OCZ Tempest Heat Sink Fan Cooler

Temperature Testing

To test out the OCZ Tempest CPU Cooler we ran it on our Intel Core 2 Duo test platform which was then run at default and 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, while the OCZ Tempest was 1C cooler at idle. Under load the OCZ Tempest CPU Cooler performed the best and was found to be two degrees Celsius cooler than the retail boxed heat sink.

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, OCZ Tempest and the 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 and OCZ Tempest were both 10C cooler at idle, but once the processor became under full load the temperature soared up to 76C on the Tempest and 78C on the Xfire. Both the OCZ Tempest and Aerocool Xfire didn’t throttle and completed full runs of Prime 95 and Super Pi on our Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 test system that was overclocked from 1.86GHz to 2.8GHz.