"The case is has smooth surfaces all around with some venting on the rear panel. I ran UNIGINE Superposition for 20 minutes and got CPU 66°C, PCH 59°C, and, RAM 57°C with the same 23°C ambient. AIDA64 seems to be pushing the CPU really hard. It's designed to "Stress" CPU, FPU, cache, and memory as the program states, so it must be doing it's job pretty well.
FC8 doesn't have vents for fans and works as a giant heatsink instead. You are spot on about the graphite TIM. When I build fanless machines, one of the main goal is for it to work robustly for many years without maintenance (cleaning out the dust, replacing dried-out thermal paste, etc.). Graphite TIM is an integral part to this. Even if the temperature increases somewhat, it's a favorable tradeoff for me overall."
Source: reddit
