in the initial review for the nr200p max the out of the box
thermals were perhaps a bit sub optimal so what i did was reconfigured everything
and tested pretty much all the reasonable fan configurations both with the 3080fe card that
the case was built up with originally and also a card drawing half the power let's max out the max
welcome to machines and more i hope you all enjoyed the review of the energy and pmax and
found it helpful i did spend some time getting fancy with the fans and honed in on what i think
are the best configurations for this case at the time of this video's release there's a bit
of uncertainty in terms of retail availability and as of yesterday the case is technically launched
worldwide but actual stock could be arriving october or mid-november and i will let you guys
know if i hear something more concrete the best way to get those updates is hit that subscribe
button down there and the bell for notifications thanks a lot good news is it might be a little
bit early to start thinking about configuring the case but you do have quite a bit of time to think
about how you might want to set it up and get the equipment that you need to do that and i think
after you see this video you'll have a better idea as to the thermals for a fully optimized nr200p
max system just a quick recap out of the box the max case is set up with a top mounted 280 with the
fans in top exhaust and the potential issue here is that under combined usage with a graphics card
such as in gaming where your gpu will be at a high utilization that hot gpu exhaust is going to be
sucked through the top radiator and makes your cpu cooling a lot less efficient the addition of
the nf a 12 by 15 slim fan and the nfa 12 by 25 fan at the bottom did make it work a lot better
but we'll drill down today as to what the best setup is and that actually will vary somewhat
depending on which panel whether the vented or the glass panel that you choose to use
if you're new to pc building and many of you will be given the audience for the max
you might ask why does this matter well if it gets bad enough your cpu could hit the temp at which it
thermally throttles or holds back performance in order to protect itself i don't think we're quite
there yet despite how much heat of 3080 outputs i mean there's a lot of headroom with a 280
but still this is also dependent on the model and the tdp of your cpu and also how much power your
gpu draws but more pertinent at this level is the cpu or gpu's boost frequency how critical
the thermals are varies based on your boost algorithm but generally speaking the cooler you
go the higher and faster those components will be running and you'll get better performance and if
you don't really care about that if even if your particular application won't benefit meaningfully
from those higher boost clocks another practical reason this matters is that even if you're okay
with a band of thermals for your components when your system is fully optimized you
can achieve those same thermals with lower fan speeds which will give you lower noise
before we get into the numbers and there will be quite a few in this one i did want to clearly
define the fan configurations there are four fan configurations that i tested the first one is
bottom intake and top exhaust so this is the stock setup with the addition of bottom fans second is
bottom exhaust and top exhaust so air is leaving from both the top and the bottom of the case third
is bottom intake and top intake so that's the opposite air is coming in both through the top
and the bottom and finally bottom exhaust and top intake with air following a downwards path
the fans aren't difficult to switch out the easiest way is just to unscrew the radiator
and to remove the front top horizontal bar just pull out the rad flip the fans as needed
for the first set of configurations let's talk about the glass panel and while glass panels
look great especially with this case because you can see your graphics card front and center
they also limit how air can come in or leave so getting the right setup is pretty key here in
general and excluding full custom loops systems with glass panels tend to work pretty well
when airflow is balanced meaning air comes in one end and more or less the
same amount leaves the other end getting into the results with the 3080 founders edition card
which is about a 325 watt card for the combined heaven 4.0 and blender cpu benchmark run right
off the bat we can eliminate two configurations configuration two here is clearly the worst it
yields the highest gpu temps and the highest cpu temps and from a practical standpoint it makes
absolutely no sense since this would draw makeup air from the back of the case and that limits the
gpu's airflow while also pushing that gpu heat through the radiator configuration three is also
clearly beat by configuration four so now the good news is we're left with two viable ones to compare
i think either can work but the difference here is about 12 degrees of cpu temps for about 4 degrees
of gpu temps so ultimately it depends on how much you prioritize either but personally i'd go for
configuration 4 and that's similar to how the og nr200p was tested too except with the 240 and this
is just the same airflow configurations flipped upside down and temps are pretty comparable
between the two and like for like we're seeing an expected improvement in cpu tabs now because
of the 280 round on the max versus the 240 on the og case the benefit of this top intake bottom
exhaust setup is you can always just drop the rad fans a little bit and then up your gpu fan
