**Thermal Management and CPU Performance**

In this article, we're going to explore the thermal management and CPU performance of a case mod. We'll examine how reducing throttling and increasing the CPU frequency can lead to significant improvements in temperature and performance.

The original task saw an average CPU frequency of 40-35 MHz, while the modded version averaged 43-42 MHz. However, it's essential to note that this isn't due to some weird variable frequency; rather, the frequency was locked at a stable value. The intended target for this test bench is always 4400 MHz.

Reducing throttling and increasing the CPU frequency had a noticeable impact on both performance and temperature. Not only did these changes result in reduced temperatures, but they also helped to eliminate the effects of throttling, which can be detrimental to overall system performance.

**Thermal Results**

In our tests, we observed significant improvements in thermal management. The no-filter test saw an improvement in frequency as well as a substantial reduction in temperature. Specifically, the CPU temperature dropped from 64.2°C (originally) to 50.5°C (with the mod).

The addition of fans proved to be crucial in achieving these results. By adding a fan pointed at the front of the case, we were able to create a straight airflow pattern through the tower, which helped to dissipate heat more effectively.

**Challenges and Limitations**

However, there are several challenges and limitations associated with this mod. Firstly, it's essential to acknowledge that modifying a case can be a significant undertaking, requiring careful planning and execution.

Additionally, the use of fans can sometimes lead to uneven airflow patterns or compartmentalization, which can negatively impact thermal performance. In this case, we observed some issues with the GPU thermals due to the video card being positioned at the top of the case, which created an air barrier that trapped hot air near the CPU.

**Modding the Case**

The mod itself was a fun exercise in improving thermal management and CPU performance. While it's clear that some corners were cut during the design process (given the micro ATX case's adaptation for ATX components), we still managed to achieve some impressive results.

If you're considering modifying your own case, it's essential to keep these challenges in mind and approach the project with caution. The modding process can be trial-and-error, requiring patience and persistence.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, our case mod has demonstrated that reducing throttling and increasing CPU frequency can lead to significant improvements in temperature and performance. However, achieving optimal results requires careful planning, attention to detail, and a willingness to experiment with different configurations.

If you're interested in exploring more thermal management techniques or improving your own system's performance, we encourage you to do so. There are many resources available online, from tutorials to forums and communities dedicated to case modding and thermal management.

By investing time and effort into optimizing your system's thermal management, you can unlock improved performance, reduced temperatures, and a more satisfying overall user experience. Whether you're a seasoned enthusiast or just starting out, we hope this article has provided valuable insights into the world of case modding and thermal management.

**Additional Resources**

For those interested in exploring further, we recommend checking out the following resources:

* Patreon.com/scishow: Access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, tutorials, and more.

* Gamers Nexus Net: Get access to high-quality reviews, guides, and tutorials on PC hardware and peripherals.

