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Test Method
All our coolers follow the same rigorous testing conditions. We strapped on a single 120mmx38mm fan in the shape of the San Ace 9G1212H1011, widely considered one of the best fans on the market due to its under-volting ability (lower RPM) and high static pressure – perfect for heatsinks. This fan can produce up to 99CFM at full speed. If a heatsink is supplied with a fan, we shall be testing that stock fan(s) on full RPM.
We now use LinX Build 0.6.1 for our entire load testing of heatsinks as this stresses the CPU more so than other load tests and really puts strain on the heatsinks. Idle testing was taken after a LinX run had finished. We allowed a ‘cooling off period of 10 minutes for the idle test. Both minimum and maximum temperatures were taken from Real Temp Build 3.58; an average of the cores was taken. Any energy saving features were disabled in the BIOS. OCZ Freeze was the TIM of choice.
All tests were run a minimum of 3 times (each run was followed by a remounting of the heatsink) and only the best results are represented. Our test system can hit 4.41GHz stable with 1.45v. However, due to the high voltage, not all heatsinks can cope, so we decided on a safe voltage level of 1.35v, and a lower stable clock speed of 4.20GHz for our testing.
Test System
Intel Core i7 930 @ 4.20GHz w/ 1.35v
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7
HIS HD 5850 1024MB
Corsair Dominator GTX2
Enermax Modu87+ 700W
Intel X25-M G2 80GB
