Testing

For the testing I used the following setup:

AMD 3500+ @ 2.75ghz & 1.65v
DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR
OCZ 1gb PC4000 VX @ 250htt & 3.3v
Nvidia 6600 256 @ 420/518
TT Armor Case

To test the kit in Idle and load environments I left my rig running for 30 minutes and tested the temperature using speedfan and a temperature probe. I then ran my computer at full load for 15 minutes using S&M CPU stress tester and tested again with the temperature probe and Speedfan. I also compared these temperatures to my previous air cooler, the Gigabyte 3d Pro. All figures are in Degrees Celsius.

As you can see the XSPC kit is a huge leap ahead of my previous air cooler. The temperatures at idle and at load show very significant temperature drops. The low speed fan (1700rpm) was also exponentially quieter than the Gigabyte cooler (4000rpm).

Overclocking

With reduced temperatures it is quite common for people to achieve higher overclocks; so I set about raising by HTT. Unfortunately I think I am pretty much at the limits of my chip and even upping the Vcore to 1.7v allowed only another 30 MHz of stable OC. I was able to suicide run at 2.9 GHz though which I was quite proud of, however this crashed as soon as I tried to run any benchmarking programs.