Does Cooling Matter With Core 2 and AM2?

In a recent review of the upcoming Core 2 Duo E4300, Anand found that the new 1.8GHz E4300 could be easily pushed to 3.37GHz with stock cooling, an astounding 87% overclock. Why then, would anyone want to worry about enhanced cooling? The answer is really simple. If you want to reach even higher overclocks - to potentially around 4 GHz - you need to look at improving CPU cooling.

It is absolutely true that Core 2 Duo is not Pentium 4 when it comes to heat generation. The extremely hot and poor performing NetBurst processors have been replaced by Core 2 Duo, which runs very cool at stock speeds and overclocks like few chips we have ever seen in the evolution of the CPU. As a result life is good right now for Intel CPU users.

This year we will see if AMD can accomplish something similar with AM2 at 65nm. Current top 90nm AM2 processors have almost no "head room" at all, making concerns about overclocking relevant only for lower end AM2 chips. Early 65nm chips are also not stellar overclockers, but it is still early, and everyone expects that AMD can achieve overclocking results similar to C2D when their 65nm manufacturing is fully rolled out. It will be interesting to stop the speculation and actually see what AMD rolls out this year.

With relatively cool CPUs and massive overclocking capabilities it is worth looking at what happens with a stock processor and a stock heatsink/fan, at rated speed and when overclocked. We monitored CPU temperature on an NVIDIA 680i motherboard running an X6800 CPU with the stock Intel HSF - both at the stock speed of 2.93GHz, and at the highest stable overclock that would still allow gaming of 3.73GHz.

X6800 CPU Operating Temperature with Standard Heatsink/Fan
(Ambient Temperature 21C (70F)
  CPU System
IDLE 2.93GHz 41C (106F) 32C (90F)
GAMING 2.93GHz 56C (133F) 33C (91F)
IDLE 3.73GHz 56C (133F) 37C (99F)
Gaming 3.73GHz 71C (160F) 38C (100F)

While temperatures are dramatically improved compared to P4 NetBurst processors, it is clear that temperatures do increase rapidly as the overclock increases. At the highest overclock of 3.73GHz idle temperature had increased to 56C (133F) and stressed temperature rises to 71C (160F).

At this 3.73GHz overclock we suspect that the biggest handicap to further overclocking is CPU cooling. However, this is a question that can only be answered with a closer look at the performance of the Tuniq Tower 120. In the end we buy improved coolers for better cooling in most performance configurations. This improved cooling should theoretically allow even higher overclocks of the CPU. If the cooler you are considering does not cool better and/or improve overclocking, there is absolutely no justification at all for buying the cooling solution.

Index Sunbeam Tuniq Tower 120
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  • EWAXMAN - Sunday, January 6, 2008 - link



    TO WHOM THIS MAY CONCERN,

    I WOULD LIKE TO SEE A TEST RUN ON THE "ASUS TRITON 77 CPU COOLING FAN" COMPARED TO: THE TUNIQ TOWER 120, THE ZALMAN 9500 LED, AND THE ZALMAN 9700 LED - FOR OVERCLOCKING PURPOSES.

    TESTED ON AN INTEL DUAL CORE CPU's 1.86 GHZ 65nm's AND UP, FOR COOLING, EASE OF INSTALLATION, PLUS NOISE FACTOR AS WELL.

    THANK YOU IN ADVANCE, FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, TIME, AND HELP.

    RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
    EWAXMAN
  • EWAXMAN - Sunday, January 6, 2008 - link

    I WOULD LIKE TO SEE A TEST RUN ON THE "ASUS TRITON 77 CPU COOLING FAN" COMPARED TO: THE TUNIQ TOWER 120, THE ZALMAN 9500 LED, AND THE ZALMAN 9700 LED - FOR OVERCLOCKING PURPOSES.

    TESTED ON AN INTEL DUAL CORE CPU's 1.86 GHZ 65nm's AND UP, FOR COOLING, EASE OF INSTALLATION, PLUS NOISE FACTOR AS WELL.

