Designing the cooler platform
Several months were taken when originally designing the cooler test platform, as well as the testing methodologies, and after a lot of thinking and debating, I can honestly not think of a better way to test a CPU cooler than what has already been established. That being said I will always be open to suggestions as to what our readers want to see, so changes in the future are not out of the realm of possibility.
Several months were taken when originally designing the cooler test platform, as well as the testing methodologies…
The Test System:
As was said, there was a lot of time spent designing a test system for cooler testing that accurately represented what the vast majority of real world PC enthusiasts are using. A 10 minute run of a stress testing program on an open air test bench is not going to relate to the stresses a real user puts on a system. That said, here is a breakdown of the components you will find in the cooler test system.
CPU:
The CPU that will be getting regularly tortured is a Ryzen 7 1700 that has been overclocked to 3.9GHz at 1.475v. This combination gives us around 160 watts of package power draw at full load, enough to thoroughly test any cooler. For the most part, any cooler can do the job on a stock processor, this is designed to actually stress the cooler, and test manufacturer claims. The Ryzen platform was chosen for a variety of reasons, one of which being the AM4 socket. While Intel likes to change sockets with nearly every CPU generation, if history with AMD has taught us anything than the AM4 socket should be around, and stay relevant for a good long while.
Motherboard:
The motherboard being used is the GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 motherboard. This board has proven to be extremely stable, which is vitally important in order to perform this kind of testing repeatedly.
Memory & Storage:
For storage we are using an OCZ Vertex 450 250GB SSD. Old, reliable, and gets the job done. An SSD is also used to make sure no unwanted noise is being put into the system during testing.
For memory we have two flavors of DDR4 from Corsair. The first and primary set is 16GB (8GBx2) of Dominator Platinum 3000MHz. This is tall memory, and will highlight any memory compatibility issues that we may run into with various coolers. The second set is again 16GB (8GBx2) , however this set is Corsair’s LPX memory, also at 3000MHz. This is a lower profile option than the Dominator Platinum, and is used in the case that the Dominator Platinum won’t fit with the cooler being tested.
Power Supply:
The power supply being used is a Corsair HX-1000i. This gives us more than enough power to feed the test system during full load, as well as all the connections we need.
Video Card:
Think of the video card in this machine less like a GPU, and more like a space heater, and that space heater is the ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP. You may ask “Why is this here for testing CPU coolers?” The answer is simple, enthusiasts have GPUs in their computers, and GPUs generate heat that is put into the case, raising the ambient temperature around the CPU cooling components. TheASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP pulls around 280w of power under full load per HardOCP’s 2012 review of the unit, and should provide a very comparable heat load to what is seen in modern GPUs.
Case:
The case that will be housing everything will be the Corsair 750D Airflow Edition. Again, the goal is to replicate real world usage, and in the real world, most people have their PC in a case. The 750D Airflow Edition was chosen as it has the ability to mount up to a 360mm radiator in the top, and represents the majority of ATX cases well. Two 140mm intake fans in the front, a single 140mm exhaust fan in the rear is nearly the standard now. As well the Corsair 750D was the most popular ATX case in the world at the time it was chosen.