BitFenix Ghost Case Review: Begging for the Premium Treatment

Noise and Thermal Testing, Overclocked

Having been fairly underwhelmed with performance at stock settings, I experienced some trepidation when it came time to test the BitFenix Ghost under much more stressful circumstances. The essential problem is this: making tradeoffs for silence over performance mostly works out under more moderate loads, but high performance and/or overclocked hardware can stress the case's cooling enough to actually negate the sound dampening aspects of the design.

At the same time, I was also optimistic that the fans from be quiet! might acquit themselves better still under the overclocked settings.

There's no nice way to say it: without modified cooling, the BitFenix Ghost's thermal performance under our overclocked testbed is pretty poor. The Ghost needs additional airflow to get truly competitive thermals; the system didn't overheat the way Lian Li's PC-A55 did, but I'd still hesitate to call the thermals any more than "barely adequate" under this much stress.

Fan speeds tell the same story.

With all that in mind, the Ghost is at least successful in keeping noise levels down, but once again it's clear you really do need to add just the right amount of cooling to hit a sweet spot with this chassis design. Idle noise remains quite low, and adding some quiet fans can help bring load noise down substantially.

I'm of the opinion that while performance does improve noticeably with the door removed, the improvement isn't enough to make me suggest the case is being outright suffocated by keeping the door closed. It's a reduction in airflow to be sure, but not a catastrophic one. At the same time, it does negate the Ghost's primary reason for being: muffling noise.