One thing about being a reviewer is that you get lots of stuff, especially CPU Coolers, so I've got quite a few of them on hand and thought I'd compare them all together. This isn't just a comparison of results from a bunch of reviews, this is all new testing done with these coolers specifically for this article.

You might be wondering why I titled it 'CPU Cooler Roundup on C2D' well that's because I've recently got a C2Q and I am in process of re-doing all of these same tests on my Core2Quad CPU as well to see which of these 12 coolers can handle a Quad core.

Where applicable I've even tested these coolers without fans to see just how well they perform as truly silent cooling solutions. Since this isn't a 'official' review it will be broken down differently than others I've done in the past, this will be divided into sections. Inside you'll find sections with the coolers using the fan connected to a Molex, meaning running at full speed, connected to the CPU header, PWM controlled if applicable and of course a section just for coolers without their fans.

To make it all even, I've used Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound on all of the coolers, Arctic Cooling was kind enough to send me several tubes of their new MX-2 thermal compound to be used as I saw fit, and this fit the bill perfectly.

Of course you won't find every cooler out there in here, but I've got Scythe, Thermalright, JetArt, Noctua, Coolink, Zalman, GlacialTech, OCZ and even the Intel Stock Cooler included for good measure, so it's a nice sampling of various types of coolers available today. So let's jump into this now and see what's going on with these coolers...

-Edit - This is updated as of July 2nd/3rd and will be updated periodically as more coolers come in for review.

as of now, included in the charts are coolers from Thermalright, Scythe, Zalman, Kingwin, Thermolab, Coolink, Jetart, Glacialtech, Arctic Cooling, OCZ and Noctua

CPU Cooler Roundup on C2D – 20 Compared, who's the best?

Author: Kristofer Brozio

Sponsor: DragonSteelMods and Arctic Cooling

Test System Specs, Testing Procedures, and Basic Info:

All testing was done in a controlled room temperature environment that was always at approximately 20C with a +/- .3 degree variation.

All testing was done using the Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal compound, after every test the CPU/Coolers were cleaned with Arctic Silver ArctiClean to insure proper testing and good thermal conductivity.

Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound

Turbo MX-2 is a high conductive and low resistance compound for components that require the best thermal dissipation. MX-2 is ideally suited for use in CPU, GPU cooling and other applications between power semiconductor components and heat sinks where high thermal conductivity is critical.

Review Link HERE

Product Page HERE

My test setup consists of:

Intel C2D E6420 CPU running at 2.13Ghz

(-no overclocking was done for testing)

Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R LGA775 Intel G33 Bear Lake mATX Motherboard

2gigs of Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2-8500 Ram

Connect3d X1800GTO Video Card

-With Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 VGA Cooler and Turbo Module

1x Hard drive

1x DVD/RW Drive

Ultra X3 800Watt Power Supply

all housed inside of a Thermaltake Matrix VX PC Case with two 120mm cooling fans (1 intake/1 exhaust)

I used CoreTemp v.96 to get the temperature readings, I enabled the logging feature and averaged out the temperatures to get the results that you will see in the charts on the following pages.

To achieve load on the CPU I used Orthos Stress Prime, I basically turned it on and let it run for 3 hours at a time, this was done over several days to insure accurate results.

To get the idle temps I turned the system on and let it sit running nothing but the Windows XP processes for an hour, this was done over several days as well to insure accurate results.