Testbed and Methods

I compared the Titan Amanda TEC with a Thermaltake Big Typhoon cooler that was equipped with a 120mm fan and a speed controller (from 800 to 2000rpm), but I didn’t include the stock coolers supplied with boxed Intel Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon 64 processors which had nothing to do in that company. As for other advanced air coolers like Scythe Ninja or Zalman CNPS9500 LED, they have been frequently tested on our site in comparison with the Big Typhoon, so there is no sense to test them yet another time.

The tested was assembled 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 Pentium 4 524 (3060MHz, 533MHz FSB, 1024KB L2 cache, SL8ZZ Costa Rica, G1 stepping Prescott core)
• 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 cards:
• Chaintech GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB (500/1200MHz)
• Sysconn GeForce 7600 GT 256MB (560/1400MHz)
• 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)

Note: I installed Chaintech’s GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics card into the AMD platform, but the Intel platform didn’t support that card and I had to use the Sysconn GeForce 7600 GT in it.

The tests were performed in Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 2. I installed Nvidia nForce version 6.82 and Intel Chipset Drivers version 8.1.1.1001, DirectX 9.0c, Catalyst 6.6 and ForceWare 91.31.

SpeedFan version 4.29 was used to monitor the temperatures and fan speeds. The CPU was heated up by running the FPU test from S&M version 1.8.1 (beta) at 100% load for 15 minutes; on the Intel platform I also ran the previous three S&M tests. 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 mainboards’ automatic fan speed management was disabled for the time of the tests. The thermal throttling of the Intel Pentium 4 processor was controlled with the ThrottleWatch utility.

The coolers were tested in a closed system case that was equipped with two 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 cycle.

The ambient temperature was monitored by means of an electric thermometer and remained within 23.4-24.0°C.

Before proceeding to the test results, I want to show you how efficient the new thermal grease enclosed with the Amanda TEC and other new coolers from Titan is.