Testbed and Methods

We tested the new Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro cooler and its only competitor in two modes: in an open testbed when the mainboard sits horizontally on the desk and the cooler is installed vertically, and in a closed testbed with the mainboard in vertical position.

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

• Mainboard: DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS (Intel X48), LGA 775, BIOS 08/29/2008
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (3.0GHz, 1.25V, 2x6MB L2 cache, 4x333MHz FSB, Yorkfield, C0)
• Thermal interface: Gelid GC1
• Graphics card: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition GDDR3 896 MB / 448 bit, 650/1400/2100 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 SATA-II DVD RAM & DVD±R/RW & CD±RW
• System case: ASUS ASCOT 6AR2-B Black&Silver (ATX) with 120mm ~960RPM Scythe Slip Stream 120 fans for air intake and exhaust (the fans are installed on silicon spindles), and the same 120mm ~960RPM fan on the side panel
• Control and monitoring panel: Zalman ZM-MFC2
• Power supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W W0218 (with a default 130 mm fan)
• Monitor: 24" BenQ FP241W (Wide LCD, 1920 x 1200 / 60 Hz)

All tests were performed under Windows Vista Ultimate Edition x86 SP1. SpeedFan 4.36 beta 15 was used to monitor the temperature of the CPU and mainboard chipset, reading it directly from the CPU core sensor and to monitor the rotation speed of the cooler fans:

The mainboard’s automatic fan speed management feature as well as CPU power-saving technologies were disabled for the time of the tests in the mainboard BIOS. The CPU thermal throttling was controlled with the RightMark CPU Clock Utility version 2.35.0:

Since we are testing only two coolers today, the CPU was heated up in three modes. First we used Linpack 32-bit with very convenient LinX shell version 0.4.9 to heat up the CPU to its maximum. We manually set the RAM capacity at 1850MB and recorded 15 runs.

Since we ran the test twice with 20/10-minute idle period between the runs for the system to cool down and temperatures to stabilize, the relatively short actual testing period was quite enough for the maximum processor temperature to become stable.

Besides that we also ran OCCT v2.0.0a CPU test for 23 minutes (with maximum priority):

Finally, the third test mode was extremely resource-hungry Unreal Tournament 3 game that works perfectly well with all four CPU cores. The test consisted of three runs of “Botmatch” scene at “DM-ShangriLa” level with the help of HardwareOC UT3 Bench v1.3.0.0 benchmark.

To minimize the dependence of the CPU performance on the graphics card in our system we used 800x600 pixels resolution but maximum image quality settings. In this mode our GeForce GTX 260 graphics card delivered average framerate of ~162 fps, which means that it is still pretty CPU-dependent.

I performed at least two cycles of tests in all three modes and waited for approximately 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. Despite the stabilization period, the result of the second test cycle was usually 0.5-1°C higher. We took the average temperature of all four processor cores for the results charts, however, we will also provide the temperature readings for each core individually.

The ambient temperature was checked next to the system case with an electronic thermometer that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperatures varied between 23.0~23.5°C. It is used as a starting point on the temperature 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.

The noise level of each cooler was measured after 1:00AM in a closed room about 20sq.m big using CENTER-321 electronic noise meter. The measurements were taken at 3cm, 1m and 3m distance from the noise source. During the acoustics tests all three 120-mm case fans were slowed down to ~700. In this mode the background noise from the system case measured at 1m distance didn’t exceed ~32.8 dBA, and the loudest fan was the 130-mm fan of the system power supply. When the system was completely powered off, our noise meter detected 30.8 dBA (the lowest on the charts is 30 dBA. The subjectively comfortable noise level is around 34~34.5 dBA.

Now a few words about the competitor. As you may have already guessed we are going to use highly efficient Thermalright SI-128 SE cooler ($40) with a 140-mm 11-blade Scythe Kaze Maru fan ($20) working in two modes: quiet mode at ~1020 RPM and maximum rotation speed for the fan of this type of ~1860 RPM:

Thermalright SI-128 SE cooler was installed with the heatpipes ends facing upwards. We didn’t modify or improve the cooler in any way (such as polish the base, for instance).

Since Scythe Kaze Maru creates higher pressure than the default fan of Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro, we also tested the latter with the Scythe fan in the same two operational modes:

By testing the coolers with identical fans we can compare the efficiency of their heatsinks in the pure. I would also like to add here that during the tests inside a closed system case Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro was installed exactly as you see on the photo above, i.e. with the heatpipes positioned horizontally.