To get the best review of this product, I decided to test it as it was intended, with a unknowing consumer. So I called on my Friend Adam Hawkins, who goes by the name of GLOC in our forums. He has the following system:

• Abit NF7-S Revision 2.0.
• 2500+ Barton, AQXEA, Factory Unlocked.
• Two 512mb sticks of 400mhz memory, one Samsung, one TwinMOS.
• Tyan Radeon 9600 Pro
• Stock AMD Cooler.

The first thing I did was to put some Arctic Silver 3 on his chip. I then inserted the Lian-Li temperature probe that overclock.co.uk provided me with (thank you!). Before installing the watercooling, I felt it would be a good idea to push the system as it was and take some temperature readings.

We had trouble attaining 400mhz FSB, even with the multiplier down. Going by our Nforce2 round up, this seems to be quite typical (unfortunately).

We experimented with different speeds, voltages e.t.c and used Toast as a way of pushing the chips temperature. We also ran Aquamark and 3dMark to check for stability.

We found 192x12, 2319mhz (according to WCPUID) using 1.85v to be the highest stable speed using stock cooling. Running toast, it stabilised at 68.5c on the CPU with 23.5c air coming into the cooler. Running at 2330mhz caused the machine to reset when the CPU hit around 65c. Part of me wonders if his 350W el-cheapo power supply could have something to do with that.

68 degrees is far from a happy temperature, and once the case is shut the temperature will probably end up more like 80c! So watercooling may offer us a solution here.

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