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TECHNOLOGY X TEST PROTOCOL
At Technology X, we test our CPU coolers slightly different depending upon the cooler’s marketed purpose, whether it be for a silent operation or extreme overclocking. Our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide, however, CPU C State alteration may or may not have occurred depending on the motherboard and BIOS configurations. Additionally, we also try to include links to the benchmarks used in our report so that you as the reader can replicate our tests to confirm that your cooler performs the way it should.
SYSTEM COMPONENTS
This Test Bench build was the result of some great relationships and purchases; our appreciation goes to the below mentioned manufacturers for their support in our project. All of the components we use for testing and evaluation can be easily purchased at a relatively affordable price. The links provided below can assist in pricing, as well as availability for those of you who may find interest in our equipment.
| PC Chassis: | In Win 805 Mid Tower Chassis |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Z170 OC Formula |
| CPU: | Intel i5-6600K |
| CPU Cooler: | N/A |
| Memory: | Crucial 64GB DDR4-2133 Memory |
| Power Supply: | be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W |
| Graphics Card: | Zotac GeForce GTX 980 Amp! Edition 4GB |
| System Cooling: | be quiet! Silent Wings 2 Chassis Fan |
| Keyboard: | Tesoro Excalibur Spectrum |
| Mouse: | i-rocks M20E Illuminated Gaming Mouse |
| Storage: | Intel 750 Series NVMe PCIe SSD (1.2TB) |
AIDA64 EXTREME
In order to test our CPU cooler, we’ll be running a CPU stress test and monitoring our temperatures using AIDA64, which is a great utility for benchmarking, testing the stability of, and monitoring your system.
COOLING PERFORMANCE
To test our cooler, we ran AIDA64’s ‘System Stability Test’ for one hour and recorded the highest temperature reached on any core. We did so at both the stock core frequency of our Intel Core i5 6600K, as well as overclocked to 4.2GHz, and 4.6GHz.
During all tests our ambient temperature was approximately 22C while the cooler’s intake temperature was a slightly warmer 28C.
We can really see how the more efficient Skylake CPU performs here. At a top overclocked speed of 4.6GHz, the max temperature recorded was 54C, this leaves us with plenty of room to push this CPU even further. Even running at it’s stock clock speed, the difference from idea to load temperature is only that of 11C! When we look at our 4.6GHz overclock, the same comparison is that of only 25C!