Testing

Methodology

Testing a GPU cooler involves taking the temperature of the graphics processor while at idle, and at full load. First, the cooler is attached using the stock heatpaste and temperatures are taken of the GPU while it is in both states. We then remove the cooler and replace it, this time using Arctic Silver 5 heat paste and retake the temperatures.

For "Idle" state, we leave the pc at the desktop with no applications running. After 30 minutes the temperature is taken. For load, we ran our heaviest Crysis benchmark (set at 1600 x 1200, 6x AA and High detail on everything) for 30 minutes, and then retook the temperature.

All temperatures are in degrees C and were taken using Rivatuner's temperature monitoring app.

The PC used to test this cooler was as follows:

Processor	Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 3.2 GHZ
Motherboard	Gigabyte P35T-DQ6 rev. 1.0
RAM	Crucial DDR3 12800 2GB @ 1600 MHZ
HDD	Maxtor DiamondMax 20 80GB SATA
Power supply	Spire Rocketeer 600w
Graphics Card	Sapphire x1900XT
OS	Windows XP Pro x86
Graphics Driver	Catalyst 8.2

For a comparison, results were also taken using a Zalman VF 900.

All testing is with the cooler plugged directly into the motherboard. No fan controllers were used except for the noise testing.

Results