Testbed and Methods

We tested the new Thermalright TRUE Copper Ultra-120 eXtreme and its competitor only in an open testbed when the mainboard sits horizontally on the desk and the coolers are installed vertically.

Our testbed was identical for all coolers and featured the following configuration:

• Mainboard: DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS (Intel X48), LGA 775, BIOS 10/03/2008
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (3.0GHz, 1.25V, 2x6MB L2 cache, 4x333MHz FSB, Yorkfield, C0)
• Thermal interface: Arctic Silver 5
• Graphics card: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition GDDR3 896 MB / 448 bit, 648/1404/2106 MHz
• Memory:
  • 2 x 1024MB DDR2 Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-9136C5D (1142MHz / 5-5-5-18 / 2.1V);
  • 2 x 1024MB DDR2 CSXO-XAC-1200-2GB-KIT DIABLO (1200MHz / 5-5-5-16 / 2.4V).
• Disk subsystem: Western Digital VelociRaptor (SATA-II, 300GB storage capacity, 10,000RPM, 16MB cache, NCQ)
• HDD silencer and cooler: Scythe Quiet Drive 3.5”
• Control and monitoring panel: Zalman ZM-MFC2
• Power supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W W0218 (with a default 140 mm fan)

All tests were performed under Windows Vista Ultimate Edition x86 SP1. SpeedFan 4.37 was used to monitor the temperature of the CPU and mainboard chipset, reading it directly from the CPU core sensor and to monitor the rotation speed of the cooler fans:

The mainboard’s automatic fan speed management feature as well as CPU power-saving technologies were disabled for the time of the tests in the mainboard BIOS. The CPU thermal throttling was controlled with the RightMark CPU Clock Utility version 2.35.0:

The CPU was heated up in two modes. First we used Linpack 32-bit with convenient LinX shell version 0.5.2.2 (includes updated Linpack with even higher load) to heat up the CPU to its maximum. We manually set the RAM capacity at 1536MB and recorded 15 runs.

Since we ran the test twice with 20/10-minute idle period between the runs for the system to cool down and temperatures to stabilize, the relatively short actual testing period was quite enough for the maximum processor temperature to become stable.

For the second type of load we usedOCCT (OverClock Checking Tool) v2.0.1:

We ran a 23-minute test with maximum CPU utilization, during which the system remained idle in the first 1 and last 4 minutes of the test.

I performed at least two cycles of tests in both test modes and waited for approximately 15 minutes for the temperature in an open testbed to stabilize during each test cycle. We took the maximum temperature of the hottest processor core after two test cycles for the results charts. The table will also show detailed temperature readings for each processor core.

The ambient temperature was checked next to the system case with an electronic thermometer that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperatures varied between ~24.0°C. It is used as a starting point on the temperature diagrams. Note that the fan rotation speeds as shown in the diagrams are the average readings reported by SpeedFan, and not the official claimed fan specifications.

Quite logically, the pure copper Ultra-120 eXtreme cooler will be competing against its brother with aluminum heatsink plates. Both Thermalright coolers were tested with one and two 120 x 120 x 38 mm Scythe Ultra Kaze fans ($13.6). We ran the tests in two fan modes: in quiet mode at ~1020 RPM and at maximum rotation speed of ~2000 RPM. The fans were installed as intake-exhaust.