Thermalright Venomous X CPU Cooler Review

The Results

Now, since the Venomous X does not come with any fans, but the instructions say to use a 120mm fan or a pair of 120mm fans of your choice. So, for today’s testing I will be using a pair of Noctua NF-P12 120mm fans. The fans have a 54.3 CFM rating and have a static pressure rating of 1.68mm H2O, or roughly 0.002 PSI if my math is right. These are the same fans used on the NH-U12P SE2 we tested a few days ago.

With the system at stock settings the Thermalright Venomous X paired with two NF-P12 fans did very well. With the cooler mounted at the 70lbs setting its a very nice 18.75 degrees cooler then the stock Intel HSF, and only 0.5 degrees warmer then the Noctua NH-D14.

Cranking the heat up a touch we overclocked the system to 3.5Ghz. The Venomous X still doing very well, but still just a hair behind the Noctua NH-D14 by a half degree. Not that this is a bad thing; it’s still a whopping 20.75 degrees cooler than the stock Intel HSF.

Now lets put on a little more heat and raise our C0 stepping i7-920 set to 190×20 and 1.3875v on the CPU to get 3.8Ghz. The CPU temp climbed up to 78.5* degrees at full load. This is 2 degrees warmer than the Noctua NH-D14, and 21 degrees warmer than our custom water loop with the Swiftech Apogee XT. So you can see the benefits of using water with these types of overclocks.