[Review] Antec KÜHLER H₂O 9200 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on February 3, 2012
Introduction
There have been many discussions on the interwebs of whether or not traditional air cooling is efficient enough and if it can provide enough performance or if water cooling can supersede it and offer things that air cooling just can’t. Noise, power draw, reliability, performance and pure price are among common categories mentioned in these discussions. The camps are still divided but the manufacturers aim at the middle and hopefully will change that. A few years ago we started...
[Review] Enermax ETS-T40-TB1 Comment By GSG-9closeAuthor: GSG-9Name: Levi Tomes Email: gsg-9@mediocrocy.com Site:http://StypticDesign.com About:See Authors Posts (13) on December 16, 2011
Recently Enermax sent over one of its newest cooling products, the ETS-T40.
Here’s what they have to say about it:
World leading thermal resistance performance of 0.09°C/W.
VGF (Vortex generator flow) technology to greatly increase air convection.
SEF (Stack Effect) design to enhance heat transfer.
Unique air path creating high VEF (Vacuum Effect) to optimize the airflow.
HDT (Heat Pipe Direct Touch) Technology to ensure rapid thermal conduction and eliminate CPU hotspot.
Side flo...
[Review] Akasa Venom Voodoo3 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on December 11, 2011
Introduction
We got some Voodoo in the lab. No seriously, some Venom Voodoo. I think you got it now. Correct, The Akasa Venom Voodoo spooked it’s way in our labs. Let’s hope that the black magic doesn’t effect the results.
The company Akasa is well established. Akasa has development and manufacturing operations in Taiwan, China, Brazil and England to makes this an international operation. There is a wide range of products Akasa is developing and manufacturing. We will focus on...
[Review] Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo9 Comments By GSG-9closeAuthor: GSG-9Name: Levi Tomes Email: gsg-9@mediocrocy.com Site:http://StypticDesign.com About:See Authors Posts (13) on November 27, 2011
Cooler Master sent us one of its newest cooling products, the Hyper 212 Evo.
Some words from Cooler Master about their newest HSF:
Succeeding the popular Hyper 212, the Hyper 212 Evo carries on the legacy of providing a great balance of performance and noise level during high and low speed operations. The Hyper 212 Evo is Cooler Master’s first cooler to be equipped with an all-in-one mounting solution that includes LGA 1156 and 1366. Direct Contact heat-pipe is now also utilized in this la...
Review: Gelid Tranquillo Rev28 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on November 7, 2011
Introduction
A sample from our next contender comes from Gelid. The company is based in Hong Kong with management in Swiss. The company is a fairly young player in the industry and was founded in 2008 by Gebhard Scherrer and VC Tran. Gelid is Gebhard Scherrer’s latest project after co-founding the well known Arctic Cooling brand. Gelid’s name established quickly and well in the industry, rather known for their case fan product line, Gelid now is also more determined to get a foothold...
[Review] Cooler Master H612PWM1 Comment By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on September 14, 2011
Introduction
Today we have an exclusive Cooler Master release product on the bench. The H612PWM is an ambitious attempt to take the cooling crown. We are very proud to be one of the first to have it to get an exclusive look at what could be the future of the air cooling market.
Looks like sheer size and the brutal force of 6 heat pipes is the magic behind the Cooler Master H612. The cooler was not intended for small cases but performance was the primary idea behind this design. The H612 feature...
[Review] Noiseblocker TwinTec3 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on September 12, 2011
Introduction
Coming a long way to use, all the way from Germany, today we have the Noiseblocker TwinTec in the house. The TwinTec from Noiseblocker is Is one of the few ventures the company made into actual CPU cooling hardware. Noiseblocker has impressed so far with it’s products and it’s ability to live up to it’s promise, which is to deliver a silent product.
The NB TwinTec features some interesting design differences. First, instead of using the traditional 6 to 8 heatpipe...
[Review] Evercool HPL-8152 Comments By GSG-9closeAuthor: GSG-9Name: Levi Tomes Email: gsg-9@mediocrocy.com Site:http://StypticDesign.com About:See Authors Posts (13) on August 24, 2011
Introduction
Recently, Evercool sent us their latest ultra low profile product, the HPL-815 Low Profile cooler. After taking the HPL-815 out of its box I felt like a giant. It is possible to hold the fan and heatsink in the palm of your hand while your fingers and thumb touch opposite sides of the contact area. Evercool claims this feisty cooler can tame the most brutal processors on the market. Today we will put the Evercool HPL-815 to the test.
