Cooling Efficiency and Acoustic Performance

Cooling Efficiency Tests

Let’s see how these coolers coped with an overclocked quad-core CPU:

I can’t say that the first cooler we talked about today – ASUS Triton 77 – is a very efficient solution compared with the other two and especially with a ZEROtherm cooler. You may already know about coolers like that (with the airflow directed up and away from the mainboard PCB) – we tested solutions from Spire using the same airflow principle. And again we have to admit that this cooling principle is not justified against the classical approach, when the airflow is directed towards the mainboard PCB or along it. Here I would like to add that after we turned the fan upside down, so that the airflow was now coming towards the mainboard, ASUS Triton 77 improved its cooling efficiency by 2ºC. However, it was most likely a 120mm fan on the case side panel that blew cool air to the top of ASUS Triton 77 and then this airflow was taken over by the ASUS fan at the bottom of the heatsink. The same test performed in an open testbed with the fan turned upside down didn’t result in any changes of the CPU temperature.

Two other ASUS solution, Silent Knight II and Silent Square EVO, proved more efficient on an overclocked processor than Triton 77. We were a little bit surprised by Silent Square EVO, which suddenly turned out more efficient than Silent Knight II, while the results of the previous tests with first cooler revisions proved otherwise. We believe it is larger heat dissipating surface of the Silent Square EVO cooler as well as better fan positioning inside the heatsink that minimizes the airflow loss. Silent Knight II, however, could have been designed better in this aspect. Even the copper heatsink plates of the Silent Knight II and 220RPM faster rotating fan, according to the monitoring data, didn’t help it catch up with Silent Square EVO in cooling efficiency. The latter actually performed very well against the ZEROtherm NV120 Premium and yielded only 3ºC to the leader.