Benchmarking
Test Rig
| CPU | AMD Athlon 2000+ |
| Motherboard | Asus A7V333 |
| RAM | 512MB Micron PC2700 |
| Chassis | Antec SX-1030 |
In order to compare the cooling capacity of the cooler, we have run it against some more traditional cooling solutions. The first being the OCZ Gladiator II, the Thermaltake Volcano 7 and 11, as well as the Swiftech MCX462-U. The test consisted of running 20 rounds of SiSoft Sandra’s CPU Burn-in Wizard (doing both the Arithmetic and Multimedia CPU tests).
| Heatsink | Min T (ºC) | Max T (ºC) | Case T (ºC) |
| OCZ Gladiator II |
42.5 |
50.0 |
29.0 |
| Swiftech MCX462-U |
32.0 |
39.0 |
26.0 |
| ThermalTake Volcano 7 |
37.0 |
43.0 |
28.0 |
| ThermalTake Volcano 11 |
36.5 |
42.0 |
28.0 |
| ThermalTake SilentTower |
35.0 |
48.5 |
29.0 |
As we can see the Swiftech MCX462-U heatsink performed the best while the Thermaltake SilentTower only performed as well as the OCZ Gladiator II (a much smaller heatsink). However, while all heatsinks were extremely loud the SilentTower earned its name. I could not even hear the SilentTower over the hum of the chassis fans. It is interesting to see that while the SilentTower only performed averagely under load, at idle, it performed remarkably.
Conclusions
While performing admirably at idle, the SilentTower seemed to have trouble at high load leading me to believe that either the heat pipes couldn’t transfer heat away from the CPU quickly enough, or that the heat was not dissipated from the aluminum fins was sub par. Perhaps the addition of a second fan or perhaps faster fans (although this would counteract the “silent” aspect of the heatsink) would enable the SilentTower to perform with the high end products. However the SilentTower was true to its name and was extremely quiet. For an overclocker, this heatsink wouldn’t be your first choice, or your second for that matter. But for a normal everyday system, this heatsink is great especially for those of you with the computer nestled close to where you sleep. With this cooling solution, the only thing keeping you awake at night are those pesky blue leds keeping your room bright as day. A definite recommendation for people not overclocking
Pros:
Cons:
Score: 92
