X-bit labs

Started by: yasin | Date 06/30/07

Comments: 5 | Last Comment:  07/04/07

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1. Spire coolers are difinitly not the best coolers. and i never think they will or could launch a good cooler,this company has been a while on the market since socket a, and they never launched something that impressed me.(its like jetway or ecs motherboard in overclocking) never expect much from it.
the review is excellent im waiting forward review of ati Hd radeons 2400/2600..

2. Nice review. However, I do have a request for the presentation of the thermal performance graphs: it would be better to subtract the ambient temperature from the temperature measured, so that the zero-point of the graph makes some physical sense. Currently the zero-point being at 0°C means nothing in particular (after all if this were really the zero-point of temperature it should be -273.15°C) and there is a lot of wasted space between 0°C and the ambient temperature which causes unnecessary visual distraction. Overall a graph just showing temperature rise from ambient would be more understandable.

Must agree - a better metric for performance is simply deltaT (using a constant thermal load). A lot of words below, just pointing out the obvious reasons to not use absolute temp values.

1) Change in T(ambient) (which is usually small) does not change the heatsink degree/watt efficiency relationship, so just baseline graphs at T(ambient) to show deltaT. We know the /W output is constant (same processor each test), so it's fast to visually identify performance/efficiency.

2) The way/rate efficiency decreases when W increases (heatsink saturates/overloads) can be measured using deltaW. Rate of change in deltaT for W is then a convenient metric.

3) Plotting from any systems arbitary '0' degrees (and what systems zero point? 0 K is different to 0 F is different to 0 C) means that any visual ratio estimates made from the graphs are incorrect, as the bars are far too long. The T(zero) to T(ambient) region is not part of the 'performance' of the heatsink. Imagine if you used a 0 K baseline - huge real performance differences would appear to be only a few percent.

4) Heatsink performance between reviews with the same test system are directly comparable, since data is independent of T(ambient) for every test.


Minor point really - all up, as usual, nice review.

3. Once again a nice test, thanks.
As a quiet PC lover I would have been curious to see how low you can reduce the fan speeds of the Big Typhoon and Hyper TX and still adequately cool a Kentsfield.

4. Nice, clear-cut review that actually evaluates the products at hand rather than just rehashing marketing fluff. Nice going.

I'm somewhat confused by how an article can average 7.81 on a 3-graded scale though.

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