Antec SpotCool System Case Fan Review
Andy Ruffell / 14 years ago
Performance Testing
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| Test System | |
|---|---|
| Processor (CPU) |
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
|
| Motherboard |
Asus Crosshair IV Formula
|
| Memory (RAM) |
4GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1800MHz
|
| Graphics Card |
AMD Radeon HD 6850
|
| Heatsink (HSF) | CoolerMaster Hyper 212+ |
| Primary Hard Drive |
2 x Kingston V+ Series 64GB SSD(RAID 0)
|
| Power Supply | BFG EX Series 1200 Watt Modular Power Supply |
| Chassis | CoolerMaster Lab Test Bench |
| Operating System |
Windows 7 Professional Edition 64-bit
|
When testing a fan or similar cooling device, there are plenty of variables that will affect the outcome and final temperatures.
To make sure testing is fair and concise, you will firstly need to make sure that the ambient temperature is at a constant rate throughout the testing phase. To combat this, we used an indoor digital temperature reading that showed the ambient room temperature was 21 degrees Celsius throughout our tests.
The second part of the testing is to make sure that the same software is used throughout, this includes the temperature monitoring software as well as any software used to simulate 100% load of the testing area. To bring out system to 100% load, we used Prime95 and FurMark.
When measuring the idle temperature, the system is left to sit in an idle state for 15 minutes, the temperature is then recorded, the two benchmarking applications are then opened and started for 15 minutes until the temperature is recorded again. This phase is the load state to see how the temperature differs from its idle form.
For our tests, we took a look at how the Northbridge temperature is affected by measuring idle and load temperatures with no fan used, the fan at low setting, medium and also high setting to see how the temperature fairs against the different settings as well as to see if the fan is a worthwhile product or if it’s unneeded.
We also tested the noise level of the fan using a 5-in1 digital multimeter. We tested at low, medium and high settings to give a clear comparison between the different speeds.
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[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]We started by testing the ambient room noise with the fan switched off which gave us a clear indication to work from. We could then continue to see how many extra decibels the fan created and could then subtract the ambient room noise from this to see how much noise the fan made.[/COLOR][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR]
