Thermalright HR-01 Plus: 2nd Gen Killer Tower Cooler

Testing was done according to our unique heatsink testing methodology, and the reference fan was profiled using our standard fan testing methodology. A quick summary of the components, tools, and procedures follows below.

Key Components in Heatsink Test Platform:

• Intel Pentium D 950 Presler core. TDP of 130W; under our test load, it measures 78W including efficiency losses in the VRMs.
• ASUS P5LD2-VM motherboard. A basic microATX board with integrated graphics and plenty of room around the CPU socket.
• Samsung MP0402H 40GB 2.5" notebook drive
• 1 GB stick of Corsair XMS2 DDR2 memory.
• FSP Zen 300W fanless power supply.
• Arctic Silver Lumière: Special fast-curing thermal interface material, designed specifically for test labs.
• Nexus 120 fan (part of our standard testing methodology; used when possible with heatsinks that fit 120x25mm fans)

Test Tools

• Seasonic Power Angel for measuring AC power at the wall to ensure that the heat output remains consistent.
• Custom-built, four-channel variable DC power supply, used to regulate the fan speed during the test.
• Bruel & Kjaer (B&K) model 2203 Sound Level Meter. Used to accurately measure noise down to 20 dBA and below.
• Various other tools for testing fans, as documented in our standard fan testing methodology.

Software Tools

• SpeedFan 4.32, used to monitor the on-chip thermal sensor. This sensor is not calibrated, so results are not universally applicable.
• CPUBurn P6, used to stress the CPU heavily, generating more heat than most real applications. Two instances are used to ensure that both cores are stressed.
• Throttlewatch 2.01, used to monitor the throttling feature of the CPU to determine when overheating occurs.

Noise measurements were made with the fan powered from the lab's variable DC power supply while the rest of the system was off to ensure that system noise did not skew the measurements.

Load testing was accomplished using CPUBurn to stress the processor, and the graph function in SpeedFan was used to make sure that the load temperature was stable for at least ten minutes.

The ambient conditions during testing were 14 dBA and 21°C.

TEST RESULTS

Cooling Results

The test results for the HR-01 Plus with our standard Nexus 120 fan were top-notch. Not only did the thermal rise not break 20°C at any point, there was only a 7°C difference in cooling performance between the highest and lowest fan speed. The sweet-spot seems to be at 7V — at this level the Nexus fan is inaudible in all but the quietest enviroments. Very impressive indeed.

Comparables

Compared head-to-head with the big boys, the HR-01 Plus easily joins the elite ranks of the Ultra-120 eXtreme and Xigmatek HDT-S1283. The most impressive comparison is with the Nexus 120 fan at 5V — its performance is unmatched. This implies the HR-01 Plus should perform better than all the competition when it comes to passive cooling... if your CPU is cooler than ours and if your rig has enough airflow to allow at least some air movement through the heatsink fins.