Testing:
With all the leg work out of the way to actually find a system to test in, measuring the thermal performance should be the easy part. In the end, a system with the following components (as pictured in the previous section) was used to test the cooling performance of the CoolIT Systems RAM Fan and PCI Cooling Booster:
»
FoxConn 865M01-G-6LS mATX Motherboard
» Intel Celeron D 330 Processor @ 3.0 GHz
» 2GB (2x1024MB)
Corsair TwinX1024-4000PRO Memory
»
Cooler Master iTower 930 ATX Case
» 3x 80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA Hard Drives
»
PowerColor X1650 XT 256MB AGP Video Card
» Buslink DVDRW Drive
» Rosewill PCI SATA Controller Card
» Windows XP Professional SP2 (current)
Digital thermal probes were used to measure the temperature on the Corsair DDR memory and the PowerColor AGP video card in order to compare the before and after values. On the memory, a thermal probe was slipped between the heatspreader and the PCB up against one memory chip near the center of the module. On the AGP card, a thermal probe was slipped between the GPU heatsink and PCB up against the GPU itself.
The system was booted into Windows and 3DMark06 was run four times in both the stock configuration and with the CoolIT Systems items installed and operating at full speed. The thermal display was monitored for sustained peaks (greater than 2 seconds) and this value was recorded as the maximum achieved, as presented in the chart below.
As you can see, both coolers provide substantial cooling to the hardware in question. Taking 11.4 degrees off of the load temperature for a video card can do wonders for in game stability, longevity of the product, and help boost any efforts in overclocking. The same can be said for the RAM Fan's effects. While only 5.7 degrees were dropped in this situation, the unique heatspreader found on this Corsair DDR memory may not react the same as a more traditional heatspreader, or a pair of memory modules without a heatspreader.
