PCMark 10 Express Test

The PCMark 10 Express benchmark focuses on the performance needs of a typical office worker. It is less demanding than the main PCMark 10 test. This test is around ~ 10mins and makes several typical scenarios predefined from the developers.

Locking the CPU ratio at 37X gave good performance and all different scenarios gave more or less same performance. Of course the best performance came with the extra NF-A12x25 LS-PWM fan on top blowing air out of the case.

PCMark 10 Extended Test

PCMark 10 Extended is a longer test that provides organizations with a complete assessment of system performance beyond typical office work tasks. PCMark 10 Extended expands the main PCMark 10 benchmark with demanding graphics and physics tests that focus on GPU and CPU performance.

At this test, things were much serious. Despite forcing the motherboard at 1.1V, due to the increased power delivery demand from the Auto Overclocking, the best performance came from inside the Bequiet! Silent Base 0802 case with the extra NF-A12x25 LS-PWM fan on top blowing air out of the case.

PCMark 10 Aplications Test

The PCMark 10 Applications benchmark measures practical, real-world PC performance for the modern workplace with tests that run in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Edge.

This is the least demanding test in terms of temperatures. we got the lowest temperatures when CPU cooler is placed inside the case with the extra on top.

Benchmark PC performance against the demands of a typical photo-editing workflow. This benchmark measures the performance of Windows PCs designed for creators, enthusiasts and creative professionals. The benchmark uses Adobe® Lightroom® to import, process and modify a selection of images. In the second part of the test, multiple edits and layer effects are applied to a photograph in Adobe® Photoshop®.

At this test we saw up to 2 temperatures difference when installing the extra NF-A12x25 LS-PWM fan blowing hot air out the case.

Benchmark and compare the video-editing performance of Windows PCs aimed at creators, enthusiasts and creative professionals. This test is based on the typical workflow when creating content for online video sharing platforms. The benchmark uses Adobe® Premiere® Pro to export video project files to common formats. Each video project includes various edits, adjustments and effects. The benchmark score is based on the time taken to export the videos.

When there are high loads and long period of CPU stressing performance differences could be high as 5 celcious depending the sensor, we look for.

AIDA64 Stability Test

AIDA64 System Stability Test uses a 64-bit multi-threaded stress testing module to drive the computer to its absolute limits. Hard disk, SSD and OpenCL GPGPU video adapter stress testing is also available.

AIDA64 is a well-known benchmark and stability test application. At this test we got around 1-2 celcious difference when testing the Noctua NH-P1 passive CPU cooler, with or without a fan on top.

Prime95

Prime95 has been a popular choice for stress / torture testing a CPU since its introduction, especially with overclockers and system builders. Since the software makes heavy use of the processor's integer and floating point instructions, it feeds the processor a consistent and verifiable workload to test the stability of the CPU and the L1/L2/L3 processor cache. Additionally, it uses all of the cores of a multi-CPU / multi-core system to ensure a high-load stress test environment.

Torture testing the Noctua NH-P1 with full passive was not a great idea, since we measured up to 97 celcious. Despite that, the CPU didn't thermal throttle. When we removed CPU lock and we left the motherboard free to overclock, we actually saw lower CPU clocks, due to low CPU Vcore value (1.1). As it seems the demanding loads from Prime95 cannot be handled from the set 1.1 volt we used to compare with equal terms all CPU coolers. Again the extra fan does help further reducing the CPU temperatures.