X-bit labs

ASUS Silent Square CPU Cooler: New Candidate for Super Cooler Title? (page 7)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

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

Thermal Performance

AMD Platform

I overclocked the Athlon 64 3000+ processor from its default 1800MHz to 2800MHz with a voltage increase to 1.65V.

CPU-Z reports the core voltage incorrectly. I didn’t remove the CPU heat-spreader. Here are the results:

The Silent Square boasts high cooling efficiency, being a mere 2°C inferior to the super-cooler Big Typhoon in a closed system case. The difference is even smaller than that on the open testbed and downright negligible under peak load. Note that the difference in the CPU temperature is bigger between the two coolers in Game mode than under S&M.

I’d also like to show you the S&M monitoring graphs as the CPU was being heated up by the FPU test at 100% load in the closed system case. The Silent Square comes first:

And here are the monitoring graphs for the Thermaltake Big Typhoon:

The delta of the temperatures is almost the same, but the Thermaltake Big Typhoon starts out at a 2°C lower temperature and finishes with the same lead. Take a look at the mainboard sensor graph (it is colored pink). It shows that the Silent Square is on the losing side when it comes to cooling the mainboard around the socket – the difference is 11°C under peak load. Note also how the temperature is going down when the load is removed. This process goes at a faster rate with the Thermaltake Big Typhoon.

Now let’s check out how the Silent Square is going to cope with an overclocked Intel Core 2 Duo.

Intel Core 2 Duo Platform

The Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor (stepping B2) was overclocked from its default 1866MHz frequency to 3450MHz with a voltage increase to 1.5V. This is a frequency gain of 84.9%, by the way:

CPU-Z reports the core voltage incorrectly in this case, too. It was set at 1.5V in the BIOS, and other utilities (e.g. Everest) reported a voltage of 1.445V. Note that the CPU was overclocked to the maximum frequency with the tested air coolers, and there are only four air coolers I know of as yet that can cope with it at such a clock rate (two of them are compared in this review).

Here are the results:

The difference between the two coolers is bigger on the dual-core CPU. The Thermaltake Big Typhoon outperforms the Silent Square by almost 6°C in a closed system case and by 3.5°C on an open testbed. The S&M monitoring graphs aren’t informative here (it only shows a CPU temperature graph and a barely changing chipset temperature graph), so there’s no sense in publishing them.