Date: January 27th, 2010
Article by: Damian Plasencia (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited By: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Thermaltake USA
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PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND TESTING
The test bed consisted of the following hardware used to test the V1 AX CPU Cooler
All coolers were tested in the Antec 300 pictured above. Keep in mind that temps inside your case will be different, depending on the chassis, cable management, fan arrangement, and airflow.
After applying some of the TIM that was included in package to the processor IHS, we can proceed with the installation.
Since I am using an AM3 platform, the mechanism for installing the CPU did not require Intel's difficult push pins or any screws. All that was needed was the locking mechanism which fastens the cooler down with the aid of the motherboards retention bracket.
Installing the V1 AX was the easiest part. All it took was aligning the base of the cooler with the processor's IHS and fastening the retention clip. As you can see there is quite a bit of room to work with. That is always a good thing for those of you that have crazy tall ram sinks.
The following parameters were used throughout testing:
• Thermaltake TIM used on all coolers.
• Ambient temperature kept at a constant 19C.
• Idle temperatures were recorded after one hour of zero load after booting to the desktop.
• Load temperatures were recorded after one hour of maximum CPU heat testing using OCCT 3.1.0.
• Core temperatures were logged with OCCT.
• For both processors, idle and load temperatures were recorded at stock CPU speed (3.4 GHz.) and at a 0.3% overclock (3.6 GHz.). Vcore was raised to 1.4V during the overclocking runs.
The computer was shut down for a minimum of one hour between tests. Here are the results compared with the other coolers in the test.
I was slightly disappointed with the results. I expected the cooler to at least stay under the 60C temperature zone. Either way those temperatures are nothing to be scared of.
