Testing and Results

Test Rig

CPU: AMD Phenom II 1090T

GPU: ASUS Reference 5870

Memory: 16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz 9-9-9-24 DDR3

Storage: Crucial C300 128GB

PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro 850W

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Case: Corsair 700D equipped with many fans

Methodology

To ensure the results were consistent, the heatsink was mounted three times and idle and load tests run each time. An average of the results is shown below.

For idle testing, Windows 7 was allowed to run with no programs for 10 minutes.

For load testing I used Prime 95 Small FFTs and temperatures were taken after 20 minutes.

The standard thermal paste, provided with the cooler, was used.

Overclocking

The settings we used for our stock and overclocked tests are:

Stock – CPU 3200MHz Auto voltage (1.325v)

Overclocked – CPU 4000MHz 1.456v

Due to the thermal probe built into the Phenom II CPUs being incorrectly calibrated, the temperatures displayed are 5C cooler than the actual temperature of the CPU. The temperatures are all taken from the same CPU so are all on the same scale.

Results

Stock

At idle the CPU it pretty cool, but the fan is running at 1739 RPM which certainly isn’t very quiet. As I apply load to the CPU we reach 2626 RPM which is loud and unless you use headphones all the time, it wouldn’t be easy to live with. It’s a small cooler but this is only the stock test.

Overclocked

Pushed to 4.0GHz the fan sits at 1985 RPM Idle which again is quite loud but mostly a windy noise. Unfortunately my CPU shuts down at 76/77 so that’s a fail, even with the fan running at 3013RPM, faster than Xigmatek rates the fan at. It did take a while for the CPU to rise to those temperatures and the fan was so loud I could easily hear it standing in the door way across the room while someone else is watching TV at the same time.