By supporting our community-driven initiatives and collaborating with enthusiasts from around the world, we can continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in the world of case modding and thermal management.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: encoolermaster askew 500l we complained a lot about it having too much steel and not enough hole in the front and the problem here is that for airflow as we saw in testing even when just blasting it with air filling more slots with fans it still wasn't good it was just objectively never a well cooled case no matter what we did and so we actually did some math on this so the whole radius is about 0.25 centimeters we calculated the area from that counter the number of holes and what we came out with is the front is about eighty four point seven percent or so eighty four point six nine percent steel and then the remainder is air flow and that's why a lot of this did poorly in testing especially when you start doing things like adding filters on top of it so now you have mesh covering the only holes there are in the case so what we're gonna do is drill a bunch of holes and try to fix it before that this video is brought to you by coarser and it's void Pro headset the void Pro headset is available in wired or Wireless versions with the wireless option supporting a boosted range upwards of thirty to forty feet the headset has full RGB LEDs on the ear cops has fifty millimeter headphone drivers and lasts up to sixteen hours on battery it can also be plugged in for Wired at use and is now lower in price than when it first launched a noise cancelling microphone is also included along with an easy mute indicated by an LED and you can learn more at the link in the description below there's a hidden benefit with the way Coolermaster did these holes so each one of them can be used as a mounting point you can see the outline here for the power supply contributing to the ugliness of the front of the case is meant to be covered up by that mesh filter but you can also insert the four screws for the power supply mount up here you can move it down here and insert them there you can put fans in whichever one slot you might have open and having the holes all over the place means that there is some granularity and adjusting what ends up where or how you mount radiators things like that but we're gonna get rid of all of that advantage today and drill each one of these to be wider originally the idea was to take a dremel or something just cut a giant gaping hole in the front of the case and stick this over top of it and you would probably have something that cools pretty well but because that's clearly not a feasible solution for coolermaster we're gonna try something just widening the holes this will make it structurally weak but we care more about airflow so the end of this video we'll talk about the thermal result for this experiment and a quick shout-out to Zeta on the GN discord for recommending these step bits so that we can do this a bit more easily so currently we are at about seven thirty seconds of I guess an inch and we'll probably move up to maybe like a quarter inch for the hole or maybe even a bit higher I haven't used one of these bits before so we're gonna learn how it works today wow that's quick so this worked really fast that was the one fourth marker we could make it wider I don't know how much bigger is that so so I guess the question is if we drill the neighboring ones do they start colliding with each other yeah that's looking pretty good so these holes are five point two seven millimeters apart and these are four point four millimeters apart I think we could do a little bit better than that okay so that's a 15% reduction and the amount of steel between two holes and because we're dealing with area on a panel that'll add up really fast so I guess we need to do this for all them we could probably go a little bigger I'm gonna try one kick bigger on this actually where is the bracket I don't get it okay cool there's gonna be a lot of metal in there that we'll have to clean out later that is now a 5/16 that's definitely about the biggest we're gonna be able to go see if it's too big oh that's 5/16 that's a pretty cool drill bit I'll link this in the description below if you want to pick up the same kit that I'm using now we are 2.8 1 millimeters apart it's right about 47% reduction in the amount of steel between two holes now some of these that's gonna be too close and I think they'll bridge but we'll we'll do our best ok cool so the biggest problem we're gonna face is cleaning all of this out so that we don't get a bunch of metal shards all over the components and short things but we'll just we'll just use an air compressor or something blow it all out when we're done but I guess now the process will be fairly straightforward drill a bunch of holes in the front of the case drain the metal onto the mod mat which you can pick up on store dock here is excess net and then clean it out make sure we don't get anything on components and test it so I'm gonna drill a whole bunch more of these like five hundred of them because I think that's how many holes they are our mod came out well ugly but the whole point is that we're focusing on proving a concept we're making a point not making something pretty although we originally were going to take a dremel to the front we decided to use a step bit instead to widen all the holes to ten point three two millimeters from five point six millimeters resulting in about an eighty four percent increase in the hole coverage which is more than we had planned in the initial part of this video that you just saw the panel is not detachable and loses structural integrity as pieces are removed but again the goal was to determine if bigger holes would be sufficient for improving thermals going back on our original plans make one giant gaping hole since we already knew how that end results would look this gives us something unique to look at so that we can see if Coolermaster had just simply widened everything if it would have worked out better for them to improve this further we'd also want to drill larger holes in the top before the cpu fan as this is where the CPU drafts a lot of its air when left in the stock negative pressure set up with the power supply blocking some of the front intake the same can be said for the holes in the bottom near the video card although at this point you'd basically have a steel frame