| Thermalright Ultra-120 Heatpipe CPU Cooler
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Installation and Operation (continued):
The images below shows the cooler with the Cooler Master fan installed on a Socket 775 system. The design allows for the cooler to be placed in this orientation, but some boards may force you to aim the fan towards your power supply. There is good clearance around the motherboard features, but that will obviously also vary by board. The only issue I had with the actual installation of the cooler was the force required. You need to have the fan removed in order to get your screwdriver onto the screws, and you then need to apply more force than I would care to use. The screws should drive themselves by the thread alone, but you need to push down to overcome the force of the spring. Everything went fine, but I could see issues arising from a screwdriver slipping under the force I was applying!
 
Here are a few more views of the installed Ultra-120, this time with the lights on.
 
The next image shows how the fan mounting clips failed to work on the Delta fan. The corners were open, but not completely, and the clips could not grab on at all. I balanced the fan there for testing, and at one point it jumped off and came straight for my bare feet! Now that got the adrenaline pumping!
Testing Setup:
Testing consisted of monitoring the CPU's thermal output while at idle and under a full load. Idle conditions were established by allowing the test system (an Intel Pentium D840 (3.2 GHz Dual-Core) CPU on an ECS Elitegroup RC410L/800-M Pentium 4 mATX Motherboard) to sit at the CentOS 4 desktop for a period of no less than one hour. The load conditions were generated by running two instances of Folding@Home (configured to take full advantage of both CPU cores) for a period of 24 hours.
An external, digital thermal probe was used to monitor the processor and ambient temperatures, while the System Monitor in CentOS was used to confirm that both cores were either at idle or at full load. Idle conditions saw the cores bounce between 0 and 2% activity, while load conditions had both cores pegged at 100% for the duration.
The head-to-head competition for the Ultra-120 was provided by the stock Intel cooler and the Scythe Mine, shown previously.
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