Testbed and Methods
The new coolers and their opponents were tested on an open testbed as well as in a system case with the following configuration:
- Mainboard: ASUS P5K Deluxe/WiFi-AP (Intel P35 chipset, LGA775, BIOS 0501)
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2400MHz, 1.2875V, 266x4MHz FSB, 2x4096KB L2 cache, Kentsfield B3)
- Thermal interface: Arctic Silver 5
- Graphics card: Sysconn GeForce 7900 GS GDDR3 (256MB, 256-bit, 575/1710MHz)
- Graphics card cooler: Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 in passive mode
- Memory: 2 x 1024MB Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-9136C5D DDR2 SDRAM (SPD: 1142MHz, 5-5-5-18, 2.1V)
- Disk subsystem: Hitachi HDT725032VLA360 (SATA-II, 320GB storage capacity, 7200rpm, 16MB cache, NCQ)
- Optical drive: Samsung SH-S183L DVD-burner (SATA-II)
- System case: ASUS ASCOT 6AR2-B Black&Silver with two 120mm 980rpm system fans Sharkoon Luminous Blue LED for intake and exhaust and a 120mm 940rpm GlacialTech fan on a side panel
- Power supply: Enermax Galaxy EGA1000EWL 1000W (a 135mm 850rpm fan for intake and a 80mm 1650rpm fan for exhaust)
There are no weak coolers in this review, so the quad-core CPU with the polished heatspreader lid was overclocked to a very impressive frequency for a B3 Kentsfield core stepping of 3456MHz at a core voltage of 1.6V.
The other mainboard voltages were left default.
All tests are performed in Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 2. SpeedFan 4.32 is used to monitor the temperature of the CPU, reading it from the CPU core sensor. The CPU is heated up by means of OverClock Checking Tool version 1.1.0 under maximum workload in a 24-minute test during which the system remains idle in the first and last 4 minutes.
The mainboard£r automatic fan speed management (Q-Fan technology) is disabled for the time of the tests. The thermal throttling of the Intel Core 2 Duo processor is controlled with RightMark CPU Clock Utility version 2.25. Our CPU begins to skip clock cycles on reaching a temperature of 82̣¾ and higher.
I perform at least two cycles of tests and wait for 20 minutes for the temperature to stabilize during each test cycle. The maximum temperature of the hottest CPU core in the two test cycles is considered as the final result (if the difference is not bigger than 1̣¾ ?otherwise the test is performed once again). Despite the stabilization period, the result of the second cycle is usually 0.5-1̣¾ higher.
The noise level of each cooler was measured according to our traditional method. The subjectively comfortable level of 36dBA is marked with a dash line in the diagram; the ambient noise from the system case, without the CPU cooler, was about 34dBA.
The ambient temperature was monitored by means of an electric thermometer and remained at 20.5-21.0̣¾ during the tests (marked with a vertical red line in the diagrams). The fan rotation speeds are shown in the diagrams as reported by SpeedFan. ASUS?P5K mainboard series does not support PWM-based regulation of the CPU fan, so I set the subjectively quiet mode for the Xigmatek HDT-S1283 manually with SpeedFan.
The specs table suggests what I£l going to compare the new coolers with, but I want to tell you more about them. The Enzotech Ultra-X has heat pipes of the same diameter. This cooler was tested with its standard fan in two modes: a quiet 1140rpm and a maximum 2530rpm. I also added the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme as one of the best coolers overall. I tested it with a Scythe Minebea 4710KL-04W-B29 fan at 1100rpm and 1900rpm. The Thermalright SI-128 was tested with the same fan and at the same speeds.