left with the cheese grater on top of it finally note that the power supply placements can be switched between the front top and the front bottom and that this will inhibit all air flow thus nullifying that mod and that particular reason if we move it to the top then the mod doesn't really do anything in the top where the CPU air path is and so forth and before getting to the results just one final note that we did a lot of test configurations for our original benchmark and review of this case and so if you're not familiar with that content you should check out their review so you understand what each test is looking at here's the CPU torture workload result list growing ever longer for just one case now definitely losing us some money because of the time investment but we're gonna prove a point here the moderate results with an extra two fans lands us at fifty two point two degrees Celsius over ambient for CPU temperature which is a massive 10 degree reduction from the original results of sixty two point five degrees over ambience that's just from drilling the holes to nearly twice the size so we didn't need to completely remove the front panel to see this change which is impossible anyway because you can't remove the front panel in this case that said we did need to basically destroy it so this is proof of concept and academic exercise territory not a mod we would ever recommend you could do something similar to this maybe perhaps with more care but doing it like we did would result in a very flimsy warped front panel stock results look like they get us minimal improvement but it's much more significant of a change than these numbers let on for this we moved from seventy four point four degrees to seventy two point five degrees over ambient but keep in mind that our original test had us throttling hard seventy four point four degrees over ambient means regularly hitting 100 degrees in actual temperature we were throttling in each test which makes it difficult to actually present a straight thermal number seen as it's no longer 100% controlled this frequency overtime chart demonstrates the issue the average CPU frequency in the original task was just 40 35 M but the modded version of the case averaged 43 42 megahertz and this isn't because it's some weird variable frequency it's locked it's supposed to be 4400 megahertz for this test bench always so we not only reduced throttling and a significant performance affecting noticeable way to the user we also reduced thermals at the same time to see both of these results in conjunction is significant as throttling will inherently lower the thermals of the first results and then increasing the frequency will increase the thermal requirements of the cooling this is a major improvement from our mod even though the fans aren't present in the front of the case for this test back to the main chart the no filter test saw an improvement in frequency as well and finally exited throttle in territory reduced down to seven point six degrees over ambience and the getting very very close to the 44 hundred megahertz target we should note that comparatively to the other cases that you can see in our chart in the original review these are still abysmal results but at least they're no longer the worst you've ever seen as you add fans like the fan added pointed out the CPU the case gets competitive but it's basically impossible to get both the GPU and the CPU competitive simultaneously and finally adding a single fan the most reasonable chains receive you thermals creates a straight front to back airflow pattern through the tower cooler when dropping the power supply into the bottom front of the case this drop temperature to fifty point five degrees over ambient and is another massive reduction that's one about 13 degrees from the original 64 point two degree result that we saw in this configuration originally Coolermaster might as well have put a flat steel sheet in front of the fans for this case and finally we did observe a lack of improvement from adding a fan positioned in the bottom of the case as well but that's because it's pointed straight at the GPU which basically compartmentalized at the top of the case because this video card is about the largest you can possibly fit in this case with the power supply used it moves some of the GPUs hot air up and into the CPU chamber and you're also dealing with radiative heat off the backside as in the original review then it's best to just go with a different case we we improved it but not really in a usable sense it's it's very ugly you can cover it up with the filter so that's nice if you actually wanted to use this case if you actually want to do a mod you could obviously do a much better job than this you should probably maybe sand it down first use a stepped bit that's not quite as aggressive make sure you use a fixed size every time and don't vary it and then find a way to keep the front panel flat and not warping so it could be done but it'd be easier to just buy a different case this one is like we said in the review because it's a micro ATX case that's been adapted for ATX and so clearly some corners are cut here for thermals and it's it's really difficult to overcome all of them all the time we still have issues with the GP thermals with this mod because it's compartmentalized because the video card unless you get a small one barely fits with the power supply in there as well and you can start drilling holes into the bottom of the case you can stand the case on its side like we did in some of our tests originally like that and then you start to get some good performance or at least well acceptable performance but it just becomes a question of how much are you willing to do to make it work and for a case like this if you're starting to buy smaller components just to make it thermally acceptable then what are you doing you might as well just build the smaller system all together at that point in buy a different case so anyway that's it for the mod it was a fun exercise in improving things and of course there are more elegant ways to do it but the concept has been proven so if you end up buying one of these and would like to go a similar route go for it just do a better job visually than we did although we're pretty happy with the thermal results here so that's it for this one thank you for watching you can subscribe for more as always go to patreon.com/scishow there's access to get behind-the-scenes videos or store