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- Date:
- Monday , January 26, 2009
- Author:
- Marc Adams
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Prolimatech Megahalems LGA 775 and LGA 1366 Cooler
Prolimatech may be a new name to many computer hardware cooling enthusiasts. It is a new company with a lofty goal. Prolimatech claims to have built a CPU cooler worthy of taking on the King of the Hill in what it calls a Megahalems. We see if that is so on a new LGA 1366 test setup.
Results: Temperatures
For our stock testing our Intel Core i7 920 will be kept at it stock clock of 2.66 GHz with a stock core voltage of 1.25v. (Stock voltage of this CPU might vary a bit from CPU to CPU.) For overclocked CPU testing we will be running our Intel Core i7 920 at 3.6GHz with a 1.45v vCore. Idle temperatures will be recorded after a fifteen minute period of inactivity. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes. Load temperatures will be recorded after a fifteen minute period of 100% load. To obtain this load we will be using Prime95 v25.3 Blend test. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes.
Please note the following scores are normalized to the ambient temperature. This will show you visually the rise above ambient temperature as well as the overall temperature. Since we are dealing with air cooling it is physically impossible for the temps to be less than ambient. This is why we start our charts at 25º C.
Stock Settings
Both Prolimatech and Thermalright sent us a bunch of their in-house fans and we tested the heat sinks with their respective fans. Thermalright included their line of FDB Silent Fans and they are listed below as 1000 RPM, 1300 RPM, 2000 RPM and 2x2000 RPM (Dual fans in push-pull configuration). Prolimatech included two fans of their own which include their 1200 RPM and 1600 RPM fans. They are listed below in the same manner.
These results will show us the range of the coolers and how well they operate across varying levels of fan speed and airflow. An apple to apples comparison using the same fan was also made and those results are on the following page.
At stock speeds the Megahalems performs extremely well. I can’t remember the last time a competitor came this close to matching the performance of the TRUE. It even performs better when using a slower fan as shown by the difference in the 1600 RPM score for the Megahalems and the 2000 RPM score for the TRUE.
Overclock Settings
Cranking up the heat helps to give us a clear picture of just which cooler can get the job done. Here we see a reversal as the TRUE is able to outperform the Megahalems albeit with a faster fan. The 1300 RPM fan on the TRUE also turns in a solid performance which makes for an excellent solution if silence is the name of the game.
A very honorable mention goes out to the Intel box cooler for the Core i7 965. When set to high speed it is able to cool the CPU down to very acceptable levels though as we’ll see in our next section this comes at the price of noise levels.
Sound
This information is included for those of you who want an idea about noise as a factor when deciding which cooler to buy. As a personal reference, for anything under 43 dB(A) the noise was easily tolerable and if placed inside a case would be even more so.
Now it’s time to level the playing field and find out if the Megahalems has what it takes to dethrone the king of cooling.