Fractal Torrent Review – The Ultimate Air-Cooled Case

Cooling Performance  

Thermal performance is an essential factor for any PC case. Your system may look fantastic and seem silent from the outside, but all of that is for nought if your PC has the internal temperature of an oven. Your PC case needs enough airflow for your components to remain cool under load and to prevent any form of thermal throttling. For our test, we used the following hardware using fixed fan speeds (so that only the case and its included fans can influence thermal performance).

 

Fractal Torrent
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 Vengiance 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.

Max Fan RPM Test

In our thermal testing, the only variables that we set are the enclosure and the speed of the enclosure’s included fans. We use a hit-running CPU with a compact cooler and a graphics card with fixed fan speeds to ensure that only internal case airflow can impact thermals. 

With the Torrent, it is clear to see that Fractal’s Airflow-focused design has had an impact on our system’s thermals, giving us the lowest CPU and GPU thermals that we have ever seen using this hardware configuration. Frankly, the results speak for themselves. 
  

  
  

1000 RPM Fan Test

Lowering our system’s fan speeds to 1,000 RPM results in a minimal increase in GPU and CPU thermals, but not enough to make higher fans speeds seem worth it. With Fractal’s 180mm fans maxing out at 1200 RPM, it’s not surprising that turning these fans down to 1,000 RPM has a minimal impact. 

  
  

600 RPM Testing – Wow!

We have never seen thermals this low at our 600 RPM fan tests. Frankly, we are amazed. These are the best results that we have seen from a modern enclosure. Nothing else even comes close. The Fractal Torrent is the best low RPM airflow case that we have ever used.