Cooling Efficiency

Inside a closed system case using the “weakest” cooling system of the today’s testing participants we managed to overclock our 45 nm quad-core processor to 3.7 GHz (+23.3%). The nominal processor Vcore was increased to ~1.45 V in the mainboard BIOS (+26.1%):

The obtained results are given on the diagram below (the coolers are grouped according to the testing conditions and noise levels). Please take a closer look at it:

Note the results obtained in quiet mode, which is more important from a home user’s standpoint. The performance difference between Thermaltake TMG IA1 and Scythe Kama Angle is fairly small: 1°C inside a system case and 3°C I an open testbed in favor of a Scythe solution. However, the latter cooler falls only 2-4°C behind the super-cooler working with two fans. Moreover, it’s the cooler that has recently defeated Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme. Excellent results!

To be fair I have to add that at maximum fan rotation speed ThermoLab BARAM increases its win that adds up to 7°C. At a higher fan rotation speed both newcomers improve just slightly, by 2°C or maximum 3°C. Nevertheless, it was this particular mode that seemed to be most interesting for maximum overclocking experiments on an open testbed using today’s two best cooling solutions, namely – Scythe Kama Angle and ThermoLab BARAM. Here is what we got:

 It turned out that the new Scythe cooler yielded only 10MHz in frequency and 3°C in peak temperature to one of the best air coolers out there. I have to stress once again: it was excellent performance.