Testing the cooler
Testing the cooler
Time to test. As stated before, the cooler will work absolutely great with any processor from low to high-end (Phenom II/Core i5/i7 quad-core and even six-core included) at default operating speeds, and there's room left for overclocking as well.
Now what we always do (for a little more serious testing ), we test it with higher requirements, mildly overclocked as 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 towards 3.3 GHz / 1.3 Volts. Now we'll test the cooler in two utilization stages:
- Actively cooled - yet CPU has nothing to do (IDLE)
- Actively cooled - four processors cores 100% stressed (LOAD)
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 VANTAGE cooler positions immediately itself in the high-end performance range of heatpipe based coolers.
But now let's have a look at the processors 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 normally at 80% RPM for objective comparison reasons, the Vantage however regulates that by itself, so we set the unit at performance mode -- temperatures wise -- obviously LOWER = BETTER.
We are hovering just over 50 Degrees C with the processor slightly overclocked under full load. The ECO performed a little better, but at the time of our measurements we had a bit of a heat wave here in the Netherlands with temperature above 30 Degrees C, that does affect liquid cooing alright. Our AC could barely cope with it. The ambient temperature as such as a little higher then normal.
The rough conclusion is that both the ECO and VANTAGE have roughly the same cooling performance wise.