Here is an overview of the impressively dim...
[Review] Cooler Master GeminII S5242 Comments By GSG-9closeAuthor: GSG-9Name: Levi Tomes Email: gsg-9@mediocrocy.com Site:http://StypticDesign.com About:See Authors Posts (13) on August 18, 2011
Introduction
For review today we have the GeminII S524 cooler by CoolerMaster. This 5 heatpipe cooler features aluminum fins designed to maximize surface area while allowing all RAM slots to be occupied for AM3 and Socket 1155/1156/1366 computers.
The GeminII S524
Manufacturer’s Description & Specifications:
Specifications
CPU Socket
Intel Socket:LGA 1366 / 1156 / 1155 / 775 *
AMD Socket:FM1 / AM3+ / AM3 / AM2+ / AM2
CPU Support
Intel:Core™ i7 Extreme / Core&t...
[Review] eVGA Frostbite vs Arctic Silver Céramique1 Comment By miahallencloseAuthor: miahallenName: Jeremiah Allen Email: miahallen.ironmods@gmail.com Site:http://www.ironmods.com About: Well, I was playing with computers ever since my Dad got a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old (1986), when I was 10 (1990) he bought a custom build 486DX33, and I was in love. Mostly back then I was just a kid playing games, but my fascination with computers had a start. Because I had no money of my own, I was stuck playing with my Dad's computers, and really couldn't "play" too much. So in 1998, the year I graduated, I spent some of my college savings to by a "computer for school", haha. It had two Voodoo2 12MB 3D accelerators in it, so you can imagine how much school work was done on it ;-) It had an AMD K6-233 that I had a really mild OC on, but my custom computer builder friend Aaron had done all the work. So I can't really take the credit there. My fascination with graphics just kept growing and growing over the years, and I was constantly in a struggle to keep my games looking as sharp and smooth as possible. OCing played a big role.
My whole world was rocked in 2004 when I was deployed to Iraq as a US Army soldier. The whole year I was there I had a cheap IBM Thinkpad R40 with a 2GHz Celeron, 1GB DDR-333 RAM, a 60GB 4200RPM HDD, and ATI Radeon Mobility graphics (same technology as a 7000 series with only 16MB of memory). It started out rough as I was really into Command and Conquer Generals at the time, and the machine would only play the C&C slide show LOL. So, I downloaded PowerStrip, and OC'ed the GPU by 40%...amazingly, the game was playable!
Things changed dramatically in 2007 when I met a guy named Matt while I was stationed in Japan. He introduced me to www.ocforums.com, and the "Benchmarking Team" there. I had not had much interest in benchmarking previously, I always though of myself as more practical. But, I thought I'd play along and I joined the team. My first introduction to an actual competition was was is "The Raptor Pit", "Forum Warz 2008" in the spring of 2008. I was running a Q6600 and an 8800GTX. With air cooling I was able to bench my Q6600 at over 4GHz, and tore up the competition in my class. Overall OCF won the Forum War in 2007, Winter and Summer of 2008, and 2009...that means five in a row. I was not part of the first one in 2007, but the four since then, I have participated in. After winning the 2008 Winter and Summer Warz, Tom's Hardware Guide announced they were looking for nominations for individuals to compete in their first ever international overclocking competition, called "Overdrive". I was nominated, and chosen to compete in the North American semi-finals in Los Angeles in November 2008. I was placed on "Team IRONMODS" as they only had two guys, yet three man teams were allowed. We won the semi-finals in LA, and our prize was a trip to Paris the following month, to compete with the best in the world.
The following month, Ton, Jake, and myself flew to Paris as "Team USA" to face off against the best from Taiwan, France, Germany, and Italy. It was a very intense competition, but after two heated days of battle (16 hours of benching), we emerged the victors. Amidst our celebration, Ton and Jake officially invited me to join "Team IRONMODS" on a permanent basis, and I graciously accepted. Ton, aka "TiTON", is a world renown case moder, and is also very well known for some of the AMD overclocking he has done. Jake, aka "CPT.Planet", is a genius overclocker, and a really fun guy. The team has a great synergy when working together, we really have complementary styles.
After winning the world championship in December 2008 things were a bit quite for a couple months, then in the spring of 2009 I received an invitation to the 2nd annual Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship "GOOC". I would compete in the North American semi-final in LA, where the winner would win a ticket to the world championship in Taipei Taiwan during CES in June 2009. The competition was tough with 14 of the best from North America gathering for a 1 on 1 competition of OCing. But once again, I completed the competition well, and rose above the others. I won 1st place and the trip to the world finals in Taipei.
