DEEPCOOL Ice Wind Pro Review

Testing:

Testing of this heat sink will involve applying a load simulated by Prime95, using small FFTs in stock and overclocked scenarios, where both idle and load temperatures will be recorded. Load temperatures will be the maximum value displayed in RealTemp after running eight threads in Prime95 for one hour, and idle temperatures will be the minimum recorded value by RealTemp with no computer usage during a period of one hour. The temperature values for each of the four cores will be averaged and displayed in the graphs below. The ambient temperature is held at a constant 23°C throughout testing of the DEEPCOOL Ice Wind Pro, as well as with the comparison units. All the data shown in the graphs below is in degrees Celsius. The included thermal paste from DEEPCOOL will be used during testing, and thermal pastes on other heat sinks from their respective manufacturers will be used. The fans on each cooler will be run at full-speed for these tests.

Testing Setup:

• Processor: Intel Core i7 2600K - Stock and @ 4.4 GHz
• Motherboard: Gigabyte Z68 AP-D3 Rev 2.0
• Memory: Mushkin Blackline PC3 16000 9-9-9-24 1600 MHz
• Video Card: XFX Radeon HD6970
• Power Supply: Mushkin 1000 watt Joule Modular power supply
• Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 1TB SATA
• Optical Drive: Lite-On DVD-RW
• OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
• Case: Corsair Obsidian Series 650D

Comparison Heatsinks:

• Titan Fenrir Siberia Edition
• NZXT Havik 120
• Phanteks PH-TC14PE
• Corsair Hydro Series H100
• Noctua NH-D14
• Stock Intel

These results look rather skewed, but this ~$40 cooler is going up against $50+ coolers and hanging in there within a couple degrees in every test, showing no sign of fatigue in even the overclocked load testing.