Introduction and System Setup
Battle of the All Copper HSFs
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.
This is the first time we’ve attempted to look at three individual HSF’s at the same time, but with growing interest in high performance cooling, we thought we would bring you face to face with three of the major all copper contenders.The subjects of our study will be the Kanie Hedgehog from Plycon, the GlobalWin CAK-38 from NerdsByte and the OCZ Gladiator from http://ocz.safeshopper.com.
All three will be tested using the same Delta 60 mm 37 cfm fan that we’ve used in all our reviews. This is done to maintain continuity as the Delta is recognized as the top performing 60 mm HSF fan. As in all our studies we are looking for the overall best performance attainable with a particular unit.
The system used is comprised of the standard items found in most computers, but with some major differences. The case is an all Aluminum Lian-Li PC-10 mid-tower with an Enermax 430 watt power supply, Rounded IDE cables are used and the power supply lines are loomed, the three stock fans have been replaced with high performance Panaflo 80 mm 47 cfm models. An Abit KT7A-Raid motherboard is the home of our AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz AXIA 266 FSB CPU (note: while this is a hot running CPU it’s not the hottest, I’m told that the 1.33 GHz CPU’s run hotter, please take this into consideration when you review the temperatures we attained). An ambient room temperature of 74 degrees Fahrenheit 23 degrees Celsius was maintained during the tests.
Our findings are not set in stone!! But, are a reflection of what you CAN attain with an above average case and cooling system in place. We try to conduct our tests in a manner that best reflects the way a great majority of computers are run day in and day out. We use a mix of software that contains Business and Accounting applications, a varied combination of Utilities, Graphic intensive software, some 3D games, Surfing the internet and burning CD’s.
Fifty readings per day, for four consecutive days are taken using Via Hardware Monitor and the Award Bios the high and low temperature readings for each day are discarded and the remaining 48 averaged.
