Test Setup and CompetitionWe build a S775 system with parts from Alternate.de, the CPU is one hot running Pentium 4 524, 3.06Ghz. It is mounted on a Swiss-army knife equivalent of motherboards: an Asrock 775Dual-VSTA.
The mounting system on S775 is quite straight forward and well thought out, 4 holes around the socket serve as mounting points for the push pins on the standard Intel cooler. Installation is a snap, and removal is very easy too.
With the stock cooling and at stock voltage the 3Ghz P4 was running stable at 3.68Ghz, quite a nice improvement from default speeds.
A Watt Meter recorded peak power consumption under heavy CPU load at
138W, which is less than our previous Athlon 64 setup which consumed up to 165W. The Asrock bios lacks CPU voltage manipulation, so at default voltage is seems this Prescott setup is more power friendly then the over-volted AMD system.
We’re using a compact Antec Sonata II mid tower case, swapped out the PSU for a passive model from FSP rated at 400W, the outside of the PSU case never went past 40°C during our stress tests,
in-take temperature was measured at 22°C for all tests, but temp fluctuations, different mounting and user error can account up to 1-3°C of inaccuracy in the obtained results. Please keep this in mind when looking at the results. Each heatsink was tested repeatedly; if we got questionable results the test was restarted.
example: dBA meter is placed right at the edge of the case - with side panel removed
Noise level of each HSF combo was recorded with SmartSensor SL4001A, the sensor was placed ~5cm away from the side of the case with panel removed. The lowest dBA reading in the test room was 36dBA! with system running without HSF fan.
System was stressed by running K7 CPU Burn for 30min (after Thermal Compound's burn-in); this application pushes the temperature higher than any other application or game we've yet encountered. Speedfan was used to log maximum obtained temperatures.
Arctic Silver kindly send us their “Lumière” thermal testing compound which has the same colour as Ceramique, but only a break in time of 30min!
Arctic Silver's ArctiClean was used to clean off thermal paste of the CPU and heatsink between tests
Fans used for comparison
Delta FFB1212VHE 120x38mm Very High Speed provided by Sidewinder Computers
151CFM – 3200RPM – 12V fan
To eliminate as much variables in the tests we test each heatsink with a "reference" fan if it can be mounted.
GlobalWin NCB 120x120x25mm fan with 41.7CFM rating.
Delta NFB0912L 92x92x25mm fan with 42CFM rating.
Delta FFB1212VHE 120x120x38mm with 151CFM rating.
The Competition
These are the heatsinks we have tested so far on this platform and will compare the NH-U12P to:
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Auras CTC-868
Auras GTO-990
Auras LPT-709
Coolermaster Vortex 752
Coolermaster Sphere
Coolermaster Hyper 212
Coolink Silentator
Coolermaster Eclipse
Coolermaster Hyper TX
Coolermaster GeminII
Coolermaster Mars
Evercool Buffalo
Noctua NH-U12
Noctua NH-U12P
OCZ Vendetta
Rosewill RCX-Z5-Ultra
Rosewill RCX-Z775-EX
Scythe ANDY Samurai Master
Scythe Kama Cross
Scythe Katana 2
Scythe Ninja
Thermalright IFX-14
Thermalright SI-128
Thermalright Ultra-120 A
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme
Titan Amanda TEC
TTIC BIG
TTIC NPH-1000
Tuniq Tower 120
Ultra ChillTec Thermo Electric CPU Cooler
ZEROTherm BTF90
Zalman CNPS9700LED
Zalman CNPS8700
and three Intel stock heatsinks:
Intel Reference Alu (included with older Pentium 4 S775 and Intel E2xxx)
Intel Reference Alu/Cu (included with Core 2 Duo models)
Intel Reference Alu/Cu Big (included with Core 2 Quad models)
Onto the results ->
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