Testbed and Methods

We usually pick up opponents for a tested product basing on the price factor. Having no official info about the price of the Hyper 7, I took a super-cooler Thermaltake Big Typhoon, a less efficient Scythe Mine, and boxed coolers for Intel Celeron D and AMD Athlon 64 processors. The tested was configured out of the following components:

• Mainboards:
• ABIT AN8 SLI (nForce 4 SLI chipset, Socket 939, BIOS v.2.0)
• ABIT AA8-DuraMAX (Intel 925XE chipset, LGA775, BIOS v.2.5)
• Processors:
• AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2000MHz, 1.40V, 512KB L2 cache, Cool&Quiet Disabled, Venice core, E6 stepping)
• Intel Celeron D 352 (3200MHz, 533MHz FSB, 512KB L2 cache, SL96P Malay, CedarMill, C1 stepping)
• Memory:
• 2 x 512MB Corsair TWINXP1024-3200C2 PC3200 DDR SDRAM (SPD: 400MHz, 2-2-2-5_1T)
• 2 x 512MB Corsair TWIN2X1024A-4300C3 PC4300 DDR2 SDRAM (SPD: 533MHz, 4-3-3-8)
• Graphics card: Radeon X1900 XTX (PCI Express x16, 512MB GDDR3, 650/1550MHz, 16 pixel processors)
• Graphics card cooler: Zalman VF700-Cu (~1980rpm, ~20dBA)
• Disk subsystem: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 (6V250F0, 7200rpm, Serial ATA-II, 250GB capacity, 16MB cache)
• 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. We used the same thermal paste with all the coolers and disabled the automatic fan speed management systems in the mainboards’ BIOSes.

SpeedFan version 4.28 was used to monitor the temperatures and fan speeds:

The CPU was heated up by running the FPU test from S&M version 1.8.0 (alpha) at 100% load for 15 minutes.

I also simulated a Game test mode by running 3DMark06’s Firefly Forest test with 16x anisotropic filtering and without full-screen antialiasing for 20 times. The temperature was read from the sensor integrated into the CPU.

The coolers were tested in a closed system case that was equipped with two rather quiet 120mm system fans for intake and exhaust and one 120mm fan on the side panel. Three test cycles were performed for each cooler and the results were averaged. I waited for 40-45 minutes for the temperature to stabilize during each test.

The ambient temperature was monitored by means of an electric thermometer and remained within 22.1-22.7°C.