Performance
Test setup and Testing Methodology
The system used for testing is listed in the table below. Ambient temperatures were kept at 24 degrees Celsius +/- 1 degree. The thermal paste used was Noctua’s NT-H2 (for testing consistency). The cool and quite mode was set to default. The fan speed was set to Full speed. The idle temperatures were recorded after 10 minutes of idle and max temperatures were recorded after a 5-minute torture test using Adia 64 System Stability Test and recording the CPU value reported.
| CPU | Intel Core i9-11900K (Comet Lake) |
| Cooling | Cougar Forza 85 |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte Z590 Vision G |
| Ram | Zadak Spark RGB 32GB DDR4-4133 CL19 |
| HDD | Samsung 960 EVO 250GB PCIE M.2 SSD |
| PSU | Antec Signature Series 1000W |
| OS | Windows 10 |
Now we get to the good stuff the results. I apologize for my cooling catalogue being rather slim, but as more coolers come in, we will continue to grow this list. As you can see in the graph below, we have the Idle temps for the Cougar Forza 85. This chip hovers at a decent 28 degrees Celsius. Ambient temps and honestly idle temps are irrelevant because of the lower clocks at idle.
Alright LOAD temps! The ones that really matter. The Cougar Forza 85 performed pretty well coming in at 55, 53(2 Fan) degrees Celsius (CPU test) and 97, 93(2 Fan) degrees Celsius (FPU test). The 11900K is a hot chip at full load. The chip cools immediately after the load is removed showing the cooler has great recovery from a high workload.
Noise can be an important factor for some. If we have an open case design and the fans might be exposed, we do not want record setting noise coming from our cooler. This not the case with the Cougar Forza 85. As you can see in the graph above the fans at full speed hit 30 dBs. Just to note, the actually hearable noise from the fans, is not distracting at all.
CPU Test
CPU Test 2 Fans
FPU Test
FPU Test 2 Fans
Now let’s move on to the Conclusion and Verdict!