My luck ran dry in Taipei where I started off with a bad motherboard, and went through 5 more during the course of the competition due to various reasons. Despite the poor finish in Taipei, I have high hopes to redeem myself next year.See Authors Posts (24) on July 20, 2011
Introduction
With the market for extreme PC cooling growing at a rapid rate over the past few years, we are seeing a much greater number of PC components and accessories geared to this end of the spectrum. This goes back to the Foxconn “Quantum Force” line, which was kicked off with a killer mainboard, the BLACKOPS with features that had never been seen before. Fast forward a few years, and now all the top manufacturers are mimicking elements from that board, and pushing forward ...
Review: Xigmatek GAIA SD12836 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on July 7, 2011
Introduction
Last but not least in our Xigmatek review lineup is the Xigmatek GAIA SD1283. We have been talking about the company in previous reviews already and won’t go into much detail again. Xigmatek has impressed consumers with a good quality product line up and performance that can be shown off, remaining at an affordable price level. Xigmatek’s “ICE” philosophy is well-illustrated in the company and its products.
“ICE” = Impressive / Creative / Essentia...
[Review] Xigmatek AEGIR2 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on June 11, 2011
Introduction
The next review sample in our Xigmatek lineup is the AEGIR SD128264. Xigmatek has been around for a little over 5 years, and has established itself well and rather quickly in the air cooling arena. They have impressed many consumers with good quality products and performance at an affordable price level. Xigmatek’s “ICE” philosophy is well-illustrated in the company and its products.
“ICE” = Impressive / Creative / Essential
The AEGIR is a 120mm vertic...
[Review] Water Cooling The Silverstone Temjin Series TJ1110 Comments By The DukecloseAuthor: The DukeName: Drew Briggs Email: drew@techreaction.net Site:http://www.techreaction.net About: Just keeping it real for the average joe overclocker and computer user.See Authors Posts (168) on June 3, 2011
In 2005, SilverStone created the Temjin TJ07, a tower chassis with unprecedented unibody construction and compartmentalized layout for an almost limitless liquid cooling configuration. Then in 2006, the Temjin TJ09 was released with classic styling and a see-through air duct designed for cooling. In 2008, they created the first retail computer chassis to implement 90 degree motherboard mounting with the RAVEN RV01, a new design which tried to balance air cooling performance and quietness.
Silve...
[Blog] FFF&FM Rev2.0 – water cooling built for benching!10 Comments By miahallencloseAuthor: miahallenName: Jeremiah Allen Email: miahallen.ironmods@gmail.com Site:http://www.ironmods.com About: Well, I was playing with computers ever since my Dad got a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old (1986), when I was 10 (1990) he bought a custom build 486DX33, and I was in love. Mostly back then I was just a kid playing games, but my fascination with computers had a start. Because I had no money of my own, I was stuck playing with my Dad's computers, and really couldn't "play" too much. So in 1998, the year I graduated, I spent some of my college savings to by a "computer for school", haha. It had two Voodoo2 12MB 3D accelerators in it, so you can imagine how much school work was done on it ;-) It had an AMD K6-233 that I had a really mild OC on, but my custom computer builder friend Aaron had done all the work. So I can't really take the credit there. My fascination with graphics just kept growing and growing over the years, and I was constantly in a struggle to keep my games looking as sharp and smooth as possible. OCing played a big role.
My whole world was rocked in 2004 when I was deployed to Iraq as a US Army soldier. The whole year I was there I had a cheap IBM Thinkpad R40 with a 2GHz Celeron, 1GB DDR-333 RAM, a 60GB 4200RPM HDD, and ATI Radeon Mobility graphics (same technology as a 7000 series with only 16MB of memory). It started out rough as I was really into Command and Conquer Generals at the time, and the machine would only play the C&C slide show LOL. So, I downloaded PowerStrip, and OC'ed the GPU by 40%...amazingly, the game was playable!
