The BIOS & General Usage
When I first powered the system on was surprised that I actually had the option to go into a BIOS. Many compact systems do not give you an option like this. Going into the BIOS I was brought to a familiar place as this system is using the same BIOS that ASRock using on their motherboards. This is a UEFI BIOS and very easy to navigate.
When you turn the system on you will notice that the fans are audible. With such a small system it is really hard to come up with a cooling solution that does a good job and is quiet at the same time. When you are doing something intensive the fans really do spin up and can be quite loud, actually much like a first generation Xbox 360. If you are gaming with a headset or have the volume turned up on your speakers it is not really a big deal, but if not the noise can be pretty annoying.
The i7-3770K is cooled by NZXT’s Kraken X40 liquid cooling system. So how well does that system do in such a confined space as well as the rest of the cooling on the system. Check out our temperature sensors below. The left photo is when the system is idle and the right is running Prime 95 putting full load on the CPU.
Not that bad at all!
