Date: January 17th, 2006
Article by: Joe Anderson (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Spire
<--SHOP FOR COMPUTER COOLING PRODUCTS HERE
PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND TESTING
with the exception of the memory slots. This will vary from board to board, but in this particular case, the VertiCool III will need to be removed to change memory in this slot. At any rate, let's get on to the testing.
I've tested all the coolers in the comparison in the bare frame pictured above. This eliminates any effects that a case might introduce. Keep in mind that temps inside your case will be higher; how much higher depends on the case and airflow.
The following parameters were used throughout testing:
Arctic Silver 5 TIM used on all coolers.
Ambient temperature kept at a constant 21C.
Each cooler allowed to burn-in at maximum heat setting with Prime95 for two hours to partially set the thermal paste. The computer was then shut down for one hour.
Idle temperatures were recorded after one hour of zero load after booting to the desktop.
Load temperatures were recorded after two hours of maximum heat torture testing using Prime95.
Fan speed for the Verticool III was adjusted to maximum (3250 RPM) and minimum (1250 RPM) via the included controller
Idle and load temperatures were recorded at stock CPU speed (2.2 Ghz.) and at an overclock approaching 25% (2.7 Ghz.). Vcore was raised by 0.1V (from 1.4V to 1.5V) during the overclocking runs.
The testbed we'll be using consists of the following:
- AMD Opteron 148 processor
- DFI Lanparty UT nF4 SLI-DR motherboard
- eVGA 7900GS KO
- OCZ 5002048ELGE-K (1024mb X 2) memory
- OCZ GameXStream 850W PSU
- Western Digital WD800 SATA hard drive
- Lite-On DVD-RW drive
After several hours of testing, these are the results.
* With the recommended Panaflo 92mm fan (FBL09A12M, 2450 RPM, 48 CFM, 30dBA)
The VertiCool III from Spire performed admirably during testing, posting up some of the best temperatures I've seen. It performs on par with a cooler costing considerably more. It's also nearly silent at minimum fan speed, but quite noticeable at max.
