Cooling: Asetek WaterChill :: Performance

The Asetek WaterChill was installed and reviewed on the following test machine:

• Motherboard: EPoX 8K9A2+
• CPU: AMD Athlon XP1700+ Thoroughbred B
• RAM: 512Mb Crucial PC2100 DDR CAS 2.5
• Power Supply: Enermax EG365P-VE 350w
• Video Card: PNY GeForce 4 Ti 4200
• Case: Antec 1030SX SOHO
• Sound Card: SoundBlaster LIVE! 5.1 Digital
• OS: Windows XP Pro SP1

For this review, I have also tested the video card temperatures using 3DMark 2001 SE and Neverwinter Nights. The card was tested at normal settings and with just the card itself overclocked going from 250/500 MHz to 350/540 MHz perfectly stable.

As always, Arctic Silver III thermal paste was used instead of the Silicone grease. The system was run a minimum of 72 hours before any testing was done so that the ASIII has time to cure. The tests consisted of the following:

• 3DMark 2001 SE (CPU/Memory/Graphics)
• PCMark 2002 (CPU/Memory/Graphics/HDD)
• SiSoft SANDRA Burn-in (CPU/Memory/Graphics/HDD)
• Neverwinter Nights (CPU/Memory/Graphics)
• BurnIn Pro v3.0 (100% CPU load)
• Overclocking (XP1700+ 1.47GHz TbredB @ 1.60v stepped up to XP2600+ 2.11GHz @ 1.75v)

All temperatures are ± 2° C. A CompuNurse thermal probe was used to obtain the temperatures. The thermal probe was attached with the end of the probe stripped and touching the CPU die. MBM5 was used for the under-die temps. Ambient temperature remained a steady 70° F. I allowed the system to return to idle for 20 minutes in between each test. Here now are the scores:

System: Fan at 7v

System: Fan at 12v

System: Fan at 7v

System: Fan at 12v

Video Card: Fan at 7v

Video Card: Fan at 12v

Video Card: Fan at 7v

Video Card: Fan at 12v