Performance

Testing will consist of running the fan at its maximum RPM and at its minimum. Also the thermal probe will be tested for both temp and RPM's Temperatures will be taken at idle 15 min after a fresh boot. Load temperatures will be taken after 30 minutes of Running Folding@Home. Temperatures will be taken with Motherboard Monitor 5.2.0.0. Room temperature was maintained at a steady 74F for testing. System specs are as follows...

• AMD XP 1600+ AROIA-Y
• Epox 8K3A+
• 512 Megs of Samsung Pc2700
• Western Digtial SE 120 Gig
• ATI Radeon 8500
• Hercules GTXP
• Arctic Alumina thermal compound

As most probably know, but for those of you who don't, the 8K3A+ reads the temps of the AMD XP's from the internal thermistor on the CPU itself and not the socket thermistor. Because of this the temps may seem a little on the high side. But its nothing to worry about. It is a more accurate way to read the temps than by reading from behind the chip as done on most pre-kt333 boards.

As you can see the Volcano 9 definately performs very well. Now with the fan running at 1300 RPM's its not the greatest and I doubt most will run a heavily overclocked chip with the fan at that setting so to me thats not a big deal. However I found that turning the fan down to about 3500 rpm's made it very quiet and it still had pretty good performance. And also if you need an extra boost you can just turn it back up. The temp probe also was pretty affective as well, even being placed in the fins at the bottom of the heatsink it seemed to do its job.

Overall I felt that the Volcano 9 did a very good job. The 3 pin to 4 pin adapt with the rpm sensor on it is really nice! The fan is very cool to say the least. With a rheostat to adjust the speed of the fan manually or the temp probe so that it adjusts itself when needed definately gives the Volcano 9 some superiority over other heatsinks in its class.

However, there were some things I wasn't pleased with. The installation of this cooler is not easy at all. Because of the width of the actual heatsink it was really hard getting the clips all locked down. And also because the Epox 8K3A+ has that row of capacitors too close to the socket those were in my way when trying to get this installed. It took me 15 minutes and about a 6 different approaches but I finally was able to get it on. Seems that with a heatsink this wide a different clip style is really needed. Or in the area of the heatsink that the clip is located. It needs to be notched out so there is more room to work with the clip.

Thanks goes out to Thermaltake for giving us the opportunity to review this cooler!

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