Processor at 4600 MHz with increased voltages
The processor at 4600 MHz with higher Voltage
Now we up the ante. Understand that 1.30V and higher voltages are the levels where Haswell processors get into serious problems due to the aforementioned heat-spreader versus TIM design applied solution from Intel. We now set apply 1.30 volts / 4600 MHz all cores on the CPU while loading it with 100% stress for wPrime to run on all available CPU threads three times. Below, you can see the IDLE results with the Core i7 clocked @ 4600 GHz with 1.30 volts on the CPU. Again, the results are the IDLE temperatures thus you are on your desktop doing pretty much nothing.
So while there is a bunch of capacity left the cooler will continuously balance in-between silence and cooling capacity, preferring acoustics.
To advance on overclocking to see where our thermal threshold (the point of no return) is we tweak in four stages where we up the core voltage from 1.30v upwards to a more (unrealistic) 1.40v. At 1.35 volts most heat pipe coolers, for example, would fail.
You can see it performs moderately well, however one we hit 1.40v the fans kicked in harder, immediately showing the cooling capacity as the heat curves will flatten down. The LCS definitely has proper cooling capacity to offer, but obviously that is relative towards acoustics.