Testing
The test rig consists of the following parts:
Processor: Intel Core i5 2500K
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 EVO
Video Card: SPARKLE Calibre Series X480 GeForce GTX 480
Memory: Corsair Vengence 8 GB @ 1600mhz
Power Supply: High Power Astro PT 700w
Storage: OCZ Vertex 2 120 GB Running Windows 8 64bit
Cooling: Swiftech H220
Case: Nanoxia Deep Silence 1
Testing was done using Intel Burn Test (IBT) with the AVX instruction set. The reason I use this instead of Prime95 with this setup is that it pushes our i5 2500K a whole lot harder, giving us a better sense of load temps. Most of the testing was done at the high memory setting for a single pass. While admittedly this in no way would qualify the chip as stable when overclocking, it gives us a realistic idea of what temps it will be hitting.
First I did some re-testing with our new case using the stock Intel cooler, at the stock motherboard settings, in the test rig with results as follows:
Ambient temps: 22.22C/71.99F
Idle temps: 31.25C/88.25F core average
IBT temps: 78.5C/173.3F core average
Next I ran the H220 through the exact same test at the same motherboard settings:
Ambient temps: 22.22C/71.99F
Idle temps: 34.25C/93.65F core average
IBT temps: 49.5C/121.1F core average
Oddly as you can see the H220 idled a little higher than even the stock cooler. But as should be expected, it blew the stock cooler out of the water under load.
After seeing these results I was starting to doubt what this cooler could do. With little expectation, I went ahead and took it through my standard overclocking session to find it’s ceiling. Here is what I was able to do:
Ambient temps: 22.22C/71.99F
Max overclock: 5.0 ghz/1.488V vCore
IBT temps: 77.25C/171.05F core average
The only thing to say here is very impressive. Actually spectacular considering my initial findings.
Now some of you may be saying hold on a minute didn’t you test another AIO that also did 5.0ghz? And you would be correct. We tested the Tt Water 2.0 Extreme recently and it did indeed do 5.0ghz. However, that was in our old case, which had a ton of air flow, but was a bit noisy. Once transferred to and installed in the Nanoxia it could only do 4.8ghz without letting the CPU overheat.
So at .2ghz faster than it’s nearest AIO competitor the H220 is now our top performing AIO to date!
And I mentioned the noise of the old case. Noise, although an afterthought for extreme users, is a concern for most everyone else. I am happy to report, while you are creeping your way through Crysis 3 even with the fans at full tilt (as governed by bios PWM set to “turbo”) the only thing you are going to hear is wonderful in game sound. These are truly a silent pair of fans. And needless to say, as the results speak for themselves, they do a heck of a job as well.