doc gamers nexus net to pick up one of the mod maps that we worked on earlier in this video they are shipping now I'll see you all next timecoolermaster askew 500l we complained a lot about it having too much steel and not enough hole in the front and the problem here is that for airflow as we saw in testing even when just blasting it with air filling more slots with fans it still wasn't good it was just objectively never a well cooled case no matter what we did and so we actually did some math on this so the whole radius is about 0.25 centimeters we calculated the area from that counter the number of holes and what we came out with is the front is about eighty four point seven percent or so eighty four point six nine percent steel and then the remainder is air flow and that's why a lot of this did poorly in testing especially when you start doing things like adding filters on top of it so now you have mesh covering the only holes there are in the case so what we're gonna do is drill a bunch of holes and try to fix it before that this video is brought to you by coarser and it's void Pro headset the void Pro headset is available in wired or Wireless versions with the wireless option supporting a boosted range upwards of thirty to forty feet the headset has full RGB LEDs on the ear cops has fifty millimeter headphone drivers and lasts up to sixteen hours on battery it can also be plugged in for Wired at use and is now lower in price than when it first launched a noise cancelling microphone is also included along with an easy mute indicated by an LED and you can learn more at the link in the description below there's a hidden benefit with the way Coolermaster did these holes so each one of them can be used as a mounting point you can see the outline here for the power supply contributing to the ugliness of the front of the case is meant to be covered up by that mesh filter but you can also insert the four screws for the power supply mount up here you can move it down here and insert them there you can put fans in whichever one slot you might have open and having the holes all over the place means that there is some granularity and adjusting what ends up where or how you mount radiators things like that but we're gonna get rid of all of that advantage today and drill each one of these to be wider originally the idea was to take a dremel or something just cut a giant gaping hole in the front of the case and stick this over top of it and you would probably have something that cools pretty well but because that's clearly not a feasible solution for coolermaster we're gonna try something just widening the holes this will make it structurally weak but we care more about airflow so the end of this video we'll talk about the thermal result for this experiment and a quick shout-out to Zeta on the GN discord for recommending these step bits so that we can do this a bit more easily so currently we are at about seven thirty seconds of I guess an inch and we'll probably move up to maybe like a quarter inch for the hole or maybe even a bit higher I haven't used one of these bits before so we're gonna learn how it works today wow that's quick so this worked really fast that was the one fourth marker we could make it wider I don't know how much bigger is that so so I guess the question is if we drill the neighboring ones do they start colliding with each other yeah that's looking pretty good so these holes are five point two seven millimeters apart and these are four point four millimeters apart I think we could do a little bit better than that okay so that's a 15% reduction and the amount of steel between two holes and because we're dealing with area on a panel that'll add up really fast so I guess we need to do this for all them we could probably go a little bigger I'm gonna try one kick bigger on this actually where is the bracket I don't get it okay cool there's gonna be a lot of metal in there that we'll have to clean out later that is now a 5/16 that's definitely about the biggest we're gonna be able to go see if it's too big oh that's 5/16 that's a pretty cool drill bit I'll link this in the description below if you want to pick up the same kit that I'm using now we are 2.8 1 millimeters apart it's right about 47% reduction in the amount of steel between two holes now some of these that's gonna be too close and I think they'll bridge but we'll we'll do our best ok cool so the biggest problem we're gonna face is cleaning all of this out so that we don't get a bunch of metal shards all over the components and short things but we'll just we'll just use an air compressor or something blow it all out when we're done but I guess now the process will be fairly straightforward drill a bunch of holes in the front of the case drain the metal onto the mod mat which you can pick up on store dock here is excess net and then clean it out make sure we don't get anything on components and test it so I'm gonna drill a whole bunch more of these like five hundred of them because I think that's how many holes they are our mod came out well ugly but the whole point is that we're focusing on proving a concept we're making a point not making something pretty although we originally were going to take a dremel to the front we decided to use a step bit instead to widen all the holes to ten point three two millimeters from five point six millimeters resulting in about an eighty four percent increase in the hole coverage which is more than we had planned in the initial part of this video that you just saw the panel is not detachable and loses structural integrity as pieces are removed but again the goal was to determine if bigger holes would be sufficient for improving thermals going back on our original plans make one giant gaping hole since we already knew how that end results would look this gives us something unique to look at so that we can see if Coolermaster had just simply widened everything if it would have worked out better for them to improve this further we'd also want to drill larger holes in the top before the cpu fan as this is where the CPU drafts a lot of its air when left in the stock negative pressure set up with the power supply blocking some of the front intake the same can be said for the holes in the bottom near the video card although at this point you'd basically have a steel frame left with the cheese grater on top of it finally note that the power supply placements can be switched between the front top and the front