Performance

To test the Freezone Elite and Pure coolers we performed sustained rendering within Cinebench R10 and monitored the temperatures at full load with the highest value being noted below. Cinebench loads all four cores of our quad-core chip to 100% and so is a great stress test. Idle temperatures were also recorded after the system had been running on the Windows desktop for 30 minutes. Temperature readings were taken from the MTEC control panel and verified with Everest Ultimate.

Reference Clock Speeds

At the reference X9770 speed of 3.2Ghz with 1.2v passing through the CPU we see that the Pure cooler performs on par with one of the best air coolers available, the Arctic cooling Freezer 7 Pro.

For Freezone Elite results we ran the cooler at three separate settings, 'max cooling' involved setting the unit to aim for a coolant temperature of 15c which results in the fan/pump running at maximum level.  Coolant at twenty-five Celsius results in the fan sitting at a near silent volume for around thirty seconds then briefly spinning up every twenty or so seconds. The final setting was targeting the coolant to thirty-five Celsius which gaves us a near silent system at all times with the fan only occasionally spinning up to seventy percent.

At the three settings tested, clearly maximum cooling is the most impressive with an idle temperature of fifteen degrees Celsius and load of only thirty-four. Even when running in near silent mode the temperatures are still impressive and the load reading was three degrees below the air cooler.

4.05Ghz (450x9 1.4v)

Moving to a more demanding set of CPU settings we have the results for the processor running just over 4.0Ghz using 1.4v. At these settings the idle temperatures for the Pure cooler are once again similar to the Arctic Cooling model but the CoolIT does perform better at load.

The Freezone Elite once again gives us some very impressive results. With maximum cooling we have an idle temperature of twenty-five Celsius with load nearly twenty degrees lower than air cooling at forty-nine degrees! Setting the unit to not rise above thirty five Celsius results in temperatures near to those obtained by the Pure cooler although the Elite is a little louder at times. Finally we have the coolant set to not rise above forty degrees Celsius which gives us near silent operation at 4.0GHz. With this setting the temperature at idle is a little disappointing but at load the cooler still outperforms the air cooling alternative.

Maximum Overclock – Freezone Elite

The above results for the Freezone Elite show us that it has the potential to be a great cooler, so the big question is just how far we could take our X9770. The answer is 4.5GHz, 1.3GHz above stock. To achieve this excellent overclock we used a multiplier of 10 with a FSB of 450. The CPU voltage was set to 1.6125v and various other motherboard voltages were tweaked to achieve full stability. The exact settings are shown below.  Coolant level was set to aim for fifteen degrees Celsius which once again resulted in full speed pump/fan operation.

With the above configuration our idle temperature was a respectable fifty-two degrees with load of seventy-one which is excellent for such a high CPU speed and voltage. Coolant temperatures never came close to the requested fifteen Celsius and at its highest hit thirty.