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Gigabyte G-Power 2 Pro |
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Performance
The system being used to test the heatsink is as follows:| CPU: | Intel E6850 Core2 Duo |
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| Clock speed: | 9 x 333 MHz = 3.0 GHz, Memory at DDR2-667 |
| Motherboard: | Asus P5W DH Deluxe |
| Memory: | 2 x 1GB G.Skill F2-6400PHU1-2GBHZ |
| Video Card: | Sapphire HD 2900XT PCI-e |
| Harddisk: | 4 x 250 GB Seagate 7200.10 in Matrix Raid 0/5 |
| Power Supply: | ThermalTake ToughPower 750W |
| Case: | Lian Li PC-A10B |
| Software: | Windows XP Pro SP2, Catalyst 7.10 |
At stock speeds the G-Power 2 Pro does very well at both 12V and 5V, only being beaten out by the Zerotherm Nirvana 120 Premium.
When the CPU is overclocked and the voltage is increased, the G-Power 2 Pro has a little harder time keeping up. This is probably due to the fact that the heatpipes are are single-sided, which tend to not perform as well as dual-sided heatpipes. Still the performance is decent, and it is only 4 degrees behind the leaders.
Fan Noise
To measure fan noise we used an IEC Type 2 sound level meter on the dBA setting. Measuring distance was 10 cm from the heatsink fan hub. The short distance of 10 cm is necessary to get proper readings with very silent fans. All fans were tested outside of the case at 12V supplied by a lab PSU. On fans that come with a fan controller or allow control of fan speed in any other way, "low" and "high" indicate the settings on the fan controller.
When the fan is run at full speed it is rather loud. Fortunately, Gigabyte has included a power adapter that allows the fan to run at 5V, which quiets the fan down considerably. In fact, at 5V the fan was the quietest so far in the test group. Since most motherboards are capable of supplying the full 12V to the CPU fan, it would have made more sense to allow the power adapter to supply 7V instead of the 12V. This would allow one more option for power users to get the right balance between performance and noise.
