Testing Configuration and Benchmarks Used

System mounted TRUE Spirit 140 Direct Cooler, stock Single-fan configuration

System mounted TRUE Spirit 140 Direct Cooler, Dual-fan configuration

To validate the performance of the cooler under comparison, the coolers were tested with the CPU running at stock and at a known stable overclocking speed using an X99-based motherboard so that comparative results could be provided for Haswell-E based systems. The benchmark tests used should give you a good understanding of the tested water block capabilities so that you, the reader, can make a more informed purchasing decision.

Test System Setup
CPU Intel X99-based system
Intel Core i7-5960X
Stock – 3.0GHz, 30 x 100MHz Base Clock
Overclock – 4.20GHz, 42 x 100MHz Base Clock
Motherboard ASUS X99-A II
Memory Intel X99-based system
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 modules
Stock – 2133MHz, 15-17-17-35-2T
Overclocked – 2666MHz, 15-17-17-35-2T
Hard Drive Intel 730 240GB SSD
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA III HD
Sound Card On-board sound
Video Card NVIDIA GTX 780 3GB
CPU Cooling Thermalright TRUE Spirit 140 Direct CPU Air Cooler
Noctua NH-D15 CPU Air Cooler
XSPC Raystorm Pro water block
XSPC Photon 170 Tube Reservoir with D5 pump
XSPC RX480 V3 Radiator
Video Drivers NVIDIA 376.33
Power Supply Corsair HX750
Operating System Windows 10 Pro x64 Anniversary Release (build 1607)
Thermal Paste MG Chemicals 860-60G Silicone Heat Transfer Compound
Coolant Distilled Water with PK-Nuke

The 64-bit Windows 10 based test bench used for Intel X99 LGA2011-v3 board testing includes an Intel Core i7-5960X CPU, 32GB of DDR4-2666 memory, an NVIDIA GTX 780 3GB video card, and an Intel 730 240GB SSD drive. Using the selected components gives us the ability to demonstrate the cooling system's capabilities rather than that of the system components.

Benchmark Tests used for evaluation:

  • AIDA64 Extreme Edition v5.30.4000
  • EVGA OC Scanner X v3.6.1.2
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