Testing and benchmarking (1)
Testing and benchmarking
Now that the cooler is installed, juiced up and working as an actual cooling solution, let's run some performance tests.
Initial thought: Okay. Not really high-end performance though.
We set our room temperature towards roughly 21 Degrees C for an objective comparison. As you will see the cooler is performing fairly well with regards to cooling our processor.
The setup used:
- nForce 790i Ultra SLI
- Core 2 Quad QX9770 (3.2 GHz / 1600 MHz FSB / 1.2 Volts)
- Core 2 Quad QX9770 (3.6 GHz / 1600 MHz FSB / 1.4 Volts)
- Crucial DDR3 memory
- 300 GB WD HDD
- GeForce 280 GTX
- Power supply: BFG 800W.
Sidenote, we also tried 4.0 GHz at 1.6 Volts. Unfortunately the cooler could not deal with temps well enough as the processors ran temps close to 69 Degrees C in IDLE. That's too high to safely test and as such we did not continue with a 4 GHz overclock, even with fan RPM at 80%.
Core 2 Quad QX9770 XE processor @ 40% Fan RPM
For our first test we are going to look at the cooling performance. Our processor is a beefy one, as it's the 1600 MHz FSB based quad core QX 9770. By itself the processor runs quite hot due to the high FSB frequency.
We will try three performance modes we'll check the cooler with, which we set manually in the BIOS:
- Fan RPM at 40% (LOW)
- Fan RPM at 60% (NORMAL)
- Fan RPM at 80% (HIGH)
You can have your BIOS also have this regulated automatically which would results in a varying RPM anywhere in-between 30 and 60% RPM. We tested each (RPM) mode with the processor both in idle (nothing to do) and 100% stressed on all four cores with Prime95 software.
- Processor clocks at 3200 MHZ / Processor voltage 1.2v (default)
- Processor clocks at 3600 MHZ / Processor voltage 1.4v
We have all power saving features in the BIOS and Windows vista disabled. When enabled, our idle temperatures would be better, but we simply want to test in somewhat more extreme conditions.
- With LOW fan RPM (=40% rotation) in a LOAD status we see the processor roughly hover at 50 Degrees C / 122 F at default 3200 MHz.
- With LOW fan RPM in a LOAD status we see the processor roughly hover at 69 Degrees C / 156 F when overclocked 3600 MHz.
So the cooler manages an up-to 3600 MHz overclock with LOW noise versus fine temperatures. But let's see if we can shave of some of the temperatures.
The cooler is perfect for a high-end processor when not overclocked and decent enough when overclocked as well, in a near silent condition (38 DBa coming from the PC).
Core 2 Quad QX9770 XE processor @ 60% Fan RPM
For our second test we are going to look at the cooling performance of the kit with an average RPM fan speed at 60%. The quad core QX 9770 is again measured at default 3200 MHz and overclocked towards 3600 MHz as well, with the core CPU voltage now increased towards 1.4 Volts.
Idle temperatures are fine, even overclocked.. The CPU cores stressed at a 3600 MHz clock frequency gave us only a 2 degree C improvement over the LOW RPM setting at 67 C / 152 F. If you want my advice, stick to a low RPM mode for decent cooling performance and an inaudible environment.
At this point we only measured 39 coming from the system, and the PSU and VGA card where making the most noise really. The CPU fan was barely audible, very nice.
