Testing and Results
Testing heatsinks accurately is a tricky business.
For a review the gain over ambient is the most important, it lets the readers figure out how cooling will run for them with a certain ambient temperature. For example it could be 30*C in a house, and the heatsink has a 20*C delta. So for someone with a 30*C ambient those core temperatures would be 50*C while someone with a 0*C ambient would have 20*C core temperatures.
For this review I will be expressing all temps in the number of degrees over ambient the cores are running (or Delta), if you the viewer add this number to your current ambient air temp the resulting number is how hot my system’s cores would be running in your house during the tests.
For testing I will be using the Xigmatek Prime SD1484 with Arctic Cooling MX-4 thermal paste(in order to give a level playing field for all heatsinks).
The test system is
- Intel Core i5 3770k
- Asus Maximus V Gene
- 8gb Patriot Viper3 1600mhz
- Antec 1200w Power Supply
- Navig Benching Station
- Delta 120mm CFB1212VHW
The 3770K will be run at a mild overclock and a higher overclock:
- 4.1ghz with 1.15v Core
- 4.5GHz with 1.3v Core.
The small overclock is to give at least a small bump in frequencies over stock since it is even possible for a stock intel heatsink to take the heat load of a 3770k with a small overclock.
Results
The results are expressed in degrees above ambient temperature, or Delta.
4.1ghz Testing
With a small overclock these temperatures are a bit warm,. but the fan did not really spin very hard throughout testing. I would consider the slightly warmer temps for near silent fan speed a fine trade off.
Now we kick things up another notch and set the processor at 4.5ghz with 1.3v.In order to test the heatsink itself with a different fan I decided to attach the Delta GFB1212VHW (The Monster). Mind you, this is no normal fan. It is a dual fan, meaning it has two sets of fan blades that spin in different directions to provide crazy amounts of airflow. The result is litterally a wall of air and intense static pressure. Just as a reference, at full blast the stock Xigmatek fan pushes 90CFM (Cubic feet of air per minute) of air, while the Dual-fan Delta pushes a whopping 220CFM of air.
Overclocked
With the stock fan, temperatures did not warm up a very large amount. Just three degrees at idle and four degrees at load. This is not a bad showing at all, at times other heatsinks fall flat and temps skyrocket. But for the most part these stayed close.
In order to test what the heatsink could really do, the monsterous Delta fan was attached to the Prime heatsink. Temperature drops were quite impressive. At full load with an added 400mhz frequency the temperatures were actually lower than the 4.1ghz testing showed. This simply shows that with a more powerful fan, the Prime is in fact up to the task of lowering temperatures and it can be limited by the quiet fan at times.
Noise Level
The stock PWM fan was very quiet throughout testing. The only time it actually spun up to be noticable is with the 4.5ghz testing. Every other test found the Prime to be extremely quiet. Mind you, this is with an open air test bench so inside of a case there is a solid chance that you will not heat anything.
