Heatsink Group Test - August 2007

Author: Simon Briers
Published: 2nd August 2007

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Asus Arctic Square (continued):

Problems:

Having installed the Arctic Square, we started running Orthos with the fan unplugged until the CPU hit 75°C, as usual. Ten seconds or so after reconnecting the fan, we noticed the temperature hadn't changed much, and that the CPU was throttling. At this point, we realised that the fan wasn't spinning!

We stopped the load test immediately and checked everything was connected properly. The cooler's LEDs were lit so the circuitry was obviously working as it should do, so we shut down the system and removed the heatsink for further investigation. On removal, we found that we couldn't even force the fan blades to turn, so we then removed the top cover and fan retention assembly.

Bizarrely, we found that both screws securing the fan to the bracket had been overtightened to the point that the fan body had warped enough to prevent the fan from spinning! Fortunately, we managed to free the fan by releasing these screws, and we were then able to continue testing as normal.

Heatsink Group Test - August 2007 Asus Arctic Square - 2

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Of course, we immediately contacted Asus about this issue and representatives from the company were just as surprised as we were – they claimed that there had been no other reports of this problem. That could just be the standard PR response though, as we’ve certainly heard similar from other manufacturers when we’ve gone to them with problems.

However, Asus’ representatives did claim to check stocks just in case this is a known problem across an entire batch, but came back saying that the sample we’d received was alone in having this fault. If you've had a similar problem with the Asus Arctic Square, we'd really like to hear about it, so please drop into our article discussion forum and share your experiences!

Performance:

Once we’d got the fan spinning, the Arctic Square performed very well in our tests, with its loaded CPU temperatures only bested by the Zerotherm BTF90 and Scythe Infinity. Even then, it was only beaten by 0.5°C and 0.3°C respectively – that’s hardly worth writing home about. In addition, the Arctic Square also gave the lowest VRM temperatures for both load and idle readings.

On the noise front, we found there to be a slight whoosh from the fan and on the whole it was about as loud as the Zerotherm at load. I guess you could summarise its noise output by saying it's a long way from being overly loud and uncomfortable, but it also isn’t silent either.

Conclusions:

The Arctic Square's results are far from disappointing, with the best VRM temperatures, and third best CPU results here. It’s not the quietest cooler on the market, but it’s also not obtrusively loud either – it won’t bother you if you’ve got several hard drives spinning inside your case. One concern we have is with regard to the build quality – the fan blades in our unit refused to spin out of the box because the screws had been over-tightened.

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Despite its promising performance and acceptable noise levels (when the fan works properly), the cooler is unfortunately let down by an overly high asking price - it's the most expensive cooler in this group test by around 15 percent. That price does however get you one of the best looking coolers available, presuming blue LEDs are to your tastes.