Things changed dramatically in 2007 when I met a guy named Matt while I was stationed in Japan. He introduced me to www.ocforums.com, and the "Benchmarking Team" there. I had not had much interest in benchmarking previously, I always though of myself as more practical. But, I thought I'd play along and I joined the team. My first introduction to an actual competition was was is "The Raptor Pit", "Forum Warz 2008" in the spring of 2008. I was running a Q6600 and an 8800GTX. With air cooling I was able to bench my Q6600 at over 4GHz, and tore up the competition in my class. Overall OCF won the Forum War in 2007, Winter and Summer of 2008, and 2009...that means five in a row. I was not part of the first one in 2007, but the four since then, I have participated in. After winning the 2008 Winter and Summer Warz, Tom's Hardware Guide announced they were looking for nominations for individuals to compete in their first ever international overclocking competition, called "Overdrive". I was nominated, and chosen to compete in the North American semi-finals in Los Angeles in November 2008. I was placed on "Team IRONMODS" as they only had two guys, yet three man teams were allowed. We won the semi-finals in LA, and our prize was a trip to Paris the following month, to compete with the best in the world.
The following month, Ton, Jake, and myself flew to Paris as "Team USA" to face off against the best from Taiwan, France, Germany, and Italy. It was a very intense competition, but after two heated days of battle (16 hours of benching), we emerged the victors. Amidst our celebration, Ton and Jake officially invited me to join "Team IRONMODS" on a permanent basis, and I graciously accepted. Ton, aka "TiTON", is a world renown case moder, and is also very well known for some of the AMD overclocking he has done. Jake, aka "CPT.Planet", is a genius overclocker, and a really fun guy. The team has a great synergy when working together, we really have complementary styles.
After winning the world championship in December 2008 things were a bit quite for a couple months, then in the spring of 2009 I received an invitation to the 2nd annual Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship "GOOC". I would compete in the North American semi-final in LA, where the winner would win a ticket to the world championship in Taipei Taiwan during CES in June 2009. The competition was tough with 14 of the best from North America gathering for a 1 on 1 competition of OCing. But once again, I completed the competition well, and rose above the others. I won 1st place and the trip to the world finals in Taipei.
My luck ran dry in Taipei where I started off with a bad motherboard, and went through 5 more during the course of the competition due to various reasons. Despite the poor finish in Taipei, I have high hopes to redeem myself next year.See Authors Posts (24) on May 28, 2011
The original recipe
A couple years ago, I put together a simple water cooling system that I dubbed FFF&FM.
Form
Follows
Function
and
Fully
Modular
And the name really tells you everything you need to know. It was not a pretty system, nor did it need to be….but it did work very well for cooling my HW while pretesting for more serious benching session with liquid nitrogen. Here is a link to the original forum post where I detailed the build.
FFF&FM Rev1.0 parts
The original syste...
[Review] Noctua NH-C14 – Built To Perform2 Comments By GSG-9closeAuthor: GSG-9Name: Levi Tomes Email: gsg-9@mediocrocy.com Site:http://StypticDesign.com About:See Authors Posts (13) on May 14, 2011
Introduction:
Our friends at Noctua recently sent us their latest and greatest heatsink for review, the NH-C14. The NH-C14 is a top-flow heatsink of similar design to the NH-D14, which is a cross-blowing heatsink.
The Noctua NH-C14:
The NH-C14
The NH-C14 supports the following processor sockets:
Intel:
LGA1366
LGA1156
LGA1155
LGA775
AMD:
AM2
AM2+
AM3
Next: Specifications and Dimensions
[Review] Xigmatek LOKI SD9635 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on May 3, 2011
Introduction
Some review samples from Xigmatek have arrived today, and the first that we will be looking at is the LOKI SD963. Xigmatek has been around for a little over 5 years and in that time the company made a name for itself rather quickly and impressed many with good quality and performance oriented products. Xigmatek’s “ICE” philosophy seems to be well applied and directly translates into the companies products.
“ICE” = Impressive / Creative / Essential
The ...
[Review] Crucial Ballistix DDR3-2133 (3×2GB) – DDR3 with Thermal Monitoring3 Comments By miahallencloseAuthor: miahallenName: Jeremiah Allen Email: miahallen.ironmods@gmail.com Site:http://www.ironmods.com About: Well, I was playing with computers ever since my Dad got a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old (1986), when I was 10 (1990) he bought a custom build 486DX33, and I was in love. Mostly back then I was just a kid playing games, but my fascination with computers had a start. Because I had no money of my own, I was stuck playing with my Dad's computers, and really couldn't "play" too much. So in 1998, the year I graduated, I spent some of my college savings to by a "computer for school", haha. It had two Voodoo2 12MB 3D accelerators in it, so you can imagine how much school work was done on it ;-) It had an AMD K6-233 that I had a really mild OC on, but my custom computer builder friend Aaron had done all the work. So I can't really take the credit there. My fascination with graphics just kept growing and growing over the years, and I was constantly in a struggle to keep my games looking as sharp and smooth as possible. OCing played a big role.
