Thermalright Silver Arrow Review

Testing and Setup:

Testing of the heatsink will involve loading simulated by Prime95, using small FFTs in stock and overclocked scenarios. 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 after one hour. The temperature values for each of the four cores will be averaged and displayed on the graphs below. The ambient temperature is held at a constant 25 °C throughout testing of the Silver Arrow, as well as the comparison heatsinks. All the data shown in the graphs is in degrees Celsius. The included thermal paste from Thermalright will be used during testing, and thermal pastes as packaged from the other coolers were used with each heatsink respectively. I will be running the included fans at full speed, which is 1300RPM.

Testing Setup:

• Processor: Intel i7 920 (Stock 2.66GHz and Overclocked to 3.40GHz @ 1.27V)
• Motherboard: MSI Eclipse SLI
• Memory: Mushkin Ridgeback 12800 6-8-6-24
• Video Card: NVIDIA GTX260
• Power Supply: Mushkin 800w Modular Power Supply
• Hard Drive: Seagate 1TB SATA
• Optical Drive: Lite-On DVD-RW
• OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit
• Ambient Temperature: 25 °C
• CPU Heatsink: Thermalright HR-02

Comparison Heatsinks:

• Stock Intel heatsink
• Thermalright HR-02 (High Speed)
• Prolimatech Super Mega
(Running two generic 120mm fans that operate at 1700RPM)
• Cooler Master V6GT
• Thermaltake Contac29

 

 

 

 

 

The Thermalright Silver Arrow won or tied in every test but one, where the Prolimatech Super Mega pulled ahead by only a few degrees. I will wrap this review up on the next page.