Bigger and Better! Cooler Master Qube 540 PC Case Review
Thermal Performance
Cooler Master QUBE 540 Thermal Testing
Thermal performance is an essential factor for any PC case. Your system may look great from the outside, but it’s for nothing if your PC has an internal temperature like an oven. Your PC case needs sufficient airflow to keep your components cool under load and prevent thermal throttling. For our testing, we used the following hardware. We test at fixed fan speeds, so only the case and its fans affect thermal performance.
Intel i9-9700K @4.8GHz at 1.2V
ASUS ROG Strix Z370-F Gaming @ 100% Current Capacity/ LL lvl16
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition @ 9V via Fan Speed Reducer
Nvidia GTX 980 Reference @ 60% Fixed Fan Speed
Corsair LP Vengeance LP (Grey) @ 3200MHz
Corsair MP500 M.2 NVMe SSD
Corsair RM550X Power Supply
The graph below showcases Delta temperatures with a controlled ambient temperature of 20 degrees Celsius.
1000 RPM Fan Testing
For our testing, we added three Valkyrie 120mm fans (overview here) to the Cooler Master Qube 540. Two were added to the bottom of the case, and one to the top. This setup works well for the airflow pattern of our system, though we could add more fans if we wanted to.
Overall, we were very impressed by the QUBE 540. We achieved strong CPU and GPU cooling results, with our GPU results being amongst the best we have tested. Cooler Master has clearly fixed the airflow problems that the original QUBE 500 had.
1500 RPM Fan Testing
At 1,500 RPM, we see similar results. CPU and GPU results only dropped slightly with higher fan RPMs, confirming that this case does not need crazy high fan RPMs to deliver strong airflow. A very solid result from Cooler Master.
