Overclock Your PC

Posted 12/31/2007 at 1:49pm | by Gordon Mah Ung and David Murphy

3

Comments

Print

Keeping your CPU Cool!

Without adequate cooling, your overclocked rig is as good as toast.

Air

It’s hard to get much worse than a stock air cooler for your CPU. That’s not to say there’s anything outright wrong with the fan/heatsink combo that comes with a new CPU—the little guy will likely keep your stock-clocked processor running well within safe operating temperatures.

The minute you start overclocking your processor, however, you’ll be jacking up your thermals to levels a stock cooler can’t handle. Granted, when overclocking, temps will go up with even premium air coolers, but a solid aftermarket device will give you more room to work with. Your initial temperatures will be lower, and they won’t rise as quickly as they would with a stock solution.

While other air coolers have matched the CNPS9700’s effectiveness, none has done so in this small a package.

Our current Lab champion, Zalman’s CNPS9700 ($80, www.zalmanusa.com), has maintained the throne for nearly a year. It uses a copper and aluminum framework to absorb the warmth produced by both Intel and AMD CPUs. The cooler’s 2,800rpm fan emits a tornado-like whoosh when it’s cranked to the max, but it also allows the device to reach epic levels of heat reduction. In fact, we now use the Zalman as a benchmark for other coolers. On the last test we ran, the device took our processor down to 37.5 C during our CPU burn-in test and 22.5 C when idle—a savings of 16.5 C and 9.5 C, respectively, over stock.

Liquid

aftermarket air cooling is a fine way to manage CPU temperatures, but only to a point. Eventually, practicality and performance concerns render air coolers insufficient for OC’d machines. That’s why there’s liquid cooling. Not only can you reach lower temperatures when using a liquid-based setup as opposed to air, but you’ll also benefit from a lower sound profile.

Of course, there’s an obvious caveat: Liquids plus electronics can equal a serious monetary hit if you have to replace hardware that inadvertently gets wet. Installing a water-cooling kit in your rig is a delicate process, and the drama only increases if you’ve never done it before. Sure, you can go with a preassembled liquid-cooling kit, but in our experience, a majority of these units perform on par with—if not worse than—stock air coolers.

Hardcore cooling devices, like this CoolIt Boreas, come with a price—they require you to stuff more and more gear into your case.

The best liquid cooler we’ve found is CoolIT’s Boreas unit ($450, www.coolitsystems.com). A fancier, fatter version of the company’s Eliminator, the Boreas uses 12 thermoelectric modules to rip the heat from your molten tubing into a giant heatsink. Two 12cm fans take care of the rest, allowing the Boreas to beat our FX-60 test bed’s stock cooler by 20 C in idle and 32 C during our burn-in test.