X-bit labs

ASUS Silent Square CPU Cooler: New Candidate for Super Cooler Title? (page 6)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 10/20/2006 | 12:20 PM ]

Specification

The following table lists the official specs of the Silent Square cooler:

Testbed and Methods

I compared the Silent Square from ASUS with a Thermaltake Big Typhoon cooler that was equipped with a 120mm fan rotating at ~1320rpm.

The following components were used in the testbeds:

• Mainboards:
• ABIT AN8 SLI (nForce 4 SLI chipset, Socket 939, BIOS v.2.0)
• ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP (Intel P965, LGA775, BIOS 0706)
• Processors:
• AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (1800MHz, 1.40V, 512KB L2 cache, Cool&Quiet disabled, Venice core, E6 stepping)
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1866 MHz, 266x4MHz FSB, 2x1024KB L2 cache, SL9SA Malay, Allendale, B2)
• Thermal interface: Zalman CSL850
• Memory:
• 2 x 512MB Corsair TWINXP1024-3200C2 PC3200 DDR SDRAM (SPD: 400MHz, 2-2-2-5_1T)
• 2 x 512MB Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM (SPD: 667MHz, 4-4-4-15)
• Graphics card: Chaintech GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB (500/1200MHz)
• Disk subsystem: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (3320620AS, SATA-II, 320GB capacity, 7200rpm, 16MB buffer, NCQ)
• System case: ASUS ASCOT 6AR2-B Black&Silver + an intake 120mm system fan  Coolink SwiF (~1200rpm, ~24dBA) + two 120mm system fans Sharkoon Luminous Blue LED (~1000rpm, ~21dBA)
• Power supply: MGE Magnum 500 (500W) + 80mm GlacialTech SilentBlade fan (~1700rpm, 19dBA)

The tests were performed in Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 2. I installed Nvidia nForce version 6.82 and Intel Chipset Drivers version 8.1.1.1001 for the ABIT and ASUS mainboards, respectively. I also installed DirectX 9.0c and ForceWare 91.47.

Although the GeForce 7950 GX2 generates quite an amount of heat, and the air from the coolers of this graphics card remains inside the system case (it is not exhausted as with the Radeon X1900/X1950 XTX), I decided to aggravate the conditions of the test by overclocking the card from its default 500/1200MHz frequencies to 550/1500MHz. The card produced more heat as a consequence. There was no sense in this on the open testbed, so the card was running at its default frequencies then.

SpeedFan version 4.29 was used to monitor the temperatures and fan speeds on the AMD platform. The temperature of the Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 was monitored with S&M version 1.8.1 which was also used to heat both the CPUs up by running the FPU test at 100% load for 15 minutes. In the Game test mode the computer was running 3DMark06’s Firefly Forest test for 19 times with 16x anisotropic filtering and without full-screen antialiasing.

The temperature was read from the sensor integrated into the CPU. The mainboards’ automatic fan speed management was disabled for the time of the tests. The thermal throttling of the Intel Core 2 Duo processor was controlled with RightMark CPU Clock Utility version 2.15. I additionally controlled the temperature of the Intel Core 2 Duo with Core Temp Beta 0.9.0.91 which would report a 1.5°C higher temperature of both cores than S&M did.

The coolers were tested on an open testbed and in a closed system case that was equipped with two 120mm system fans for intake and exhaust and one 120mm fan on the side panel. Two test cycles were performed for each cooler. I waited for 25-30 minutes for the temperature inside the system case to stabilize during each test cycle. The highest results from the two test cycles are shown in the diagrams (if the difference was not bigger than 1°C). Despite the stabilization period, the results of the second cycle would usually be 0.5-1°C higher.

The ambient temperature was monitored by means of an electric thermometer near the system case and remained within 18.7-19°C.