Temperatures
Right away, the performance is really good here, not the best, but certainly on the high-performance side of things using stock settings.
Optimisation goes a long way though, seeing both an increase in performance but also a very tasty drop in temperatures, and even our lowest idle temperature yet!
Acoustics
The fans are whisper quiet at stock, but push them hard and I did find they hit 100% a little too early for my liking. There was some noticeable, but fairly minor, vibration from the fans too, which clearly didn’t like being pushed too max RPM.
Of course, if you’re pushing your fans to full RPM, it’s likely overkill, and as with most fans, they’re quiet as can be at 30-70% speeds, which is more than enough, the fan curve did sort its self out when we got the optimised settings in though, resulting in just 48 dBa.
CineBench R23
The stock Cinebench score was decent, competing with everything else just fine, and closely matching the similarly priced Assassin IV.
However, once optimised, the overclock and lower temperatures, as well as lower noise levels, came together in harmony, and delivered our highest Cinebench score yet!
