Date:
Thursday , July 23, 2009
Author:
Marc Adams
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Intel Core i7 Heatsink Roundup Q309

Thermalright TRUE processor cooler has been king of the hill for quite some time. Today we bring in four new challengers to see if any of them have what it takes to make our short list of coolers to buy for your next enthusiast box build.

Introduction

As time moves forward technology improves and our gadgets get faster and smaller. This exponential growth is unfortunately not shared in the realm of heatsinks. Sure we have heat pipes and direct-touch coolers which didn’t exist years ago. But we also know where the finish line is; ambient temperature. As long as we are dealing with passive cooling, (i.e. air cooling and water cooling) we will never be able to get below ambient temps on our CPUs. So with that in mind, every heatsink manufacturer attempts to outdo each other in the race to the bottom. Our long time champion, the Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120 AKA the "TRUE-120," has been challenged as of late but not dethroned. We have four challengers today that are going to do their best to claim the top spot. They are: the ZALMAN CNPS10X Extreme, the Noctua NH-U12P SE1366, the Titan Fenrir and the COGAGE TRUE Spirit. Let’s see just what these coolers bring to the table and if any of them has what it takes to earn the top spot.

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System Setup

All testing of the coolers will occur on our new LGA1366 test bed. Consisting of the GIGABYTE X58-Extreme motherboard, six gigabytes of Corsair DDR3 RAM paired with the Intel Core i7 920 retail processor. With four cores and a total of eight threads expect to see lots of heat. The video card of choice is the NVIDIA 9500 GT thanks to its low heat output and silent fan.

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Test Methods

CPU

In keeping with the spirit of the [H] we are once again doing hardware testing of all heatsinks. This means drilling a very small path into an expensive CPU to place our thermocouple. This is by far the best way to test coolers and the only way here at the [H].

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Temperatures for the CPU will continue to be measured using our Sperry Digital 4 Point thermometer.

GPU

For this article the GPU will be kept at stock speed to keep any excess heat away from the CPU that could impact the results. In 2D mode the 9500 GT generates very little heat and to further isolate it from the rest of the system we will install it in the secondary PCIE slot.

Thermal Paste

Noctua's NT-H1 thermal paste was selected as the paste of choice for a few key reasons. Firstly, the thermal paste has been shown to provide excellent thermal conductivity allowing the heatsinks to better do their job. Secondly, there is no observed curing time. That is, performance does not get any better over time. Any curing time could have introduced variables into the equation causing at best dubious results and at worst unreliable ones. Lastly, because we have a special CPU on our hands it requires a compound that is more viscous so not to seep into the channel and run off.

Temperatures

Ambient temperature will be kept at 25C for the duration of the tests and measured with a MicroTemp EXP non-contact infrared thermometer and cross referenced with the Sperry Digital 4 Point thermometer. Any variance greater then 0.2C will halt the testing until temperatures return within spec for fifteen minutes.

Idle

Idle temperatures will be recorded after a fifteen minute period of inactivity. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes.

Load

Load temperatures will be recorded after a fifteen minute period of 100% load. To obtain this load we will be using Prime95 v25.3 set to "blend" mode. In this way we can heat up the CPU as well as the memory controller which is now integrated into the processor die. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes.

Sound

Sound levels will be measured with a Reliability Direct AR824 sound meter from a distance of four feet away. With everything turned off and the room completely silent the meter registered a sound level of 38dB(A). This is a very quiet room where a simple pin drop could be heard. All sound measurements are recorded in the very late evening to further reduce any ambient noise.