speeds and i think this would still end up better than the stock configuration with bottom fans
i also popped in a more conventional card the 6600 xt pulse card is for an upcoming review
but sapphire was cool enough to let me use it for thermal testing with this case first so big thanks
to them for their kind gesture this card exhausts out the two ends and a card like this is also very
sff friendly since about half of the exhaust is already leaving your case it consumes about half
the power as the 3080f ebit are the implications different here well in fact not at all we see
mostly the same implications here configurations two and three are clearly bested by either one or
four so again there's no sense in running either of those kind of odd airflow setups but because of
the low power draw here on the card the severity of the impact to the cpu thermals is diminished
either setup is still viable in one direction you have six degrees of cpu temps for about five and
a half degrees of gpu temps i think both are actually plenty serviceable and yeah the 6600
xt temps are pretty impressive right even if it's only 5700 xc level of performance junction temps
or not my 5700 xt never ran anywhere close to these temps so yeah it's a pretty interesting card
i still might choose the bottom exhaust and the top intake configuration here though just
because it's pretty balanced the more power your cpu draws at load the less headroom you have and
that will make this one more attractive anyway the other thing is well cpu-only temps are also better
when your radiator is intaking to be fair though at this level of power draw which is
pretty low overall but you know a lot of folks will be running a similar setup you could do the
exact wrong thing with this case and it still won't cause any huge problems just because of
how much headroom a 280 has and how gentle this gpu is but yeah there's a noise benefit
like i mentioned before and you can just run fans quieter when you have things optimized next up we
have the mesh panel and things are a little bit different with the mesh panel because it allows
us to use fans to mold the airflow pattern and encourage airflow in and out of the panel
you might have heard that with vented sandwich style cases a negative pressure or exhausting
system works well and that's because it encourages airflow through the side panels
and since you usually have a vertical gpu and or a top-down air cooler that is in close proximity
to those side panels the air coming into the side panels helps those coolers perform well
by giving them fresh air about here this is not a sandwich style case but you have a vertical gpu
in front of the side panel taking a look at the data here let's just do our little process of
elimination first configuration one and three are clearly beaten by either configuration
two or four so let's just keep two and four around as you can see the negative pressure
top exhaust and bottom exhaust combo actually does perform quite well especially for gpu thermals
and the balanced bottom exhaust and top intake that was great with the glass panel is also
quite good here especially for the cpu thermals the vented panel with the vertical gpu wasn't
a configuration i tested with the og case simply because there's not a really huge reason to set it
up that way if you're going to be using the vented panel anyway with the nr200 side mounted radiator
is preferable and just to bring up that data point it lands somewhere in the middle of the two
the lower powered graphics card not much changes except the magnitude of the thermals and with
either of the top intakes we're seeing just slightly better temps than with the higher
powered gpu which makes sense given that it is intaking directly from outside the case
and they are slightly better because the ambient case temp isn't as warm due to the lower power gpu
again here we can eliminate both one and three right away and if we just take a look at two
and four yeah both are really good and i think if you're running the vented panel with the max
both of these configurations are worth considering if you're looking to prioritize gpu thermals the
top and bottom exhausting negative pressure setup is very good but just know that the higher your
gpu's power draw gets the more you might consider the balance top intake and bottom exhaust since
that way your cpu temps won't be as adversely impacted by that hot gpu if you're looking to
use both panels interchangeably i just stick with the bottom exhaust and the top intake option since
that's the one configuration that works well with either not to mention the better cpu only temps as
well so i hope that gives you a good idea of the potential of this case that compared to the nr200p
it doesn't look to be a huge difference with similar setups and when optimized i think these
thermals are absolutely best in class amongst sff cases urgent time for a quick q a table i wanted
to know from the last video what the noise was like and yeah i'll give you just a quick series of
sound bites between the vented and the glass panel the glass panel muffles the sound that's
coming from the case and it generally measures in about half a decibel quieter take a listen
all right that'll do it for this one and i'll do one talking about some recommended
components when the pre-orders start and i am planning on doing a build guide for this when
you guys get your cases and at some point let's do a custom loop in this one just cuz right
give a like subscribe if you haven't already links are down below thanks for watching