Antec Performance CPU Cooler - Results
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Seeing the CPU Cooler installed on the motherboard is quite a relief; it certainly looks better than the stock cooler. Hopefully it performs as good as it looks.
My initial thought on using the Performance CPU cooler was that it has the potential to be the perfect aftermarket cooler for non-overclockers, for users who are just looking for a good cooling solution to help prolong the life of their system. I really wasn't expecting any great temperatures out of the cooler. I plan to take my system up to 2.2ghz at the very least; this will be at about the same clock speeds as a 3500+ Venice CPU, and a clock speed I know my system is capable of running off of stock cooling. This should show how quick the CPU can warm up, and how much better, if at all, the Performance CPU cooler would be.
Test bed
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice E6 CPU
Running 2.2ghz 9x244 stock volts.
512MB G Skill Value Ram
ATI 9600 XT 128MB, Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer Cooled
80GB Hitachi Deskstar HDD
120GB Samsung Spinpoint HDD
BenQ Lightscribe DVD+RW drive
Antec Smartpower 350W PSU
No additional chassis fans running
To test the system's maximum temperature I set up a few CPU benchmarking programs. I started with Super PI up to 32M, as well as Sandra 2006's burn in wizard, and ran the CPU benchmarks. In addition to all that, for fun, I ran Prime 95 at the same time. I took my temperature readings with both a temperature probe and the die temp that's provided in speed fan. In case there are a few people out there who question this, I used the die temperature reading, but made sure of course that it was close to my probe's temperature.
The results of the temperatures at load were very close. The Antec Cooler does offer a little bit more performance. If Antec took the same heatsink and built it in a larger scale, the heatsink would perform much better -- comparable to other heatsinks twice its size.
Well the delta temperatures remained nearly the same, but the idle temperature was decreased by only 2C, and the load temperature was decreased by 3C. It's not the most impressive decrease I've seen, but for the price of the cooler and its size, I think it's pretty decent. Especially given that it's air-cooling, a 2C drop is harder to achieve than you would think; although after looking at a few other reviews, I saw one where another reviewer swapped fans with their stock A-64 fan and lowered temperatures even further. The problem with the stock cooler is that it's temperature controlled; if it gets hot, it'll start running much faster, and end up being louder than the original Antec fan.
Next: Pros and Cons >>
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