AeroCool Xfire Heat Sink Fan Review

Temperature Testing

To test out the Aerocool Xfire we ran it on our Intel Core 2 Duo test platform which was then run at default settings then our overclocked settings. All the temperatures were obtained by using Core Temp Beta 0.9.0.91.

The test results at stock settings showed both the Intel and Aerocool heat sinks perform the same, but whenrun under full load the Aercool Xfire cooled 2C better than the Intel reference design. The Aerocool Xfire doesn’t stand out much here, but that doesn’t mean it won’t when the system is overclocked.

We pushed the limits of our Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor by raised the Front Side Bus from 266MHz to 400MHz and left the multiplier at seven. This increased the stock frequency of 1.86GHz to 2.8GHz and required a slight voltage increase on the core to operate at such extreme settings. To obtain a stable processor we increased the voltage from 1.325V to 1.4125V in the BIOS and again tested both the Aerocool Xfire and Intel reference heat sinks to see how they handle an overclock like this.

It seems that our overclock was too much for the Intel retail boxed heat sink as it hit 80C and maintained this temperature while the CPU began throttling. It was pointless to continue running our processor at 80C, so we stopped testing and recorded it as 80C. The Aerocool Xfire was 10C cooler at idle, but once the processor became under full load the temperature soared up to 78C. The only difference with the Aerocool Xfire over the retail boxed solution is that it didn’t throttle and completed full runs of Prime 95 and Super Pi with the Xfire installed.