Testing and benchmarking
Now that the system is hooked up and running, let's run some performance tests.
Initial thought: Impressive.
First off though we simply hooked up the unit towards a standalone PSU with nothing else connected to it other then the Cool Answer III to look at power consumption of this unit. Have a look at the photo.
Here we can see the power consumption of the pump plus radiator fan activated. A steady 27 Watts will be consumed for cooling. Now with the unit installed let's focus back on how the unit manages temperatures.
System:
- Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe (ATI RD580)
- AMD64 X2 4400+
- GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB
- 2 GB PDP Patriot memory
- 5x 300GB HD
- 1x Optical DVD burner
The CPU was running steady at a ~37 C temperature right after windows booted up yet it climbed up even further slowly. As part of the test we maxed the workload of the CPU to 100% for ten minutes, managing some serious encoding work.
Now I already stated in our introduction, in the time-frame we did our tests we had a heat wave here in the Netherlands. Since water-cooling is directly related to the ambient room temperature, the idle results will be roughly 120 Degrees C higher then what they should be. The momentum in time I did the tests below were done at a room temperature of 32 Degrees C / 90 Degrees F. Usually we always measure at 21 Degrees C yet my airco died *schniff*
Now despite the somewhat higher idle temperature of 37 Degrees C I still dare to say that the results are quite okay for this kit.
Why you ask ? Because the temperature delta will not pass the 43 Degrees C mark with this water-cooling kit enabled and the processor utilized 100% That's a 6 Degree maximum C differential, and that's just awesome.
Cooling method versus temperature in degrees C with HIGH setting. The lower the better.
These are the results with the fan rotating at it's default 1300 RPM. Again, and I can't stress this enough when we do temperature tests we normally have a room temperature at ~21 Degrees C.
So the scores are really okay. It's not a high-end high performance unit though, mainly due to the compact radiator. Also, since the radiator is mounted on the inside of the casing it'll use the air from the inside of that casing. Therefore compared to an external solution like Corsair's Nautilus 500 the temperature will always be slightly.
For optimal cooling you need cold air, and this unit will always use the slightly warmer than ambient air to cool down the processor.
This is good water-cooling performance though. What I find really interesting, there isn't much sound coming from the PC at all ! We placed a DBa meter roughly 75 CM away from the PC and check this out:
This is so silent. The rig has 5 HDD's active, graphics card, one fan and the watercooler active. Remarkable !
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