Thermal Performance

Test System

Test Methodology

A Xylem D5 pump, Aquaero 6 XT controller, and an EK-Quantum Surface X360M radiator with Phanteks T30-120 fans help complete the loop. The GPU is not placed in the loop to make the only source of heat the CPU, thus limiting testing to the CPU block itself. Average flow rate is set to 1 GPM and calibrated in-line temperature sensors are used to measure the coolant's temperature. Everything required is placed inside an environmental chamber with the ambient temperature set to 25 °C. Thermal paste cure time is taken into account, and three separate mounts/runs are done for statistical accuracy, and to remove chances of any mounting-related anomalies. For each run, a custom Prime95 test with small FFTs and AVX2 load is used, looping for 30 minutes, and CPU core temperatures are measured using AIDA64 with the average core temperature recorded at the end of each run. A delta T of CPU core and loop temperature is thus calculated for each run, with an average delta T that is then obtained across all three runs. This way, the cooling solution is taken out of the picture.

Test Results

Note that metal top blocks, such as this very Alphacool Core 1 with its full brass top and housing, tend to perform slightly better than the non-metal top blocks in my environmental chamber with active ventilation, owing to more uniform and efficient heat distribution. There are some blocks here which are socket-specific, and others such as this one under review offer more compatibility, but also mean they are not necessarily designed to specifically perform as best as possible on the Intel LGA 1700 socket. These two factors add to the rest of the puzzle including the installation mechanism that offers a higher clamping force onto the CPU IHS, and how well of a fit is achieved with uniform mounting pressure across the entirety of the CPU. Alphacool was marketing significant improvements over the competition in its internal testing, which I am sure happened there, but ultimately things were still close enough to the rest of the field in my testing. That said, I will give Alphacool props for coming out with a block that is the current chart leader and did that reproducibly across the multiple tests done.