Page 12 - Testing and benchmarking
Now that the system is hooked up to the cooling solution let's run some tests. Initial thoughts... impressive. The CPU and the graphics core of the videocard (GPU) are running steady at a 30 C temperature. As part of the test we maxed the workload of the CPU to 100%, managing some serious encoding work, the same was done to the GPU.
The fun part is... the temperature does not rise that much with a full 100% workload, it only differed a couple of degrees but basically that's it. This creates some serious overclocking potential for both the CPU and the GPU.
Cooling method versus temperature in degrees C. The lower the better.
These are the results with the control unit set at 7 volts and 12 volts. At 12 Volts the radiator fan made slightly more noise yet it did not have a huge impact on cooling at all, we saw a 1-2 degree difference, so we choose the silent option.
CPU Cooling - As you can see compared to traditional air-cooling at idle we have a 15 degree difference. At 100% processor utilization that difference is even bigger at 20 degrees.
GPU Cooling - Very exciting results. Idle temperature of the 5950 Ultra is normally about 40 C with the traditional cooler, it's now ~29 Degrees. But where it matters the most is at full GPU utilization and the result are staggering. The GPU with normal cooling can and will reach 65 C where we see an amazing 35 C with watercooling.
When we relate this to overclocking, your results are going to be limited by the model of CPU or graphics card that you have. Our Athlon XP 2000+ is a bad overclocker, we knew that in advance and despite the excellent cooling we could not OC it much further then we saw with traditional air cooling. The GPU however seriously likes water-cooling solution as it offers a "chilling" environment. At standard the graphics card is clocked at 475 MHz and 950 MHz for its memory. We were able to bump up the frequency towards 579 Mhz core and the memory, although not water-cooled, to 1.1 GHz. At these clock settings the GPU core still reported ~35 degrees C back.
As you can see the Asetek WaterChill solution offers serious tweaking possibilities for your system without the usual noisy environment, it is able to absorb a lot of heat.
