System Setup
Our system for this review was setup as follows:
- Asus A8N-E Motherboard
- BFG GeForce 7300 GS Video Card
- AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Socket 939 CPU
- 2 x Transcend 512 MB DDR PC-3200 Memory Modules
- MGE 500 Watt PSU
- Maxtor Maxline Pro 500 Hard Drive
Our operating system of choice was Windows XP Pro SP2. I’m still a little shy to pull the trigger on Vista. Let’s go over our testing plan.
Test Setup
In this test there are three factors which we want to determine: Idle running temperature, maximum stable temperature and time-to-idle. How we came about all three values is described in detail below.
Computer is started from a cold-boot into a Windows XP Pro SP2 install at room temperature (19 degrees Celsius here) and is then subjected to 30 minutes of a 2 x CPU-Burn in to get the CPU nice and toasty. We then allow the CPU to idle for thirty minutes to get it’s running idle temperature. To monitor temperature levels, we used AMD64 CPU Assistant.
After we’ve recorded the running idle of the machine, we start two instances of CPU-Burn in and run the machine for an hour. After that hour is up, we continue to run the machine under load until we can pinpoint a stable maximum CPU temperature and record it. We then stop CPU-burn in and start a timer to record how long it takes for the processor to return to it’s idle running temperature from it’s maximum temperature. This allows us to have a very good idea of the heat dissipation abilities of the heatsink.
So, how did the Thermaltake Blue Orb II fare? Read on to find out!
The Results Are In!
In this section we’ll be directly comparing the performance of the Thermaltake Blue Orb II with the Stock AMD 3800+ cooling system. Here is what we found:
Temperature Results:
|
|
Idle (C) |
Loaded (C) |
Time to Idle (min) |
|
Stock AMD |
34 |
42 |
4:19 |
|
Blue Orb II |
30 |
39 |
1:05 |
As we can see, the Thermaltake clearly outpaces it’s stock partner, showing off it’s cooling prowress. However, those of us who sleep in the same room as our computers know that while we could go ahead and stick a Honeywell (fan) to the side of the case, what good is cooling if it’s so loud you can’t enjoy what your doing? Let’s see how the Thermaltake fares on the good ol’ decibal scale.
Noise Level Results:
|
|
Idle (dB) |
Loaded (dB) |
|
Stock AMD |
34 |
42 |
|
Blue Orb II |
24 |
25 |
Looks like you can put that honeywell away and sleep soundly now! The Blue Orb II definately beats the stock AMD cooling and the Honeywell in this catagory giving it a flawless and substantial victory over stock cooling options.
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