Cooling Efficiency and Acoustic Performance

Cooling Efficiency Tests

The coolers on the diagrams below tested in an open testbed and inside a system case are split into two groups: with low level of generated noise and at maximum fan rotation speed. The results are the following:

The results demonstrated by Zalman CNPS7500-Cu LED show very clearly that heatpipe technology has pushed cooling solutions using them far ahead of regular copper heatsinks. This cooler evidently limits further quad-core CPU overclocking as it can no longer ensure its proper cooling. Inside a closed system case in quiet operational mode it is 17°C behind the weakest cooler with heatpipes. However, I have to say that at maximum fan rotation speed the cooling efficiency of Zalman CNPS7500-Cu LED improves significantly and the CPU temperature drops about 10°C. Even in an open testbed this cooler performs better, although it is still behind the cooling system with heatpipe technology.

The next testing participant – Tuniq Tower 120-LBF – is a significantly more efficiency cooling solution that the one from Zalman, although it didn’t become the performance leader today, too. In quiet mode inside a system case Tuniq cooler falls only 4°C behind Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme, and at higher fan rotation speed it catches up with it yielding only in the level of generated noise. In an open testbed the difference is greater, although Tuniq Tower 120-LBF is not critically behind one of the best coolers in the market.

Noctua NH-U12P also proved remarkably efficient on an overclocked processor. However, you will have to equip it with two 120x120x25mm fans to ensure that it really shows what it is capable of. Especially since everything you need for that is bundled with the cooler. As a result, Noctua NH-U12P becomes the best cooler of the four testing participants of our today’s roundup. And if you own a Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme, you still do not need to worry, as this quiet cooling solution with only one fan is as efficient as Noctua NH-U12P with two.

And finally, Thermaltake Big Typhoon 120 VX, which has become everyone’s favorite thanks to its affordable price and broad availability, performed as good as Tuniq Tower 120-LBF or Noctua NH-U12P with one fan.

As you understand, relatively weak Zalman CNPS7500-Cu LED didn’t let the other testing participants show their real potential that is why I suggest checking out the maximum processor frequencies we managed to obtain for each of the coolers. This round of tests was performed in an open testbed:

We achieved maximum processor frequency with each of the coolers in different work modes and with different voltage settings, which are mentioned on the diagram. And as we see, this test allows to distinguish between super coolers and just good cooling solutions. For example, Noctua with one fan rotating at 910RPM cools the overclocked processor as good as Tuniq Tower 120-LBF with a fan working at 1310RPM. Although you should keep in mind that their fans are designed differently. The Tuniq Tower 120-LBF with its fan rotating at maximum speed can squeeze additional 70MHz from the processor provided the voltage is raised mode and the temperature under peak workload increases.

We can overclock our processor almost to the same frequency using Noctua NH-U12P with one fan at ~1080RPM and 5°C lower temperature than with the Tuniq cooler. And if you add another fan with the same rotation speed to the Noctua solution, the temperature of the hottest cores will drop another 3°C, although the CPU overclocking potential will only improve by 24MHz. Moreover, with both fans set at ~1380RPM the processor frequency will not grow any further. It may be the cooler heatsink that exhausts its potential (there are only 4 heatpipes and the gaps between the heatsink plates are pretty big), so increasing the fan rotation speed doesn’t have any effect any more.

Thermaltake Big Typhoon 120 VX once again proved superior in our tests and totally worth every penny you pay for it. If it only had better retention that would hold its base securely on top of the processor heat-spreader without bending the mainboard PCB then we could definitely work on polishing off its base and win another 3-4°C. Hopefully, the next modification, Big Typhoon 14 will be free from this unpleasant drawback.

The leader of our today’s test session is Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme. No other cooler could cope with a quad-core CPU overclocked to 4073MHz at 1.6125V Vcore. Note that Ultra-120 eXtreme won this race with only one quiet fan onboard.