Well that is impressive. Might be worth playing around with. I try to keep my PC as quiet as possible so my inlet and exhaust 120mm are actually set to low speed and the side 80mm port is also set to low. I can gain a few degC by setting them to high but I would rather run a little hotter with low noise than a few degrees cooler in a wind tunnel. I am constantly balancing acoustic noise with temps. With that said maybe I can just leave the existing 92mm fan on the inlet to the Arctic Freezer and just add another fan on the exhaust side and see where that takes me.
Thanks for the insight.
David
So I installed the Antec Tricool 92 mm on the back side of the Arctic Freezer 64 Pro last night and it does indeed make a difference. All temps are based on running Prime95 on both cores until stability achieved (usually about 4 or 5 cycles). The case is an Antec SLK3800 with one inlet 120mm fan, 1 exhaust 120mm fan and a side port 80mm fan. CPU and motherboad temp measured by Speedfan. Variable on the CPU fan means that the motherboard varies it from low speed until 52degC at which point it transitions to high (called QFan in the ASUS BIOS). Acoustic noise was measured about 1m from the front of the system.
Conclusions
1) Push-Pull configuration on the Arctic Freezer 64 Pro gains 5degC on CPU Load temp.
2) With just Antec Tricool 92mm in pull config (ACFP64 fan off) gains 2degC on CPU Load temp.
3) All fans on high increases acoustic noise by 10dB (huge) but only benefits CPU temp by 2degC.
I am therefore happy to just run with the push-pull fans on the Freezer 64 Pro and all fans on low speed. System is very quiet and CPU temp at 54degC is OK with me. Some may call that too high but system is 100% Prime95 stable and I only have $40 invested in the heatsink. I would recommend that the $8 investment in the extra 92mm fan might be a good choice for those of you with this heatsink wanting to gain some cheap degrees in CPU temps.
On a side note I discovered a great way to attach the pull fan on the heatsink. I basically had 4 metal roofing screws with built in rubber washer and screwed these through the 4 mounting holes on the fan. I installed 4 of the rubber bushings off the Antec hard drive mounts where the screws came through. I then just pushed the fan onto the heatsink allowing the threaded screws to line up between the slats of the heat sink. The mount is quite firm and the rubber seems to prevent any rattle or buzz transfer to the heatsink. I took some photos with my cell camera and may post them once I get a chance to download them.
Cheers
David
