Testing:
To test the Ice Man HPC-925, I installed it in the following system:
• AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor
• 1gb Ultra 3200 DDR (previously reviewed here)
• Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI motherboard (default settings)
• BFG Geforce 6600GT OC video card
• 2 - Seagate 80GB Raid-0 hard drives
• 1 - Seagate 200GB hard drive
• CoolerMaster CoolDrive 4 (used to monitor temperatures and fan speed)
• Case Temperature at 22.5C
To take the load temperatures, the following applications were run for several hours:
• EverQuest 2
• Folding@Home 4.0
• Sisoft Sandra 2004 Burn In Wizard
The chart below lists the temperatures indicated by the CoolerMaster CoolDrive 4 during testing. As you can see, it performs much better than the stock OEM cooler, and many others.
The included fan ran at a default speed of 2250 RPM. Using my CoolerMaster CoolDrive 4, I could turn the fan down to 1080 RPM, and up to 3060 RPM. At the default and lower speeds, I was unable to distinguish the fan from the rest of my system. At the top speed, it was obvious where the fan was, but it was not significantly louder than the other fans in my system.
Lowering the fan speed didn't change the temperature. Raising the fan speed to 2900 RPM resulted in another 2C cooler! If you can deal with the increase in noise, that's a good decrease in temperatures!
What is even better though, is that if you add a second fan to pull the air through the fins you can get that 2C at the default speed with no increase in noise. As such, if you did run both fans on their max speed, I found I was able to get it about 5C cooler! Granted, two 92mm fans running at 2900 RPM will significantly increase your system noise.
Conclusion:
The Evercool HPC-925 Ice Man is a good cooler... it looks great, does its job well, and is very quiet. If you were to install this cooler in your system you would be happy with the way it performs, and even happier with how quietly it does it. Some of the really nice features include the ability to quickly remove the fan housing, the ability to add an additional fan, and the ability to change the direction of the fan housing.
I was unable to find a price for the HPC-925 Ice Man, but would expect that it would be priced under $50.00
This is a good cooler, it's not a top performer, but it does its job at keeping your system cool and quiet. Overall I have to give this 4 out of 5 stars... "Recommended".
Final Rating (4 out of 5 stars):
Pros:
• Quick and Simple Installation
• Included Fan Controller
• Silent on stock speed
• All accessories included for universal installation
Cons:
• No LED fan
• Fan cable not wrapped
• No 3.5 drive bay adapter for Fan Controller
Special thanks to Evercool for providing the Ice Man HPC-925 CPU cooler to Bigbruin.com for review!
Please drop by the Bigbruin.com Forum and feel free to discuss this review.
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