Testing:All tests were done with the following setup:
easypanic's setup |
CPU | San Diego 3700+ |
Mainboard | DFI NF4 SLI-DR |
Memory | 2*512Mb PC3200 OCZ |
VGA | ATI x800 PCI-E
|
I measured the temps with MBM 5 together with the DFI NF4 Data Files, you can find them over
here.
Stressing was done with
S&M, being one of the "hottest" stress program available. Temps were measured after 10 minutes of continuous stress.
CPU and Chipset testsAs you can see, water cooling is still a lot better than air-cooling, no surprise here.
Time to give my CPU a push to 2800 MHz:
Temperatures increase with more voltage and speed added, both cooling solutions see a similar rise in loaded temperature (~12°C).
While a more effective CPU cooling is always favorable to have, it’s the water cooled nF4 chipset which pleased me most, as the stock cooler has a quite annoyingly loud fan on it. Even with water cooling the chipset gets quite hot:
VGA testsThe VGA tests were done with ATI Tray Tools, it has a "scan for artifacts" option which really stress the GPU. Temperatures were measured with the same program.
I stopped the test after
three (3!) minutes. Seeing the temperatures rise to above 120°C was quite disturbing, especially if you compare them to the results I got with the stock cooler:
With temperatures this high the most likely problem may be mounting, does the GPU mounting method need an overhaul? Let’s see if I can find the exact problem of my high video card temp woes. ->