Temperatures, Cooling, Noise

The system is fully loaded using Furmark and Prime 95, similar to our laptop testing. The sound recordings are made in front of the machine, about 6 inches from the center of the tower. Temperatures are reported as recorded by CoreTemp and Furmark.

The all-in-one Corsair watercooling system was bested by the Cyclone's custom watercooling solution and the air cooler on the iBUYPOWER Revolt. The CPU achieved a max temperature of 70 degrees Celsius, which provides some room for overclocking.

On the GPU side of things, the Radeon 7990 also performed quite well. It reached a maximum temperature of 81 degrees Celsius, though the secondary GPU chip was much cooler. The GPU cooler was also quite quiet.

The iBUYPOWER Paladin is the quietest-ever system that we've tested. It produced a sound level of just 45 decibels, beating out the other systems by at least four decibels.

Power Consumption

Power consumption is measured while the system is loaded for the temperature test and while sitting idle at the desktop. Measurement is taken at the wall, so it includes everything running in the system, not including the monitor.

At idle, the machine draws 77 watts. This means it's about the same as leaving one incandescent light bulb running. During a full load, system energy draw spikes to 354 watts. Considering it competes with the iBUYPOWER Chimera, it performs quite well for in terms of performance per watt.