Thermalright HR-02 CPU cooler review

Cooling 189 Page 7 of 10 Published by

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Testing the cooler

Testing the cooler

Time to test. The cooler will work absolutely great with any processor from low to high-end (Core i3  / Core i5 / Core i7 quad-core and even six-core included up-to 130W) at default operating speeds, and there's room left for overclocking as well.

Now what we always do (for a little more serious testing), is test it with higher requirements, mildly overclocked as a reference. We change the processor frequency and voltage.

Methodology -- We use an eVGA p55 Classified 200 motherboard, equip it with a Core i5 750 (2.67 GHz) processor, which we overclock to 3.3 GHz / 1.3 Volts. Now we'll test the cooler in two utilization stages:

  1. Passively cooled - yet the CPU has nothing to do (IDLE)
  2. Passively cooled - four processor cores 100% stressed (LOAD)

Passively cooled

As stated, this cooler is marketed as a passive cooler, and that is true. Please do make sure you always have a little airflow inside your PC, heat needs to go somewhere! Even with a slight overclock at 3.3 GHz on the Core i5 750 processor with 1.3v on the CPU we still get acceptable temperatures. Roughly 61 Degrees C when we stress all the processor cores. That in fact is impressive. Though possible, I wouldn't go higher on the overclock though.

Active cooling

We find the cooler much more interesting with a fan mounted. We'll be using Thermalright's supplied TY-140 fan. This fan has an operating range of 900~1300 RPM and is extremely silent, while offering great performance.

Let's have a look at the results compared to other coolers we tested under the same conditions. Below, the IDLE temperatures.

As you can see, the cooler positions itself in the high-end performance range of heatpipe based coolers (with a fan). Passive is obviously the other way around.

But now let's have a look at the processor's LOAD temperatures.

Please understand, for the above results -- temperatures are based on a slightly overclocked Core i5 750 processor with a little extra voltage (1.3v), the fan speed is set at 80% RPM on ALL coolers shown for objective comparison reasons. Obviously LOWER = BETTER.

  • Anything at roughly 50 Degrees C or lower we consider enthusiast class cooling.
  • Anything in-between 51 to 60 Degrees C we consider performance cooling
  • Anything in-between 61 to 70 Degrees C we consider mainstream cooling
  • Anything above 71 Degrees C we consider average cooling

We are way below 50 Degrees C with the processor slightly overclocked under full load. Roughly 47 Degrees is what we get returned with the overclocked processor. This is just top notch performance.

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