Testsystem and test-routine

Testsystem

Test Setup

For ou tests, we used MSI's HD 5850 Twin Frozr II card, on which we used different coolers with the same thermal compound Gelid Solutions GC-Extreme applied again for each coolers. We used AMD's CCC 11.7 to control fan speeds and GPU-Z for the monitoring part of both fan speeds and GPU temperatures. For the Gelid Solutions Icy Vision 2 though we used a fan speed controller plugged to the fan cable to control the speeds as it's not PWM. Following, the tests we did:

For the noise level results, we measured the noise level using a decibel meter located at 1 meter away from the graphics card. The noise level is measured in dBA @ +/- 0.5 dBA.

• Idle, temperature is taken after 5 minutes @ 30 %, 50 % and 100 % fan speed.
• OCCT GPU, temperature is taken after 10 minutes of OCCT 4.0 GPU Stress test @ 30 %, 50 % and 100 % fan speed. (1920 x 1080 (60 Hz), 1 Shader, Full Screen)
• Highest temperature reached under 3DMark Vantage @ 30 %, 50 % and 100 % fan speed.
• Highest temperature reached under 3DMark 11 @ 30 %, 50 % and 100 % fan speed.