My testing setup will be an open bench on my desk. Ambient temperature has been kept consistent at 22C +/- 0.1C with air conditioning. Temperature will be recorded off a probe attached to the CPU's integrated heatspreader. This is as close to reaching the CPU core without removing the integrated heatspreader. I'm a home end user and will not be conducting tests on a scientific level, mainly because I do not have the equipment.
I test how consumers would use the heatsink. My purpose is to find out how well the heatsink performs and whether it is a good investment for you. Idle test will last 30 minutes to let the system sit idly at desktop. Load test will last 60 minutes while running 2 instances of CPU Burn-in. CPU Burn-in is a stress program just for maximizing CPU to 100% to create full load.
- AMD Athlon64 3000+ 90nm @ 2.4GHZ (8 x 300 w/ 1.7v)
- MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
- 2 x 512MB OCZ Gold PC3700 Rev3
- Gigabyte X800 Pro
The MSI motherboard has slight voltage fluctuation with VCore. During idle it would maintain a steady 1.7v, but under load, it would overvolt to 1.720v.