bottom and that this will inhibit all air flow thus nullifying that mod and that particular reason if we move it to the top then the mod doesn't really do anything in the top where the CPU air path is and so forth and before getting to the results just one final note that we did a lot of test configurations for our original benchmark and review of this case and so if you're not familiar with that content you should check out their review so you understand what each test is looking at here's the CPU torture workload result list growing ever longer for just one case now definitely losing us some money because of the time investment but we're gonna prove a point here the moderate results with an extra two fans lands us at fifty two point two degrees Celsius over ambient for CPU temperature which is a massive 10 degree reduction from the original results of sixty two point five degrees over ambience that's just from drilling the holes to nearly twice the size so we didn't need to completely remove the front panel to see this change which is impossible anyway because you can't remove the front panel in this case that said we did need to basically destroy it so this is proof of concept and academic exercise territory not a mod we would ever recommend you could do something similar to this maybe perhaps with more care but doing it like we did would result in a very flimsy warped front panel stock results look like they get us minimal improvement but it's much more significant of a change than these numbers let on for this we moved from seventy four point four degrees to seventy two point five degrees over ambient but keep in mind that our original test had us throttling hard seventy four point four degrees over ambient means regularly hitting 100 degrees in actual temperature we were throttling in each test which makes it difficult to actually present a straight thermal number seen as it's no longer 100% controlled this frequency overtime chart demonstrates the issue the average CPU frequency in the original task was just 40 35 M but the modded version of the case averaged 43 42 megahertz and this isn't because it's some weird variable frequency it's locked it's supposed to be 4400 megahertz for this test bench always so we not only reduced throttling and a significant performance affecting noticeable way to the user we also reduced thermals at the same time to see both of these results in conjunction is significant as throttling will inherently lower the thermals of the first results and then increasing the frequency will increase the thermal requirements of the cooling this is a major improvement from our mod even though the fans aren't present in the front of the case for this test back to the main chart the no filter test saw an improvement in frequency as well and finally exited throttle in territory reduced down to seven point six degrees over ambience and the getting very very close to the 44 hundred megahertz target we should note that comparatively to the other cases that you can see in our chart in the original review these are still abysmal results but at least they're no longer the worst you've ever seen as you add fans like the fan added pointed out the CPU the case gets competitive but it's basically impossible to get both the GPU and the CPU competitive simultaneously and finally adding a single fan the most reasonable chains receive you thermals creates a straight front to back airflow pattern through the tower cooler when dropping the power supply into the bottom front of the case this drop temperature to fifty point five degrees over ambient and is another massive reduction that's one about 13 degrees from the original 64 point two degree result that we saw in this configuration originally Coolermaster might as well have put a flat steel sheet in front of the fans for this case and finally we did observe a lack of improvement from adding a fan positioned in the bottom of the case as well but that's because it's pointed straight at the GPU which basically compartmentalized at the top of the case because this video card is about the largest you can possibly fit in this case with the power supply used it moves some of the GPUs hot air up and into the CPU chamber and you're also dealing with radiative heat off the backside as in the original review then it's best to just go with a different case we we improved it but not really in a usable sense it's it's very ugly you can cover it up with the filter so that's nice if you actually wanted to use this case if you actually want to do a mod you could obviously do a much better job than this you should probably maybe sand it down first use a stepped bit that's not quite as aggressive make sure you use a fixed size every time and don't vary it and then find a way to keep the front panel flat and not warping so it could be done but it'd be easier to just buy a different case this one is like we said in the review because it's a micro ATX case that's been adapted for ATX and so clearly some corners are cut here for thermals and it's it's really difficult to overcome all of them all the time we still have issues with the GP thermals with this mod because it's compartmentalized because the video card unless you get a small one barely fits with the power supply in there as well and you can start drilling holes into the bottom of the case you can stand the case on its side like we did in some of our tests originally like that and then you start to get some good performance or at least well acceptable performance but it just becomes a question of how much are you willing to do to make it work and for a case like this if you're starting to buy smaller components just to make it thermally acceptable then what are you doing you might as well just build the smaller system all together at that point in buy a different case so anyway that's it for the mod it was a fun exercise in improving things and of course there are more elegant ways to do it but the concept has been proven so if you end up buying one of these and would like to go a similar route go for it just do a better job visually than we did although we're pretty happy with the thermal results here so that's it for this one thank you for watching you can subscribe for more as always go to patreon.com/scishow there's access to get behind-the-scenes videos or store doc gamers nexus net to pick up one of the mod maps that we worked on earlier in this video they are shipping now I'll see you all next time\n"