System Testing
The Reserator XT was tested on a red-hot Presler 955 CPU and NVIDIA 8800 GTX video card. The ambient room air temperature was maintained at 23°C +/-0.5°C. The CPU was loaded by running multiple instances of CPUBurn and the GPU was loaded by running Real-time HDR IBL (rthdribl.exe) at 1600×1200.
• Zalamn Reserator XT water cooling system
• Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI Intel edition motherboard
• Pentium Extreme Edition dual core 955 (3.46 GHz at 1.22 Vcore)
• SilverStone Olympia 750 watt PSU
• (2) Corsair CM2X512-8000UL DDR RAM
• NVIDIA 8800GTX 768 MB 575/900 video card
• WD1200JD SATA HDD
• Sony 16X DVD
• Windows XP Pro with SP2
• Forceware 162.18 drivers
For comparison, I have included the results from previous testing with the stock Intel and NVIDIA coolers along with the passive Reserator 2 and active Koolance PC4-1025 liquid cooling systems. The following data is presented for comparative purposes only. Your actual results may be different depending on the variables unique to your system (CPU, GPU, overclock, ambient temperature, case air flow, temperature monitoring, etc).
Amb – Ambient air temperature measured with a thermocouple
H2O – Reserator XT reservoir water temperature (digital thermometer)
Tc – Temperature obtained with calibrated thermocouple attached to IHS
Delta T – Fully loaded Tc temperature rise above ambient air temperature
dBA – Sound pressure level recorded 3’ away (background 29 dBA)
Note: The previous Reserator 2 and Koolance systems were tested with 7800 GTX video cards instead of the 8800 GTX used with the Reserator XT so I did not include those results for comparison.
Amb – Ambient air temperature measured with a thermocouple
GPU – GPU temperature reported by Everest utility using onboard sensor
Mem – Video RAM temperature reported by Everest utility using onboard sensor
Env – Video card environmental temperature reported by Everest
Loading both Presler cores with multiple instances of CPUBurn, while using the stock Intel HSF, resulted in significant thermal throttling of the CPU to prevent core meltdown. However, with the Reserator XT, the CPU cores ran much cooler, so no thermal throttling was necessary and the processors were able to run at a constant 100% load.
The Reserator XT lowered full load CPU temperatures by almost 26°C in Auto mode with only a whisper from the fan. I am very impressed with how well the Reserator XT can cope with a fully loaded Presler CPU and 8800 GTX video card! The 8800 GTX video card also ran significantly cooler with the Reserator XT as compared to the stock air cooler. In fact the GPU full load temperatures while being water-cooled with the Reserator XT were actually lower than the idle temperatures on air.
Even though the new Reserator XT now uses a fan for forced air convection cooling, it is a surprisingly quiet cooling solution. With an ambient room temperature of 23°C the Reserator fan was barely noticeable in Auto mode and ran just slightly faster than low speed. When manually turned up to high speed the fan noise was definitely noticeable but not excessively loud. Each user will have to find their own right balance between optimum performance and noise.
Overall, the Reserator XT delivered outstanding performance with minimal noise!
