Part 4. Test Results (AMD), Summary Table, Conclusions

Part 1. Arctic Cooling, ASUS, Cooler Master, and GlacialTech products

Part 2. Products from Scythe, Thermaltake, and Titan

Part 3. Test Results (Intel), Summary Table

Test Results (AMD)

We use the same procedures for evaluating thermal efficiency of coolers for Socket 754/939/AM2 as for Socket 478 coolers and those that are actively used for testing LGA775 coolers. The primary data used for the consequent calculation of thermal resistance are temperature readings of the thermal diode built into a processor. What differs is the thermal source (Athlon 64 3700+ processor), the base platform (Fujitsu-Siemens D1607 motherboard), and a set of test applications.

Testbed configuration:

• Fujitsu Siemens Computers D1607-G motherboard
• AMD Athlon 64 3700+ CPU (Clawhammer)
• OS: Microsoft Windows XP

We use the S&M utility to simulate maximum thermal load of a processor, and SystemGuard from Fujitsu-Siemens to monitor temperatures.

Notes
Each cooler is tested with Stars 420 thermal grease

Note
Thermal resistance θ_ja is defined as the relation
θ_ja = (T_j—T_a)/P_h, where T_j is the temperature of a CPU core, T_a is the environment temperature (it's 33°C in this case), P_h is the thermal capacity of a processor (in this case it's 80 W).

Finally, at the end of this article we publish the noise measurement results (the procedure is described in the article Noise characteristics of coolers and the noise measurement method) as well as the efficiency/noise rating of the coolers.

Note: Background noise level 18 dBA

Note
The efficiency/noise ratio (ENR) is calculated as:

ENR = DM*(R_t/P¢C)/(NL/R_n), where

R_t—reference temperature (the reference thermal resistance θ_ja of the cooling system - 0.25°C/W), TC—the core temperature with the operating cooling system, R_n—reference noise (the reference noise level is 20 dBA), NL—noise level, generated by the cooling system, DM—denominate multiplier (10).

Summary table

Well, we've analyzed all test results, so let's draw a bottom line!

Conclusions

Our main conclusion today is as follows: these Mid-End coolers offer much better thermal efficiency and usability than budget products. Moreover, they can also compete with High-End products, demonstrating a close or sometimes even equal combination of usability features. Our contenders prove their "golden mean" status - decent quality for a reasonable price. They deserve more attention than people usually pay to them.

We'd like to praise the GlacialTech Igloo 5750 Silent and Igloo 5750 PWM coolers that manage to come close to functionality of High-End products and provide rich technical properties. The Scythe Mine Rev.B also performs very well - this cooler is a serious competitor to High-End products in many functional aspects. We should also mention the Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 and Freezer Pro 64, which have a friendly price tag and demonstrate interesting thermal results combining them with neat usability and noise ergonomics.

So these very coolers (Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 and Freezer Pro 64, GlacialTech Igloo 5750 Silent and Igloo 5750 PWM, as well as Scythe Mine Rev.B) get the Original Design award.

We wish Arctic Cooling, ASUS, Cooler Master, GlacialTech, Scythe, Thermaltake, and Titan every success in creating attractive Mid-End products! As for us, we'll keep tabs on this segment.