Testbed and Methods

We tested our today’s hero and its only competitor only in a closed system case with a side panel removed. It will allow us to emulate the most common working conditions for this cooler in tower-type system cases. And the removed side panel will minimize the dependency of the cooler efficiency on the specific system case model.

Our testbed was identical for all coolers throughout the test session and featured the following configuration:

• Mainboard: DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS (Intel X48), LGA 775, BIOS 10/03/2008;
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (3.0GHz, 1.25V, 2x6MB L2 cache, 4x333MHz FSB, Yorkfield, C0);
• Thermal interface: Arctic Silver 5;
• Graphics card: XFX GeForce GTX 285 1024 MB, 648/1476/2484 MHz;
• Memory:
  • 2 x 1024MB DDR2 Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-9136C5D (1142MHz / 5-5-5-18 / 2.1V);
  • 2 x 1024MB DDR2 CSXO-XAC-1200-2GB-KIT DIABLO (1200MHz / 5-5-5-16 / 2.4V).
• Disk subsystem: Western Digital VelociRaptor (SATA-II, 300GB storage capacity, 10,000RPM, 16MB cache, NCQ);
• HDD silencer and cooler: Scythe Quiet Drive 3.5”;
• Optical drive: Samsung SH-S183L;
• System case: Ascot 6AR2-B with 120mm ~900RPM Scythe Slip Stream 120 fans for air intake and exhaust (the fans are installed on silicon spindles), and Enermax Magma fan at ~900RPM fan on the side panel;
• Control and monitoring panel: Zalman ZM-MFC2;
• Power supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W W0218 (with a default 140 mm fan).

All tests were performed under Windows Vista Ultimate Edition x86 SP1. We used the following software during our test session:

• Real Temp 2.90 RC12 – to monitor the processor core temperature;
• RightMark CPU Clock Utility 2.35.0 – to control processor thermal throttling;
• Linpack 32-bit with LinX shell version 0.5.5 – to create maximum CPU load (two test cycles, 15 Linpack runs in each cycle with 1600 MB RAM capacity involved);
• RivaTuner 2.22 – to visually control temperature changes (with RTCore plugin).

So, the complete screenshot during the test session looks as follows:

The stabilization period for the CPU temperature between the two test cycles was approximately 10 minutes. We took the maximum temperature of the hottest processor core of the four for the results charts.

The ambient temperature was checked next to the system case or open testbed with an electronic thermometer with 0.1°C precision that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperature stayed at 22.5°C (±0.2°C).

We are going to compare our Thermalright AXP-140 against a cooling solution from the same manufacturer – a well-known Thermalright SI-128 SE, which is currently the most efficient “top” cooler. As we have already mentioned earlier in our review, our SI-128 SE sample had an even base. We didn’t do anything to improve the cooler even more. We used AXP-140 retention to install it onto the testboard, because both these coolers have identically shaped and sized base plates. This allows us to compare the “pure” heatsink efficiency and eliminate any possible influence of the retention type used. The cooler was installed with the heatpipes turned up.

Thermalright SI-128 SE was equipped with Enermax Magma UCMA12 fan that has proven to be the most efficient fan for this type of heatsink. The fan worked in three speed modes: in quiet mode at 840RPM, at 1180RPM generating moderate noise and at 1580RPM generating medium noise. Our tests show that the cooling efficiency of the SI-128 SE cooler improves most dramatically when the fan rotation speed increases to 1600RPM. Any further increase in the fan rotation speed has minimal effect on cooling performance.

As for Thermalright AXP-140, we tested it with two types of fans. Since 140 x 140 x 25mm fans are less widely spread in the market than 120 x 120 x 25mm fans, we decided to find out how efficient AXP-140 would be with the above mentioned Enermax Magma fan at different rotation speeds. As for the 140-mm fan, we chose Scythe Kaze Maru with rotation speed adjusted in the interval from 500 to 1900RPM. The new cooler is not designed to work in passive mode (without fans), because the heatsink array is too dense, that is why we didn’t perform any tests like that.