    THANK YOU IN ADVANCE, FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, TIME, AND HELP.

    RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
    EWAXMAN
  • LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, January 17, 2007 - link

    Maybe I missed it...were the temperature results for the Tuniq tower obtained with the fan on minimum or maximum RPM?
  • orion23 - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link

    So Anandtech, I mean, Anandtech reviews this great cooler and the test that was run compares it to Intel's stock cooler?

    And the load temperatures are taken from a game and not Orthos, or the well know Prime95?

    And what happened, You guys couldn't get a Zalman or Thermalright Cooler to test the tuniq against?

    What is wrong with Anandtech?
  • Jodiuh - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link

    Most folks use Core Temp to monitor temps since it works the same across all boards. As it stands, only 680i users can compare.

    And why not use Orthos, the OCer's fav testing tool? It gets temps up pretty high and lets us know how stable a system is.
  • PrinceGaz - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link

    You reported the temperatures at stock (2.93GHz) and at 3.73GHz for the standard cooler and the Tuniq Tower 120, and also at 3.83 and 3.9GHz for the TT120, but was the CPU running at the same core-voltage for all these different speeds? Presumably it was running at stock voltage for the stock speed run, so was 3.73GHz and 3.9GHz the maximum it could reach at stock voltage with the two heatsinks, or was the voltage increased (and by how much) to reach those speeds?

    For pure temperature comparisons between HSFs, keeping the voltage the same is obviously a must. However if the voltage was kept at stock (or at the same raised voltage) for determining the maximum overclock then you are probably missing out on a major advantage of a better cooler which is that you can crank the voltage up somewhat higher and still have a safe temperature.

    Overclocking a CPU generally consists of seeing how fast it is stable at, then add a bit more voltage and see how much further it goes (while watching the temps), then a bit more voltage, and so on until the temperature reaches the highest you are happy with. The better HSF will allow a higher voltage to be used and that will usually translate to a higher overclock. Okay, so the overclocked temperature may be just as high with the better HSF when you use that approach, but it should provide a better indication of how much higher you can overclock the CPU with it.
  • Jiggz - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link

    With it's monstrous size and weight, you would think they will design something for a vertically oriented mobo; which by the way most of us have.
  • monsoon - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link

    Does anyone know about a good / slick / cheap ( any of those criteria is welcome ) CASE where to install HORIZONTALLY a regular ATX MoBo so that I don't have to worry about the weight of the cooler ?

    THANKS !=)
  • Axbattler - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link

    Though it is a little redundant (given that I don't see people mounting AMD fans on Intel chips and vice-versa), I am a little curious how well the AMD Stock fan compares to the Tuniq tower, and by association, how well it compares to the Intel.

    I remember that AMD's heatpipe cooler, used in the Dual-Core Opteron (and probably some other chips) have been very well regarded in various reviews. At the time, it was often thought that AMD's stock cooling solution was a good few steps ahead of Intels. Of course, it is hard to tell if part of the reason may not have been with the sheer amount of heat generated by those P4s, which is why I am curious how the two compares today.
  • Araemo - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link

    I'd guess that that "good" dual core opteron heatpipe heatsink is a good unit. I purchased one in the FT/FS forums after I got my Opteron 148 (Single core, standard A64 heatsink), and with nothing but a little AS5, it was able to get my Opteron stable at 2.4 Ghz(over 1.8) with almost no extra voltage (I was only able to add 0.05V over the stock on my motherboard).

    That all said.. good luck getting a fair comparison with the Core 2 duo heatsinks.. You can't mount them on AMD and you can't mount the AMD(Socket 939) cooler on Intel(LGA775), as far as I can recall. I seem to recall that a few years back Anandtech(I think it was AT anyways.. I could be mistaken) built a 'cpu simulator' that had little metal ingots with heaters and temperature probes embedded to do apples-to-apples heatsink testing... I wonder if that's a realistic option for this roundup?

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