by Sergey Lepilov
01/21/2008 | 04:01 PM
The processor cooling system called Gigabyte Volar (from Latin “volare” which means “to fly”) was first demonstrated at Computex 2007. It represents a completely new innovative approach to cooling of the around-the-socket area.
The thing is that the heatsink of new cooling system is not just kind of hanging above the CPU but is also angled at 45 degrees. This original design does make an impression that the cooler is flying, which may have given the idea for the cooler logo with two open wings.
However, if you remember the cooling solutions we have tested before that were also designed to ensure more extensive cooling of the area around the processor socket, we have concluded that these products are not very efficient overall. Scythe Kama Cross, Katana/II or CoolerMaster Sphere didn’t demonstrate any impressive results with overclocked processors. Moreover, the airflow they created and directed to the components around the processor socket didn’t really improve the CPU frequency potential in any way.
Today we are going to check out the new Gigabyte Volar cooler to see if it managed to break this rule.
The box of the new Gigabyte cooler is designed following the traditions of the best cooler packages :) It is made of thick carton with a transparent window showing the entire cooler:
It also lists all the supported socket types and features the pictograms for the key cooler features. They even mentioned the level of generated noise right on the box. The side panels are simply filled with cooler info:
The thorough cooler features description with photographs ends with a detailed list of its technical specifications. All in all, if you are an experienced overclocker, the package gives you a great opportunity to get a clear picture of what’s inside and estimate the efficiency of this solution without even opening the box.
Although if you dare open it and check out the cooler in practical experiments, you will have to work real hard on opening the transparent casing, because the clips on it are extremely tight:
On the other hand, this minor inconvenience makes the packaging very sturdy and secure minimizing the risk of cooler damage during transportation.
Above the cooler there is a small box with accessories that contains the following:
The system is made in China.
Gigabyte Volar design is highly original especially against the background of other solutions available in the market today. First of all we should point out the unusual positioning of the cooler heatsink that sits on heatpipes at 45-desgree angle to the cooler base:
In other words, the aluminum heatsink is sort of hanging over the cooler base and heatpipes coming out of it.
There is a 120mm fan above the heatsink, and its sides are covered with meshed round casing:
If we look at the cooler from beneath, we will see that the heatsink shape is very similar to that of the “boxed” cooler for Intel processors:
And if we remove the fan, we will get the impression that Gigabyte used an Intel’s boxed processor cooler as a basis for their design and modified it by removing the copper center and replacing it with heatpipes:
Gigabyte Volar heatsink (left) and Intel boxed cooler heatsink (right)
As you can clearly see there are only three copper heatpipes, each 6mm in diameter, and not four, as you may have thought at first. One heatpipe, which two ends originate from the center of the cooler base, loops in the middle of the heatsink array and ends back at the base. Moreover, if you look at the heatsink from one of the sides, you will see that it consists of two halves, with a heatpipe running right in-between them:
Since the heatsink array is ribbed, it is very hard to ensure proper contact between the heatpipe and the heatsink ribbing that is why Gigabyte used a lot of thermal interface for that purpose. The remaining two heatpipes are much shorter. They originate from the side of the cooler base and end in the center of the heatsink.
The heatsink ribs split in two in the middle thus increasing the heat dissipating surface area:
The heatsink is topped with a seven-blade 120x120x38mm fan:
The fan rotation speed is 2,000rpm but it can be dropped to 1,500rpm with the help of a variable resistor designed as a short wire that should be connected to the fan cable and the mainboard connector. The manufacturer claims that the corresponding noise levels will be 23 and 18dBA for these two modes respectively.
The fan is an F121225SL model from Everflow:
The marking suggests that this is a 25mm fan, but when we measured the fan width with a measuring tape, we got indisputable proof that it is indeed 38mm, not 25mm. The fan uses slide bearing and is guaranteed to ensure 30,000 hours or over 3 years of non-stop operation.
The cooler base is protected with a paper sticker with a warning that it needs to be removed before installation. However, I doubt there is anyone who will install a cooler with this sticker despite the bright read color and a warning message :) Once the sticker has been removed, we see very even but not well-finished base surface:
There is no polishing or even any kind of finish at all here. You can feel the roughness of the base surface with your fingertips. However, if you favor mirror-shine finish quality, you will hardly be bothered by this drawback of the Gigabyte Volar cooler: with proper materials, some skill and desire, you can easily get the sacred mirror-shine surface in 10-15 minutes.
