As you may appreciate, we review a lot of coolers here at eTeknix. As such, our prior results sheet was getting more than a little crowded. We have, therefore, applied a new system in which we have picked those coolers we consider most popular, recent, or most relevant to this design.
Test system:
Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 9 Z270
Intel Core i7-7700K Delidded w/ NT-H1 under IHS
Radeon R7 Passive GPU with 2GB VRAM
16GB Crucial DDR4 2400 MHz (only swapped to 8GB in the unlikely event of RAM compatibility issues) – If this has been done, it will be noted within the review!
512GB OCZ SSD
be quiet! Dark Power Pro 800W
Lian Li T80 Test Bench
All testing was conducted using NT-H1 thermal paste
We want to say a big thank you to Gigabyte, Noctua, Crucial, Intel, OCZ, be quiet!, and Lian Li for providing us with the above testing equipment and their ongoing support.
Testing Methodology
We always use Noctua Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste to make sure testing reveals the efficiency of the tested coolers not the efficiency of the bundled thermal paste
WPRIME 1024 is run for at least 10 minutes to calculate “load” results
The average temperature across all cores is taken
Fans are left to operate at default PWM profile speeds unless otherwise stated
For water cooling tests, all pumps have been operated at 12 volts unless otherwise stated
Ambient temperatures should be between 21-23 degrees in all our tests unless otherwise stated
Acoustic measurements are taken 10cm horizontally and 10cm vertically away from the CPU cooler with the VGA fan disabled
Stock tests are performed using “out of the box” settings for the CPU
Overclocking tests are performed with the CPU set to 5 GHz and 1.345v
All coolers were tested under identical settings unless otherwise stated.
There is approximately a 1-degree Celsius margin of error in our temperature recording software CPUID HW Monitor
There is approximately a 1.5dBA margin of error with our Benetech GM1351 decibel meter
In all these graphs we may have a few “reference” results of particular products that do not fit within that category for comparative purposes.
As a child still in my 30's (but not for long), I spend my day combining my love of music and movies with a life-long passion for gaming, from arcade classics and retro consoles to the latest high-end PC and console games. So it's no wonder I write about tech and test the latest hardware while I enjoy my hobbies!