Testing:

Since the cooler was installed in two different systems to gauge the fit, it was also tested on both. The Intel i7 920 based system described on the previous page was tested first. In this round of testing, the Thermalright AXP-140 was put head-to-head with the stock Intel cooler for some idle and load testing in a room with a temperature of 19C. OCCT Perestroika 3.1.0 was used to monitor idle and load temperatures, as well as to generate the stress associated with the load condition. In order to protect the processor, a maximum CPU temperature of 85C was set, so that if things got that hot the tests would be aborted.

What we see in the graph below may not look like as dominating a performance as was actually experienced. The 85C mark noted for the stock cooler is preceded by a * because the test was aborted automatically after just about 6 minutes of the 30 minutes I had expected to run. If contrast, the AXP-140 was able to complete the whole 30 minutes of testing while never exceeding 68C. And it did so in near silence, and noticeably quieter than the stock Intel cooler.



In the next round of testing, the Thermalright AXP-140 was put head-to-head with the Thermaltake BigTyp 14 for some idle and load testing inside a closed up HTPC mounted in my entertainment center in a room with a temperature of 20C. The BigTyp 14 is another cooler with a 140mm fan, but despite having a speed controller, it is much louder than the AXP-140 no matter how low you set the fan speed. This time around HWMonitor was used to monitor idle and load temperatures, and the load conditions consisted of letting the HTPC to do HTPC-like tasks. The computer was left on for six hours in order to playback DVD quality content. I don't ask for my HTPC to do much more than that, and six hours is by far longer than any one session I might ask of it.



The graph above shows that in addition to being able to run much quieter, the AXP-140 is able to shave several degrees off both the idle and load temperatures. That is just what I was looking for, as now the HTPC is just about silent, with only a slight hum from the case exhaust fans which are to be addressed very soon.