Zalman CNPS 12X review - Baseline testing the cooler

Testing The Cooler

Time to test. The cooler will work good 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 the processor and motherboard set at defaults AND 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 870 (2.93 GHz) processor, which we overclock to 3200 GHz/1.3 Volts. Now we'll test the cooler in two utilization stages:

1. Actively cooled - The CPU has nothing to do (IDLE)
2. Actively cooled - Four processor cores / 8 threads 100% stressed (LOAD)

Test 1 - The Baseline Performance

Above we show two baseline temperatures modes. The cooler is set at PWM regulated fan RPM in this stage.

The processor at default processor settings with Speedstep CE1 enabled etc (clocks down in frequency and voltage in IDLE). Now if you do not plan to overclock, that is your baseline temperature at 25~26 Degrees C in IDLE and 46 Degrees C under full load.

Then in dark blue you can see the results done with a slight overclock at ~3.2 GHz on the processor, we apply 1.3v on the CPU and still get excellent temperatures. Roughly 46 Degrees C when we stress all the processor cores, nice that's smack down performance cooling.

Test 2 - IDLE Temperature

Let's have a look at the results compared to other coolers we tested under the same conditions. Below, the IDLE temperatures, thus your processor is doing barely anything. Just sitting and waiting in your system.

Now we compare all cooler based on that small overclock and fixed 80% fan RPM. As you can see, the cooler positions itself in the upper spectrum of the performance range of heatpipe based coolers (with one fan), 29 Degrees C. The two entries are tests based on normal and quiet (with the resistor wire and thus lower fan RPM).