Testing

Testing these low profile coolers required a different cooling setup than usual, not least because both the Akasa and GELID aren’t rated to handle more than a 65W processor, let alone the overclocked, over-volted quad core Xeon we now torture coolers with. Instead we’ve drafted in a 2.5GHz Intel Pentium E5200, one of our favourite affordable processors which delivers more than enough performance at its stock speeds to handle 1080p video.

We’ll be testing in our standard Cooler Master Stacker cases, fitting with a two 120mm cooling fans, one as an exhaust and one as an intake, working with an Abit IP35 Pro XE motherboard. While we appreciate that this isn’t the environment these coolers were designed for, it does allow for the only limiting factor in visible cooling to be the cooler itself. If we’d testing in a small case then limited airflow might have favours one cooler over another.

Here’s a recap of the test kit: Intel E5200 @ 2.5GHz, Abit IP35 Pro XE, Radeon HD 4670, 2x1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 6400, Cooler Master Stacker case.

When idle, Intel SpeedStep is enabled, dropping the CPU speed down to 1.2GHz from 2.5GHz. Full CPU load is achieved using Prime95's small FFT torture test. All results were taken at the end of 30 minutes under the specific processor loads.

Usually we'd be looking for superior cooling performance from a third party cooler, but when it comes to a low profile cooler it's silence and size that's important. Remember all of these coolers are much smaller than Intel's reference cooler - while we'll be expecting decent thermal performance, there's no need for overclocking or huge amounts of thermal overhead when building an HTPC.