The Enermax SpineRex breaks out of traditional cooling placement and has rear and top mounted fans absent from the chassis. The only fans found within the SpineRex are the 250mm fan attached to the side panel and the dual 120mm Vegas fans at the front of the case. The 250mm fan has been removed due to the fact the side panel will not fit on with the kit installed within SpineRex and used on all case reviews. On paper this should have a negative effect on thermal performance as traditional cooling placement would see air blowing across the motherboard and out through the back of the case.

To discover the thermal performance of SpineRex I will record idle temperatures after 20 minutes from a cold boot. I will then stress the system and temperatures will again be monitored after 30 minutes have elapsed.

System Components
CPU AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8GHz
Motherboard ASUS M4A89TD PRO
Graphics ZOTAC NVIDIA GTX 480
Memory 4GB Mushkin EM3-10666 DDR3
HDD Samsung Spinpoint 500GB SATA-II
PSU Enermax Revolution 85+ 850W

As you can see from the results below thermal performance suffers due to the lack of exhaust fans within the chassis. At stock SpineRex lacks good thermal performance due to obvious reasons, breaking out of traditional fan placement is a risky thing!