Performance:

Upon booting the test equipment in the Gigabyte Cupio 6140, the machine was almost completely silent, with the only noise on boot coming from the stock Intel heatsink on the Core2Duo E6300 – which is normal for those heatsinks. Booting into Windows XP took precisely the same time, given the exact same hardware, there should not be a difference. But, the meticulous mind wondered.

While the Gigabyte Cupio 6140 is a beauty to look at, and enjoyable to build in, concerns about the foam and door arose. Anytime a non-metallic sound dampening layer is added, chances are good temperatures will rise as foam or other materials act as an insulator. And as mentioned, the door does not have any ventilation, so fresh air flow will be inhibited.

The test components are in daily use as a Folding@Home box. Two instances of CPU Folding, plus one of GPU Folding keep the machine running at 100% processor usage, and the GPU also runs full bore. Normally, this set-up resides in an older Antec T1040B Full-Tower case with three 80mm fans (one intake, two exhaust). As a reference to check, I ran Speedfan v4.39 to record temperatures – with an ambient room temperature of 75’F. As the image below shows, the video card runs warm at 76C, and the hard drive is 39C.



With the door fully open on the Cupio 6140, airflow at the rear of the case was quite good, with a hint of warmth to the touch. Closing the door fully seemed to diminish the airflow at the back. Leaving the door closed, I allowed the machine about 5 minutes to begin Folding@Home on both processor cores and the GPU. After the time had elapsed, I recorded Speedfan on the Cupio 6140. My worries were abolished as the GPU temperature was 2C cooler than in the old Antec case. The hard drives also were running cooler as well, and the CPU was 67C. Maybe extra sound dampening inside the case isn’t necessarily a bad thing.



After recording with the door closed, I opened the door fully, and ran the same test – 5 minutes to settle, then capture with Speedfan. Again, 2 Folding@Home Processor instances and 1 F@H GPU were running during this time. The only change was the CPU temperature – 1C cooler. So the issue of a solid door blocking air is a non-issue.



All of the ports worked perfectly, and the machine is nearly dead-silent. The only indication that the machine is on is the power button and the hard drive LED in the door’s hinge.