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Introduction:
Cooling the CPU is probably the most important thing you can do to a PC.
This holds especially true if you want to overclock it at all. Without
a decent cooler the CPU will get too hot and become very unstable. Not
only that but having a better cooler keeps your room warmer in the Winter
months.
CPU coolers are an ever advancing technology with a ton of competition.
Thermaltake shows us their latest and greatest cooler for the high-end
PCs. This unit fits the AMD64 and Opteron.
Overview:
Thermaltake's Venus 12 is probably as good as it gets. It offers a lot
of neat features and cools the CPU down extremely well. The only major
downside is the noise level, which is always a factor in air cooling.
The unit comes with 4 ways to control it. You can use the 3.5" control
bus, a PCI control bus, straight up full throttle, or use a thermal sensor
to detect the temp and adjust the speed accordingly.
The choice ones are the thermal sensor or some kind of rheobus control.
Having it on full throttle is just too loud, even for my standards. The
Venus 12 is also all copper so its heat flow is much higher than that
of aluminum.
Installation:
Installing it is extremely easy. It uses a swing arm so you no longer
have to use a screwdriver. All you do is place it on the chip and set
the holders and then swing the arm and you're set. If you used the thermal
sensor it is best to put it on the outer most part of the copper bottom
because it could crush it or your CPU or the ZIF socket.
The unit comes with all of the adapters and an easy to read instruction
manual. If you want to use the thermal sensor it also comes with double
sided thermal tape. It's pretty thin and extremely sticky so it'll hold
it on there very well. I believe it's the same kind of tape they use in
video RAM heatsinks.
Testing:
Testing this unit was simple. I used the original stock cooler to test
the temps. The test system is as follows:
AMD64 3500+ Socket 939
Asus A8V Deluxe
As you can see the temps dropped quite a bit. The ambient temperature
in my room was about 70F. Ambient temperature plays a vital part in cooling
a computer down. If the air around you is extremely hot you will not get
as good efficiency as you would if you had colder air. It's always best
to run your PC in an air conditioned room.
The above chart is on stock speeds. Below is a chart of a 200MHz boost,
from 2.2GHz to 2.4GHz.
It's pretty obvious the stock cooler just doesn't cut it. To record the
temps I used Asus' Asus Probe. This reads directly from their own hardware
so the temps are accurate. These tests were performed with the fans on
full blast. Turning the fan down to an almost noiseless wind would increase
the temps by about 3 degrees Celsius. I'd say that's pretty good for having
the fan on about 2500 RPMs.
Conclusion:
I'd say this is a must-have if you want to OC your AMD64. There are plenty
of other coolers out there but I think this is one of the best. You simply
can't go wrong with this cooler it does a fantastic job and offers a ton
of features that other coolers don't have.
