Foreword
Now we come to the exciting part – the practical test. As you know, I haven’t carried out any “scientific” tests under controlled test conditions as part of my case tests so far, and I want to keep it that way. Sure, you can always measure the delta to room temperature and test for years with the same (quickly becoming irrelevant) hardware, or even rent a warehouse and retest hundreds of cases every year with the latest hardware, but then something like this quickly becomes a full-time project. Besides, it quickly gets boring if you do the same test over and over again and since, as Igor mentioned in his “New Year’s speech”, I “work” here for free and use Igor’s LAB as a platform to live out my hobby, it wouldn’t make much sense if I didn’t enjoy the whole thing here. However, I do put a lot of thought into my articles and I now have quite a considerable portfolio of hardware available for testing. For example, I also like to test larger graphics cards in large cases with the appropriate space or often use AIO water cooling (e.g. for visual reasons). In the foreseeable future, I will also be happy to tackle the topic of custom loops more actively again if bottlenecks arise within the team.
Why am I going so far afield? The Arcadia III is a budget case with a price point of well under €40 and even if it would most likely work, I personally just don’t see graphics cards with power consumption above 250W or complex custom loops in this case. You can certainly get current mid-range to upper-class graphics cards like an RX 7800XT or RTX 4070 in here, as well as a 360mm AIO for a hot-headed CPU, but if you’re raging in the price range of the aforementioned components, you’ll almost certainly go for a higher-priced case. For this reason, I grabbed a realistically sized graphics card in the form of the GeForce RTX 4060 and an air cooler for the already extensively known AM4 platform for this review in order to simulate a solid “entry-level system”. Yes, the Ryzen 9 3900X is certainly overkill in an entry-level system, but it is the hottest CPU available to me and, despite the significantly higher TDP, it is probably even easier to cool than a current Ryzen 5.
Construction diary
Brief preparation: I started by installing the CPU cooler. This is much easier outside the case as there is more space available. Installing the Eleos 12 is very simple – attach the mounting brackets that match the socket to the coldplate, apply thermal paste to the CPU and then simply screw the cooler onto the socket. Top!
I also think it’s super cool that my friend, the centering spacer, has now also arrived in the budget class.
With pre-assembled components and cooler, the board can be installed in no time at all thanks to the centering aid.
Installing the power supply unit is also child’s play, no adapter frame is required, simply slide it in and screw it tight.
Next, I installed two optional 120mm fans in the front to create an active airflow. My Arctic P12 stock is unfortunately exhausted, so I had to use two older Noctuas from the leftover box – real budget fans would certainly have been a better fit here, but at low speeds this doesn’t make a groundbreaking difference.
As already mentioned in the unboxing, the space for cable management is quite tight. However, without “fancy” cable extensions or extensive RGB fairgrounds, there is enough space to easily mount the side panel later.
Rear closed, cables all plugged in, or the one for the graphics card already laid to the front:
Finally, the graphics card is fitted:
Close the lid!
And time for the test run.
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