My whole world was rocked in 2004 when I was deployed to Iraq as a US Army soldier. The whole year I was there I had a cheap IBM Thinkpad R40 with a 2GHz Celeron, 1GB DDR-333 RAM, a 60GB 4200RPM HDD, and ATI Radeon Mobility graphics (same technology as a 7000 series with only 16MB of memory). It started out rough as I was really into Command and Conquer Generals at the time, and the machine would only play the C&C slide show LOL. So, I downloaded PowerStrip, and OC'ed the GPU by 40%...amazingly, the game was playable!
Things changed dramatically in 2007 when I met a guy named Matt while I was stationed in Japan. He introduced me to www.ocforums.com, and the "Benchmarking Team" there. I had not had much interest in benchmarking previously, I always though of myself as more practical. But, I thought I'd play along and I joined the team. My first introduction to an actual competition was was is "The Raptor Pit", "Forum Warz 2008" in the spring of 2008. I was running a Q6600 and an 8800GTX. With air cooling I was able to bench my Q6600 at over 4GHz, and tore up the competition in my class. Overall OCF won the Forum War in 2007, Winter and Summer of 2008, and 2009...that means five in a row. I was not part of the first one in 2007, but the four since then, I have participated in. After winning the 2008 Winter and Summer Warz, Tom's Hardware Guide announced they were looking for nominations for individuals to compete in their first ever international overclocking competition, called "Overdrive". I was nominated, and chosen to compete in the North American semi-finals in Los Angeles in November 2008. I was placed on "Team IRONMODS" as they only had two guys, yet three man teams were allowed. We won the semi-finals in LA, and our prize was a trip to Paris the following month, to compete with the best in the world.
The following month, Ton, Jake, and myself flew to Paris as "Team USA" to face off against the best from Taiwan, France, Germany, and Italy. It was a very intense competition, but after two heated days of battle (16 hours of benching), we emerged the victors. Amidst our celebration, Ton and Jake officially invited me to join "Team IRONMODS" on a permanent basis, and I graciously accepted. Ton, aka "TiTON", is a world renown case moder, and is also very well known for some of the AMD overclocking he has done. Jake, aka "CPT.Planet", is a genius overclocker, and a really fun guy. The team has a great synergy when working together, we really have complementary styles.
After winning the world championship in December 2008 things were a bit quite for a couple months, then in the spring of 2009 I received an invitation to the 2nd annual Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship "GOOC". I would compete in the North American semi-final in LA, where the winner would win a ticket to the world championship in Taipei Taiwan during CES in June 2009. The competition was tough with 14 of the best from North America gathering for a 1 on 1 competition of OCing. But once again, I completed the competition well, and rose above the others. I won 1st place and the trip to the world finals in Taipei.
My luck ran dry in Taipei where I started off with a bad motherboard, and went through 5 more during the course of the competition due to various reasons. Despite the poor finish in Taipei, I have high hopes to redeem myself next year.See Authors Posts (24) on April 26, 2011
Introduction:
The performance memory market has continued to push the performance envelope over the last few generations of hardware, each new development ushering in more speed and better performance. But beyond speed, memory has not yielded much material to the marketing departments. We all know that the marketing departments are tasked with getting products on the market and into your hands. But other than performance, the only marketable aspects in the segment are fancy heat spreaders, ...
[Review] Swiftech Polaris 1203 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on April 14, 2011
Introduction:
Today we are reviewing Swiftech’s latest and greatest in air cooling, the Polaris 120. The Polaris 120 is Swiftech’s comeback to the mainstream air cooling market. Swiftech had its very successful debut into the air cooling market in 2001, and the company became public in 2005. Swiftech was founded in 1994 by Gabriel Rouchon or “Gabe” as many might know him on the various forums in which he frequents. In the last few years, the company has focused on water...
[Review] Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.24 Comments By BoTcloseAuthor: BoTName: Edward Reese Email: bot@codisha.com Site:http://www.codisha.com About:See Authors Posts (14) on February 15, 2011
Introduction:
Arctic Cooling has sent over the Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 for review, and we will be taking a look at it to see how well it will perform on our test bed. This cooler is a bit different from what we have had so far on our test bench. For starters, the cooler has a fan attached from the manufacturer, and the fan is not meant to be exchanged with any aftermarket fans. This isolates and limits our testing ability, but nevertheless we will try to give you the best overview and test results ...