Testbed and Methods
The Gigabyte Volar cooler and it competitors were tested on an open testbed as well as in a closed system case with the following configuration:
- Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 (Intel X38), LGA 775, BIOS F7H
- Processors:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2667MHz, 1.35V, L2 4096KB, FSB: 333MHz x 4, (Conroe, G0)
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2400MHz, 1.2875V, L2 2 x 4096KB, FSB: 266MHz x 4, (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 DDR2 CSXO-XAC-1200-2GB-KIT DIABLO (1200MHz / 5-5-5-16 / 2.4V)
- Disk subsystem: Samsung HD501LJ HDD (SATA-II, 500GB storage capacity, 7200rpm, 16MB cache, NCQ)
- Optical drive: Samsung SH-S183L RAM & DVD±R/RW & CD±RW burner (SATA-II)
- System case: ASUS ASCOT 6AR2-B Black&Silver (ATX) with a 120mm ~980rpm Sharkoon Luminous Blue LED system fan for air intake, a 120mm ~1140rpm Scythe Minebea fan for air exhaust, and a 120mm ~940rpm GlacialTech SilentBlade GT12025-BDLA1 fan on a side panel
- Power supply: Enermax Galaxy EGA1000EWL 1000W (a 135mm 850rpm fan for intake and a 80mm 1650rpm fan for exhaust)
We are going to dwell on CPU overclocking results in the next chapter of our review.
All tests are performed in Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 2. SpeedFan 4.34 Beta 36 was used to monitor the temperature of the CPU, reading it from the CPU core sensor. Its readings matched those from the Core Temp 0.94b utility. The mainboard’s automatic fan speed management system was disabled for the time of the tests in the mainboard BIOS. The CPU thermal throttling was controlled with RightMark CPU Clock Utility version 2.30. The CPU was heated up with OverClock Checking Tool version 1.1.1b in a 24-minute test with maximum CPU utilization, during which the system remains idle in the first and last 4 minutes.
I performed at least two cycles of tests and waited for 20 minutes for the temperature inside the system case to stabilize during each test cycle. The stabilization period in an open testbed took about half the time. The maximum temperature of the hottest CPU core in the two test cycles was considered as the final result (if the difference was no bigger than 1°C – otherwise the test was performed at least once again). Despite the stabilization period, the result of the second cycle was usually 0.5-1°C higher.
The noise level of each cooler was measured according to our traditional method described in the previous articles with the help of an electronic noise meter – CENTER-321. The subjectively comfortable level of 36dBA is marked with a dotted line in the diagram; the ambient noise from the system case, without the CPU cooler, didn’t exceed 34dBA when measured at 1m distance.
The ambient temperature was checked with an electronic thermometer that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperatures stabilized at around 24.5~25°C. It is used as a staring point on the diagrams. Note that the fan rotation speeds as shown in the diagrams are the average readings reported by SpeedFan, and not the official claimed fan specifications.
We are going to compare the performance of our Gigabyte Volar against that of the cooler from the same price range – Thermaltake Big Typhoon 120 VX tested in two modes: at the minimal fan rotation speed of 1,300rpm and at its maximum speed of 2,000rpm. We have also added the results of Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme with a single 120 x 120 x 25mm fan from Scythe (Minebea 4710KL-04W-B29 running at ~1140RPM) as an efficiency reference point for contemporary air-coolers:
In addition we have also tested a boxed Intel processor cooler:
And in fact, this was a very smart decision, as the results turned out very interesting. The fan rotation speed of this cooler is PWM adjusted depending on the CPU utilization. It varies between 2650rpm and 3630rpm.
Now let’s move on to CPU overclocking and thermal performance of our testing participants.
