Building The SHIFT, Maingear's DIY Kit
Thermal and Acoustic Performance
When we fired up our DIY SHIFT for the first time, the first thing we did after OS and driver installation, was to take a look at system vital signs with Intel's Desktop Utilities software.
Stock speeds for CPU and GPU, Full Load, Stock Speeds - Core i7-3960X w/ Dual GeForce GTX 580s
Our CPU was hovering around a nippy 29ºC at idle on the desktop and the rest of the Vreg temperatures on the Intel X79 motherboard were also pretty tepid. Intel's PCH (Platform Controller Hub) Southbridge chip was the warmest of the bunch, registering 43ºC, which is still pretty mild obviously.
And of course, we stress tested things a bit.
;)
Stock speeds for CPU and GPU, Full Load, Stock Speeds - Core i7-3960X w/ Dual GeForce GTX 580s
Under full CPU and GPU workload, CPU temps hovered around 50ºC and our GPUs scaled up to the low 70s. Thermals inside this build are impressive to be sure. Acoustics under load were also completely unoffensive, even the dual GeForce GTX 580s didn't seem to spool up that much. In short, our DIY SHIFT is one cool and quiet system. We'll be experimenting with overclocking in the future but all of the above readings were taken at stock speeds.
