Let's have a 'look' at volume levels.

Here we are back to a normal 3.2 GHz on the processor. We can easily select LOW performance mode here and see that the cooler is very silent.

At medium performance mode, we can hear the cooler. But it's the same level as say the Intel stock cooler.

HIGH performance mode, now that's noisy! But say you need the additional cooling for an extreme overclock to improve that 3Dmark score of yours .. you could select it for a while, and then return to LOW or MED mode. HIGH performance mode however is too noisy .. make no mistake about that.

Speaking of a phat overclock ...

Extreme overclocking

This is Guru3D, and I will not leave out an opportunity when it reaches me. Since we can, we will now overclock the processor @ 4000 MHz @ 1.6 Volts. These are the idle settings. No CE1 or power saving functions are active there, which means that with power saving features enabled, your IDLE temperatures could be better.

There it is, in the middle of our test procedure. the PC at 4000 MHz with 1.6v during our Prime95 CPU stress test. Let's have a look at the final numbers:

Core 2 Quad QX9770 XE processor @ 4000 MHz

Okay then, our last test. An extreme overclock. The quad core QX 9770 is now overclocked towards 4000 MHz with the core voltage again increased.

• Processor clocks at 4000 MHZ.
• Processor voltage 1.6v

In an idle status we see the processor roughly hover at 40 to 54 Degrees C  (104 to 129 Fahrenheit).

• At the low (silent performance) setting when we stress the 4 CPU cores 100% temp rises towards 80 C / 176 F.
• Medium performance mode (slightly audible) manages a maximum of 74 C / 165 F
• Maximum performance mode (very noisy) shows 67 C / 152 F

The LOW performance setting is a fail. Do not overclock at 4 GHz.

The MED setting however, if circumstances are okay (good airflow in the PC) could be considered usable. And that's at normal noise levels. Very nice. At the inaudible HIGH performance mode all is fine.

So what you are looking at here is pretty extreme. There are very little scenarios where you consistently stress 4 CPU 100%, keep that in mind as we sought and measured the extreme end of the overclocking envelope here.

That being said, I'm impressed. Let's head onwards to the conclusion.