LGA1366 Heatsink Test Rig Update

Over the last few months we’ve reviewed a number of coolers and with some, we found they had disappointing LGA1366 performance – specifically, the GELID Tranquillo and the Thermalright Venomous-X.

While at the time we were sure of our results having checked and rechecked our numbers, even going so far as to remount the Venomous-X half a dozen times, some further investigation has shown our testing hardware had developed an undetected combination of faults leading to overvolt our overclocked CPU while simultaneously only delivering half voltage to the CPU fan socket.

While we do our very best to deliver the most accurate testing we can, we have to admit on these occasions that our LGA1366 numbers were incorrect and did not represent the performance of these two coolers accurately. We’re here to set the record straight though, and with a new LGA1366 test rig, have retested both coolers, as well as some old favourites, to demonstrate their true LGA1366 performance.

At the same time as publishing this article, we have also updated the two reviews to reflect the new, correct test scores.

Our new LGA1366 test rig consists of:

• Biostar Tpower X58A LGA1366 Motherboard
  
• Intel Core i7 965 overclocked to 3.6GHz ( 27x133) at 1.3Vcore
  
• 3GB (3x1GB) Elpida DDR3 running at 1,066MHz
  
• Coolermaster HAF 922 Case (2x240mm fans, 1x120mm fan)
  
• Enermax Pro 82+ 625W PSU
  
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB Graphics Card
  
• 160GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA hard disk

Our new results are below, and we take a second look at the two affected coolers on the next page.