Viewing page 7 of 8 pages.
Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
FAN CONTROL & NOISE
The stock chipset fan is a squirrelly one — very loud and
whiney at full speed. It does undervolt well; it becomes bearable at about 7V
though you can hear it tick from up close. The board has a fan control option
in the BIOS with a minimum 50% setting for the SYS_FAN header. When we plugged
the chipset fan into it, the fan only slowed down to the equivalent of 10V,
which was unacceptable. For D945GCLF2 users with Windows, SpeedFan can be used
instead, as the Speed01 option allows for full fan control right out of the
box. For some reason, the controls are backwards — setting it to 100% turns
the fan off, while 0% sets it to full blast. We set it 80% which resulted in
a speed equivalent to about 6V. With the fan undervolted and the board on an
open test platform both the chipset and CPU heatsink became very warm at full
load — between 45°C and 50°C according to our IR thermometer.
System Noise Level |
Chipset Fan Speed |
SPL @ 1m
|
SPL @ 0.5m
|
Off |
12 dBA |
15 dBA |
6V |
13 dBA |
16 dBA |
6V +
Yate Loon @ 5V |
13 dBA |
16 dBA |
12V |
21 dBA |
25 dBA |
The system, with the chipset fan turned off (not recommended — this was
done for reference only), the measured noise level at one meter was only 12
dBA. Our noise floor is only 11 dBA, so this is an excellent result. The stock
power supply unit is very quiet, even by our standards. The power supply fan
did not increase in speed when the system was stressed, so the idle noise level
was the same as during load.
13 dBA@1m was recorded with the chipset fan at 6V. Adding the Yate Loon 120mm
fan at 5V did not affect the measured SPL or our sound recordings. When the
chipset fan was cranked up to 12V, its default setting, the noise level increased
to 21 dBA@1m. This isn't bad at one meter distance, but at half a meter it was
quite loud. For a small PC like this, we assume it is more likely to be placed
on a desktop rather than underneath it, so the half-meter measurements are done
in addition to the usual one-meter readings to better represent what it sounds
like in the real world.
Impressively, the recorded noise level of 13 dBA@1m and 16 dBA@0.5m is only
1 dBA more than the recently reviewed mCubed
HFX Micro, which features a completely passive cooling system. The Micro
also happens to retail for 545 Euros (US$720). That's a lot of green for a barely
noticeable difference in noise.
THERMALS
Thermal testing was done with the chipset fan undervolted to 6V
— the lowest we were willing to go given the how hot the chipset heatsink
got to the touch on an open testing platform. The temperature readings given
by SpeedFan are somewhat difficult to decipher as they do not have proper labels
and Intel does not provide a hardware monitoring utility for their Atom boards.
Core 0-3 we can assume refer to the processor (dual core with hyperthreading
= four logical cores) while "Ambient" most likely correlates to system
temperature. "Remote 1," the remaining sensor with the largest differential
is probably the chipset temperature.
|
Temperature Comparison
|
|
Test State
|
Idle
|
Load
|
Load with Case Fan @ 5V
|
|
Ambient
|
32
|
37
|
30
|
|
Remote 1
|
47
|
68
|
59
|
|
Remote 2
|
42
|
52
|
45
|
|
HDD
|
30
|
35
|
29
|
|
Core 0 / 2
|
2
|
33
|
19
|
|
Core 1 / 3
|
8
|
32
|
14
|
|
Chipset fan set to 6V (80% using SpeedFan), full
CPU and GPU load applied (Prime95 + ATITool).
|
If our assumptions are correct, system temperature did not vary
greatly, though it was coolest with the Yate Loon fan exhausting air out the
right side panel. Without the added fan, chipset temperature increased 20°C
when the system was stressed. The additional airflow from the 120mm fan effectively
cut this increase in half. CPU temperatures were similarly affected. Given the
dramatic difference, we highly recommend a side fan — you can reduce the
noise level significantly and improve thermal performance at the same time.
| Help support this site, buy the Apex MI-008 TOWER BLACK P4 CHASSIS TWR W/250W ITX PSU+SATA POWER SUPPLY from one of our affiliate retailers! |
|
