Akasa Turing Compact Fanless 8th Gen NUC Chassis

The case is quite heavy and it was an easy assembly. Everything you need comes in the package. The only challenges are getting the NUC out of its original case and prying out the microphone assembly to transplant to the new case.

Then I started testing. All of this was done with the Akasa thermal grease that came in the package (note: remove the thermal pads and use the grease on all 3 dies). The room was at about 24 degrees Celsius and the Case standing upright under my desk with ample room to all sides but no moving air going over it. I did mount the rubber feet but not the decorative plate on the top.

Idle temps rarely went over 30 degrees. Also with moderate activity (heavy browsing, some light photo editing) temps usually stay in the mid 30s.

Sustained loads can warm the more than 2 kilograms of aluminium rather quickly. With Prime95 (I used the second method - maximum heat, power consumption, Some RAM tested) the temp equilibrium after an hour lies around 65-68 degrees. The case is very warm to the touch then, not unlike a rather warm radiator. Same with some gaming that keeps the power envelope at constant 30 Watts.

This is absolutely fine for CPU, GPU and the on-package memory. But there is more in that system. The compartment for the components has some ventilation on two sides (upper and lower when the case is standing upright). But you can imagine, that almost 60 degrees hot metal will prewarm up the little air that comes in quite a bit. After one hour RAM sat around 73 deg, my NVME 970 EVO at toasty 70 deg and the SATA 850 EVO at 67 deg. Those are not temperatures you want to see your flash storage at for prolonged periods of time. 70 deg is the absolute max operating temperature Samsung defines in their documentation. Also you will see immediate throttling with these drives at these temperatures.

My takeaway: If you plan to have long, full loads with this case, buy a USB fan that you can prop on top to pull up air through the fins at those times. Even running it at about half speed I see a significand difference in temps for the SSDs.

If anybody has a more elegant solution to keep the NAND drive, please come forth!

All in all I am happy with my purchase. I only wish for an elegant way to keep my hard drives cooler so I can run the case to its full potential without an ugly USB fan occasionally riding on top and making some noise.