Performance

Test System:

Asus P4P800-VM
P4 2.4C
1GB Corsair PC3500
Geforce FX5600 Ultra 128MB
SB Live!
200GB Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 9
16X LiteOn DVD Drive
200W Flex PSU

Since you have a few options when choosing a motherboard, I won't go into detail about the motherboards performance. You can check out the performance of the motherboard we chose (The ASUS P4P800-VM) in our Soyo Dragon 2 Platinum review.

Hornet XP Custom System: AMD AthlonXP 3200+ processor: 76.8W Motherboard: 10-15W 2 x Seagate SATA HDD: 12.5W each (25W total) Most Graphics cards: 31W 3 x PCI expansion cards: <10W average each (30W total) ---------------------------------------- 172.8 - 177.8 Watts total Comes with Achme Flex 200W PS leaving 22.2 Watts to spare.

Hornet P4 Custom System: Intel 3.2 GHz processor: 82W Motherboard: 10-15W 2 x Seagate SATA HDD: 12.5W each (25W total) Most Graphics cards: 31W 3 x PCI expansion cards: <10W average each (30W total) ---------------------------------------- 178 - 183 Watts total Comes with Achme Flex 200W PS leaving 17 Watts to spare.

You can find this information, and more, at the bottom of this page.

During all our testing, we found no problems with this power supply.

One thing I was worried about was the airflow of the Hornet. There is only one 60mm intake fan which is located on the front of the case. There is a 60mm exhaust fan located on the right side panel of the case. With this default setup, there is a continual flow of air (although not much) going through the case. If you decide to install fans in the rear of the case (one 80mm and two 40mm), the airflow wouldn't be much better since there is still only one 60mm fan bringing fresh air into the case. One intake and four exhaust fans is very unbalanced and would be much better if there was at least two intake fans.

Case Temperatures
(Show All Graphs) (Collapse Graphs)

Idle

Load

Test 1*

Test 2*

Test 3*

43

37.8

34

0

Temperature ( °C )

100

 

 

Idle

Load

Test 1*

Test 2*

Test 3*

50

42

40

0

Temperature ( °C )

100

 

 

Test 1: Stock (1 60mm intake, 1 60mm exhaust)
Test 2: 1 60mm intake, 1 60mm exhaust, 1 80mm exhaust, 2 40mm exhaust
Test 3: Left side panel open (1 60mm intake, 1 60mm exhaust, 1 80mm exhaust, 2 40mm exhaust)

As you can tell from the chart, the stock cooling caused very high case temperatures. Adding additional exhaust fans reduced the temperature quite a bit, but removing the side panel (which allowed for a greater amount of air intake) caused the temperatures to drop even more.