in the late 1990s - an international spacemission to mars failed, because some idiots were unable to use standart measurements.
As a website that deals with electronics and not corn prices in Iowa, additional specification in metric system for all people interestet isn't to much to ask?!
philosofa - Saturday, November 27, 2010 - link
I believe as at the 27th of November you're also planning to send other immigrants back to their homelands due to German multiculturalism having "failed, utterly failed"* ? I think you'll find that the match you were referring to was the England team, not GB if we're being pedantic (ok I'm being desperate with the last comment, good game and well won Deutschland, England was utterly outclassed) .The mission failed because the scientists -mixed- imperial and metric measurements, which is also arguably a good case for not ever using both lol. However troll physics aside I have to agree given the presumably large international readership of Anandtech it would be very sensible to at least have metric, I just think it's unfair to get self-righteous about it as it's an American site and we can all look it up easily.
*Chancellor Merkel
vol7ron - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
I don't get why any fan has a manual fan speed this day in age. Do the mobos not have enough inputs?Fan noise should never be a factor when it comes to cooling, you should set a temperature and have the processing units decide what needs to be done in order to keep things at that temperature.
I think if people want fan controls, they should look at case add-ons that fit into pci slots or drive bays.
Naennon - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
i really like the 600Tperfect cable management and it is HUGE! for a midi tower case
the included fancontrol can control 4 fans from 10 to 12V
it's not silent at all.. so i've used some 7V adapter to keep it silent
you can take a look at a 600T used for my rig
http://www.sysprofile.de/id86892
that case provides a lot of cooling options
the front fan can take the phobya 200mm radiator
the top fan can handle a dual 120 radiator in cooperation with 2 x 120 fans or with some modding
you can put that 200mm fan outside the case but within the top cage
and you can use another 200mm radiator
this is a dual 200mm radiator watercooling!!! nearly the same performance as two 360 radiators will do!
finally this case is great and i love it :)
sorry for the crowd-english! :D
Phoenixlight - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
This is certainly not a cool case, if you actually compare it to other cases it sucks at cooling:http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2010/09/23/...
Dustin Sklavos - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
You'd better tell mine that, then, because it's running nice and frosty.Phoenixlight - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
Well you can see the results for yourself in the link I posted, if you've replace the stock fans and use LN2 then that's something different.erple2 - Saturday, November 27, 2010 - link
The problem is that for Dustin's review, he evaluated the results that he saw, not what some other (random) review site may or may not have seen. I have no reason to believe that Dustin is lying, so I stand by Dustin's comments above.I'm sure that you can cobble together a more expensive rig that has better cooling characteristics, with custom fans, and additional pieces. However, at the end of the day, this review was about the stock 600T case. Dustin showed what the temperatures were, plain and simple. It would have been nice to compare the temps directly with the P182 in the review, but other than that, the temperatures all look fine.