Thermaltake Golden Orb II
Thermal Readings - Stock Clock Speeds
Testing Methodology: Setting up our test system was fairly straight forward. After setting up our hardware and installing Windows XP SP2, we began our testing. For this review, we compared Thermaltake's Golden Orb II cooler to a stock cooler that accompanied our Athlon 64 3700+ as well as a Asetek Vapochill Micro Ultra Low Noise cooler we recently reviewed. We then ran a series of tests comparing the three coolers. We ran loaded and unloaded tests at both stock speeds and while overclocked as well as with fan speeds set to their slowest and fastest settings. The goal is to provide a broad picture of the performance of the Thermaltake's Golden Orb II.
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| AMD Athlon 64 3700+ (2.2GHz) San Diego Thermaltake Golden Orb II Asetek Vapochill Micro Ultra Low Noise Stock AMD Cooler EPOX KN1SLI EXTREME (NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI) 2x512MB PQI3200-1024DBU CL 2-2-2-5 ATI Radeon X850 Pro 256MB On-board Ethernet On-board Audio Western Digital 80GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM IDE Windows XP Pro SP2 nForce 4 Drivers v6.66 ATI Catalyst 5.8 DirectX 9.0c |
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In our first test, we ran each fan at its highest and lowest settings and recorded the temperature with no load on the CPU.
AMD's stock cooling ranged between 30 and 31C based on the fan speed being applied. The Vapochill Micro ULN weighed in 1C lower than the Stock cooler, while the Golden Orb II's readings were significantly lower at 24 and 25C.
Next, we loaded Prime95's torture test and let it ride for a full 30 minutes before recording the temperatures. Once again, we ran each test at the lowest and highest fan speed.
With the CPU fully loaded, the stock AMD cooler settled in at 56C with the fan set to its lowest setting, while the highest fan speed lowered that reading to 49C. With the Golden Orb II, the temperatures were much lower, with the low speed test running 10C lower than the stock cooler at the same setting. When we maxed out the fan speed on the Golden Orb II, the temperature lowered an additional 4C to 42C, 7C lower than stock cooling at high speed. The Vapochill Micro ULN fell right in the middle of the two.
