Testing Results, Low Fan Speed (7 Volts)

Intel’s E97379-001 and AMD’s AV-Z7UB408003 coolers are equipped with automatic speed correction circuitry and adjust their speed to the maximum regardless of the input voltage. This renders the majority of basic fan controllers, rheostats and simple fan speed reduction resistors useless. Their speed can only be controlled via a PWM signal from a motherboard. The E97379-001 did have a small speed drop with an input of 6.5V and we included those results, but the AV-Z7UB408003 was rather adamant and devoid of a PWM signal would always automatically correct its speed to 3000 RPM, giving us the exact same performance results as before.

Average thermal resistance, 60 W to 340 W

Again, the three most powerful coolers take the top spots at reduced power.

Core Temperature, Constant Thermal Load (Low Fan Speed)

Similarly to the 12V results, the EVO, Wraith and BXTS15A are taking the top spots. It's useful to note that EVO 212 and the Wraith are essentially equal as the power increases, with the Wraith being marginally ahead at very high thermal loads.

Fan Speed (7 Volts)

Noise level

Putting the two "abnormal" coolers with non-adjustable fan settings aside, the thermal performance of the other coolers decreased almost equally, leaving their standings untouched. The D75716-002 still performs similarly to the C25704-002 and the D60188-001, but the former still is the loudest and the latter still is the quietest of the three. As a matter of fact, the D75716-002 is louder than the C25704-002, even though the fan is slower, hinting that either the fan has a worse engine or the denser fins significantly increased the airflow resistance of the cooler.

We cannot compare the AV-Z7UB408003 cooler to the rest of AMD’s coolers due to the autocorrecting fan. Nevertheless, we can make a useful observation looking at the Cooler Master’s HK8-00005 performance. Despite it has a slightly lower mass compared to that of the FHSA7015B and virtually the same fan, its thermal performance is much better, showcasing how two simple heatpipes can significantly increase the efficiency of a cooler.

Once again, AMD’s Wraith goes directly head to head with Cooler Master’s EVO 212, only this time the Wraith also compares in terms of acoustic comfort. There is virtually no difference between the two coolers in terms of thermal performance and both are equally silent with their fan input voltage reduced down to 7 Volts. The Intel BXTS15A does compare in terms of thermal performance but falls significantly behind when it comes to acoustics, as the cooler remains clearly audible even with its fan’s speed reduced by nearly 40%.

Testing Results, Maximum Fan Speed (12 Volts) Final Words & Conclusion
Comments Locked

82 Comments

View All Comments

  • mikato - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link

    Is it noisy?
  • yannigr2 - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    AMD should start selling Wraith for $20. If they can make an Intel version, that would have been hilarious. An Intel CPU with a cooler on top of it having the AMD logo.
  • silverblue - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    It might make sense to re-test the Wraith without its shroud to see if it measures up to AMD's claims.
  • Yuriman - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    I'd personally find it a lot more useful if there were some charts showing temperatures with the coolers normalized for acoustic performance, or showing noise while normalized for core temperature or thermal resistance. It's not very useful to know that cooler A is both quieter and performs worse than cooler B when both are at 7v, because they're all PWM and will be targeting a temperature range, rather than running at a fixed fan speed.
  • mikato - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link

    I agree. Noise is more important to me than this article made it.
  • Einy0 - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    Nice to see the EVO 212 is much better than most stock coolers. I have one on both my home PCs and my work PC. Glad to see the $30 investment is worth it... The wraith is sick, too bad AMD still doesn't have a nice cpu to put under it! I can't wait for Zen, I'm so sick of giving all my cpu money to Intel.
  • Peichen - Monday, July 25, 2016 - link

    Why sick of giving Intel your money? Are you not satisfied with the performance you paid for? Are you CPUs dying young?
  • mikato - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link

    Maybe because he/she has the feeling that Intel is charging more for a given item than they would otherwise be if they had better competition, and he/she does not like paying more than may be normally justified.
  • nismotigerwvu - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    Very cool! It's nice to have a quantifiable value for the improvement an aftermarket cooler can provide. My only nitpick would be to see if a push/pull setup on the 212 was worthwhile. On my system it seems to be a bit quieter since I can keep the fans at a lower RPM, but it could also just be a placebo.
  • Voldenuit - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    My old Opteron 165 (Toledo?) came with a heatpipe cooler, so that definitely predates the AV-Z7UB408003 cooler that came with the Phenom X4.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now