Gigabyte Volar may be installed onto LGA 775 and Socket 754/939/940AM2 mainboards. To install the cooler onto AMD k8 platform you should use a steel bracket with the plastic locking tag included with the cooler:
In this case the cooler may be set in two positions, although it is actually more of a CPU socket and its retention bracket peculiarity rather than the cooler design feature.
If your CPU is a pretty one that comes from Intel and hence doesn’t use the old Socket 478 you will need to mount the LGA 775 retention to the cooler base. But before that you need to unscrew the plate above the cooler heatpipes:
You can position Gigabyte Volar on the LGA 775 platform facing in any of four directions, just like in majority of cooling systems. I chose to install the cooler so that the airflow created by the fan blades aimed at the copper MOSFET heatsink on the mainboard and towards the rear panel of the system case:
Since the aluminum heatsink is sitting pretty high above the base, nothing will be conflicting with the electronic components in the area around the processor socket. Even tall RAM heatsinks that are relatively close to the processor socket on Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6, didn’t hit against the cooler fan. Only one of the four cooler fastening screws is a little hard to tighten up as it is placed very close to the mainboard chipset heatsink, but this is a minor inconvenience.
If there is anything you still haven’t figured out about the installation of Gigabyte Volar cooler, you can download a step-by-step installation guide with photographs from Gigabyte’s official site (PDF file, 1.36MB).
The technical specs and recommended retail price of this solution are summed up in the table below:
The Gigabyte Volar cooler and it competitors were tested on an open testbed as well as in a closed system case with the following configuration:
We are going to dwell on CPU overclocking results in the next chapter of our review.
All tests are performed in Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 2. SpeedFan 4.34 Beta 36 was used to monitor the temperature of the CPU, reading it from the CPU core sensor. Its readings matched those from the Core Temp 0.94b utility. The mainboard’s automatic fan speed management system was disabled for the time of the tests in the mainboard BIOS. The CPU thermal throttling was controlled with RightMark CPU Clock Utility version 2.30. The CPU was heated up with OverClock Checking Tool version 1.1.1b in a 24-minute test with maximum CPU utilization, during which the system remains idle in the first and last 4 minutes.
I performed at least two cycles of tests and waited for 20 minutes for the temperature inside the system case to stabilize during each test cycle. The stabilization period in an open testbed took about half the time. The maximum temperature of the hottest CPU core in the two test cycles was considered as the final result (if the difference was no bigger than 1°C – otherwise the test was performed at least once again). Despite the stabilization period, the result of the second cycle was usually 0.5-1°C higher.
The noise level of each cooler was measured according to our traditional method described in the previous articles with the help of an electronic noise meter – CENTER-321. The subjectively comfortable level of 36dBA is marked with a dotted line in the diagram; the ambient noise from the system case, without the CPU cooler, didn’t exceed 34dBA when measured at 1m distance.
The ambient temperature was checked with an electronic thermometer that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperatures stabilized at around 24.5~25°C. It is used as a staring point on the 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.
We are going to compare the performance of our Gigabyte Volar against that of the cooler from the same price range – Thermaltake Big Typhoon 120 VX tested in two modes: at the minimal fan rotation speed of 1,300rpm and at its maximum speed of 2,000rpm. We have also added the results of Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme with a single 120 x 120 x 25mm fan from Scythe (Minebea 4710KL-04W-B29 running at ~1140RPM) as an efficiency reference point for contemporary air-coolers:
In addition we have also tested a boxed Intel processor cooler:
And in fact, this was a very smart decision, as the results turned out very interesting. The fan rotation speed of this cooler is PWM adjusted depending on the CPU utilization. It varies between 2650rpm and 3630rpm.
Now let’s move on to CPU overclocking and thermal performance of our testing participants.
