Thermal Performance

AMD Athlon 64 Platform

I overclocked an Athlon 64 3200+ processor from its default 2000MHz to 2785MHz with a voltage increase to 1.675V.

Here are the results of the test:

So, the thermoelectric cooler delivers more performance than one of the best air coolers even when the latter uses a 120mm at 2000rpm (the fan speed of the off-the-shelf Thermaltake Big Typhoon is ~1300rpm). To my mind, however, the advantage is rather small for such a technically advanced and expensive cooling solution. The insignificant temperature reduction provided by the Titan Amanda TEC didn’t help to improve the overclockability of the CPU.

Intel Pentium 4 Platform

The Intel Pentium 4 524 stepping G1 was overclocked from its default 3060MHz to 4140MHz.

The voltage of this core was increased from the default 1.385V to 1.535V. Unfortunately, the CPU-Z utility doesn’t show the CPU model correctly and doesn’t tell its voltage on the mainboard I used during the test.

Judging by the temperature threshold for the thermal throttling of that CPU, which is about 54-55°C, the mainboard’s monitoring system reports an understated temperature value for this CPU model (by about 10-15°C), so don’t be surprised at the low values. More important is the difference in the CPU temperature between the different coolers. Here are the numbers:

My supposition about the understated temperature values is confirmed by the temperature data in the idle mode when the Peltier element should have shut down, but the orange indicator of the PCI card was still signaling that the thermoelectric unit was active.

Comparing the results of the coolers on the Intel platform, you can see that the Titan Amanda TEC delivers almost the same performance as the Thermaltake Big Typhoon does at 2000rpm fan speed. In its original version the super-cooler is just a little worse than the Titan. Where is the advantage of the thermoelectric cooler? Why can’t the Titan Amanda TEC win on the Intel platform as it did on the AMD one?