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Testing and benchmarking

Now that the system is hooked up and actually working as a cooling solution let's run some performance tests. Initial thoughts: very exciting. We set our room temperature towards roughly 21 Degrees C for an objective comparison.

As you can see the Reserator XT is performing pretty well with regards to cooling our PC.

The setup used:

• Intel Bad Axe D975XBX socket 775
• Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4 GHz)
• Corsair DDR2 memory
• 300 GB WD HDD
• GeForce 8800 Ultra

Right after system boot up the water obviously is cool at room-temperature, the components will be slightly warmer.

So this is right after boot up, we are showing the temperature in Degrees Celsius.

• The GPU Core temperature is idling at 39 C
• CPU Core1 is 30C and Core2 31C

So in idle the CPU ran at 31 Degrees C in idle after startup. Obviously water will get a little warmer after time yet not much. Next test phase:

In the above graph we have the system looped in a 3Dmark05 timedemo. We enabled hefty image quality settings, yet by using 3Dmark05 we also know that the CPU is being utilized and stressed very much. The results above are done with the Reserator at the lowest possible FAN RPM (silent).

• GPU temperature had a maximum of 47 C, really sweet.
• Both CPU cores under 100% load peak at roughly 48 Degrees C.

Not bad at all, in fact combined with such a hefty graphics card .. that's really something for a low-noise water-cooling kit. At this setting you really hardly can hear the fan spinning. We measured  roughly 35 DBa at 75 CM away from the PC. That's nothing.

The last charts I'll be showing you is the unit maxed out with the fan and pump-flow at high. At 75 CM distance we now measure 42 DBa and the unit is clearly much more noisy as you can hear the 140mm fan. Still not extreme in any way though.

• We see the maximum GPU temperature at 45C
• The CPU cores max out at 46C

We left the unit running looped for a long time and the results remain pretty accurate. I'd say, go for low noise, it merely differs only a few Degrees c.

Please do bear in mind though that this form of cooling is susceptible to ambient room temperature. If it's a hot summer at 30 Degrees C add an extra X Degrees to your CPU temperature as well, but even then it's really really good. Obviously you can also set the kit to automatic and depending on the coolant temperature the fan rotational speed and pump-flow will adjust accordingly.