I would like to allow myself to veer a little bit away before we start. One of the biggest events of the past month for me appeared the arrival of the Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 processor (2.66GHz) with new G0 core stepping. And it is not only overclocking that made this so exciting (actually overclocking results turned out not that impressive), but the CPU temperature. Compared with the previously used Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13GHz) with B2 core stepping that overclocked to 3.6GHz with 1.55V Vcore, the temperature of our E6750 clocked to 3.8GHz with 1.65V Vcore appeared 8°C lower in idle mode and 10°C (!) lower under peak workload. Of course, we used identical test platform and performance our tests in the same conditions. I believe this difference in processor core temperatures is more than just impressive. And compared against quad-core processors with the new B3 core stepping, the temperature readings from the E6750 are awfully low, which you will see later on in our review today. So, if you are looking to improve the cooling efficiency for your processor, just get the new core stepping for your Intel Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad :)
We managed to overclock our new CPU on G0 core stepping equipped with Gigabyte Volar cooler to a pretty decent frequency of 3.75GHz inside a system case. The core voltage was increased from the nominal 1.35V to 1.65V in the mainboard BIOS:
Nevertheless, CPU-Z, Everest and Gigabyte’s brand name EasyTune utility reported that the Vcore equaled 1.6-1.62V and under workload dropped down to 1.56-1.58V:
Despite that, the processor test from the OCCT suite was successfully passed twice without any errors or thermal throttling activation.
Now let’s check out the thermal chart for the dual-core processor:
Surprisingly, the new Gigabyte cooler lost not only to Thermaltake Big Typhoon and Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme, but also to the regular boxed Intel cooler. Unfortunately, neither three copper heatpipes, nor 120mm fan that is 38mm tall, nor the heatsink array that is bigger than that of Intel boxed solutions helped the Volar cooler in this battle. The problem might be poor contact between the cooler heatsink ribs and the central heatpipe, because even at minimal fan rotation speed, the heatsink is barely warm.
And here are the results obtained under maximum processor load:
Gigabyte Volar retains the last position in this race, even though at maximum fan rotation speed, the processor temperature is 1°C lower than in case of a boxed Intel cooler. I would also like to point out that the difference in CPU overclocking results between the Intel boxed cooler and the two super coolers participating in our tests was really small. It could be the not very high overclocking potential of the processor or the new mainboard that affected these results. Also, we increased the processor Vcore to 1.7V when we tested with Thermaltake Big Typhoon and Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme, however, the monitoring utilities reported it equal to 1.65-1.675V.
Now let’s move on to a very hot quad-core processor.
The old B3 processor core stepping boasts pretty high heat dissipation and fits perfectly well for cooling systems tests. That is why quad-core Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor with polished off heat-spreader cover overclocked only to 3.2GHz with Gigabyte Volar cooler and its fan rotating at minimal speed of 1.500rpm. The test was performed in a closed system case and the processor core voltage was pushed to 1.43125V:
The monitoring utilities reported a much lower voltage setting that what was set in the mainboard BIOS, and even lower under heavy workload:
The OCCT test was passed successfully again, although the cooler was running at the maximum of its capacity:
The results for the quad-core platform are given below:
The situation is the same with quad-core processor, as we can see. Gigabyte Volar is as efficient as Intel’s boxed cooler. Besides, at the maximum CPU frequency the results are again not very good for the Gigabyte’s newcomer:
The processor core voltage was the same for Intel boxed cooler and Gigabyte Volar and equaled 1.43125V. For Thermaltake Big Typhoon Vcore was at 1.525V at minimal fan rotation speed, and at 1.55V at maximum fan rotation speed, just like for Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme. The latter turned out the most efficient and the quietest one in the long run.
Now let’s check out the acoustic parameters of our today’s testing participants:
At least here Gigabyte Volar managed to beat Intel’s boxed cooling solution, although not dramatically.
We have to admit that the Gigabyte Volar cooler turned out not that efficient, unfortunately. The tests performed with two different processors revealed that it is at best as efficient as a boxed cooler from Intel. It generates very little noise at minimal fan rotation speed, but subjectively, it is just a little beyond the comfortable level. Its efficiency doesn’t increase in proportion to the generated noise at maximum fan rotation speed, so, the results here also leave much to be desired. You can hardly benefit from better cooling of the around-the-socket area while the CPU cooling efficiency is so low. Besides, the price of this solution is also a little too high for its features, so we can’t recommend this cooler. We hope that Gigabyte G-Power II Pro that is already being tested in our lab will rehabilitate Gigabyte coolers for overclockers.
P.S.: when I completed all the tests I managed to get my hands on a new G0 core stepping for quad-core Intel Core 2 Quad processor. The difference in thermal results from the older B3 core stepping turned out even greater here:
CPU with G0 core stepping appeared cooler during the same overclocking in identical conditions than the CPU with B3 core stepping. The difference reached 18°C under peak workload. In idle mode the difference was also pretty impressive and hit 13-14°C.