Orienting the HSF in this manner frees up working room around the ram
occupied dimm sockets on the DFI 915P-TAG motherboard. Nice option!
Nice Clearance
Good clearances all around. Well thought out design by Thermalright.
Inside Case
Installed in the case and ready for testing. Note the ample room around the
HSF. Sufficient room between HSF and ram in this orientation. Also, ample room
between HSF and video card.
Painless install with only a Phillips screwdriver for securing mounting brackets
and stiffening backplate to the motherboard with 4 screws. Like the XP-90 there
really are no negatives I can relate about the XP-90C other than the weight. Now
if it will just cool down my Prescott!
NVIDIA ForceWare Graphics Driver, Version (WHQL) 71.84
Enermax 600W power supply
NEC 17-inch LCD712 monitor
32-Bit Color / 60Hz Refresh Rate @ 1280X1024
Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2
Microsoft DirectX 9.0c
TESTING
Tests included evaluations of three heatsinks. First, the stock Intel HSF, then
an all aluminum XP-90, and finally the topic of this review, the all copper
XP-90C. All tests were conducted using 'tweaked' system as identified in Test
Setup using a closed mid-tower all-steel case. Airflow through the case is
provided by two primary 120mm intake and exhaust fans. In addition, the case is
fitted with an 80mm intake fan for cooling the two SATA HDDs and the contained
80mm and 92mm cooling fans for the 600W power supply.
My computer room can maintain 29C temperature consistently. I can reduce room
temperature but have difficulty in maintaining a consistent ambient temperature,
therefore, I opted for the 29C. This is probably higher that what most of you
run in your computer area but I decided to go with this setting providing a good
basis for these tests.
This is in no way a scientific test but simply an evaluation of each heatsinks
capability of cooling under 'normal' circumstances that a home user can use as a
basic comparison. All recorded temperatures were derived using temperature
recording software and additional thermal probes used to check consistency in
the results.
Idle temperature was obtained by running the test system with only minimal
operating system and temperature recording software running for a two hour
period before recording the temperature at 'idle.'
Maximum temperatures, for test comparisons, was running Folding@Home to maintain
100% CPU usage for a 24-hour period.
Fan selection was limited to the Panaflo 92mm High Speed fan as I was looking
for both performance to cool the 3.4E Prescott while adding the desire for noise
reduction. I found this 56.8 CFM, 35 dBA, fan more than adequately provided
excellent performance while running exceptionally quiet for a fan moving this
amount of air.
