Sapphire rethinks the CPU cooler – the Vapor-X
The Test
We have been living with the Vapor-X inside our case for over a week and we like it for all of our general needs including CPU overclocking. The last time we ran a comparison, we got our Core i7 3770K to 4.9GHz stably under water with the Thermaltake Water2.0 Pro and also with our Noctua NH-DH14; although with the Noctua, it was running much hotter than we liked. The Thermaltake Water 2.0 Performer was able to manage 4.8GHz. All of these were extra-ordinarly good overclocks for Ivy Bridge, considering the capabilities of the respective coolers and their higher manufacturer recommended pricing than the Vapor-X.
Now we are going to set up our Sapphire Vapor-X CPU cooler. Let’s take a look at our setup:
The Setup and the Test
Test Configuration
- Intel Core i7-3770K at stock (3.6GHz) overclocked to 4.5GHz, 4.6GHz, 4.7GHz, and at 4.8GHz – Turbo is on.
- EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard (latest beta BIOS, USB 3.0/PCIe 3.0 specification; CrossFire or SLI 16x + 16x using PLEX chip, supplied by EVGA).
- 8 GB Kingston DDR3-PC1866 RAM at 1866MHz (4×2 GB in dual-channel; supplied by Kingston)
- Nvidia GTX 680, 2GB, reference clocks, supplied by Nvidia
- 240 GB OWC Mercury EXTREME 6G SSD, on loan from OWC
- ToughPowerXT 775 W power supply (supplied by Thermaltake)
- Sapphire Vapor-X Universal CPU Cooler, on loan from Sapphire
- Overseer RX-I full-tower case (supplied by Thermaltake)
Test Configuration – Software
- GeForce WHQL 306.97 Driver; high quality filtering
- Windows Vista 64-bit SP1; very latest updates
- DirectX latest.
- All games are patched to their latest versions.
- Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
- Vista 64, all DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths
- OCCT 4.1
The Test
The Sapphire Vapor-X CPU cooler
We installed the Vapor-X cooler and we checked our temps before starting OCCT. It does fine at idle.
And it also offers great cooling at max load.
Now we raise the clocks to 4.5GHz and watch the temps climb under full load. 
Not bad. Pass.
Now we raise the clocks to 4.6GHz and again run OCCT. 
Good. Pass.
No problems at idle at 4.7GHz and now we load up all of our cores.
The Vapor-X cannot keep the 4.7GHz overclock although it lasts quite awhile with all cores fully loaded by OCCT. We were also conservative using OCCT in that we set our max upper temp at 100c in the settings although the upper limit when the CPU throttles is actually 105C.
Under gaming, however, 4.7GHz as an overclock for our i7-3770K is quite doable with the Vapor-X. 95C is the very hottest temperature that we recorded after one of our benching sessions (including running synthetic benches like Vantage). Running our Core i7-3770K at 4.7GHz is pretty good for a 200W 4-heatpipe cooler! Under full load, the Sapphire’s dual fans never became irritating although they became more noticeable over the background noise in a quiet room.
Let’s head for our conclusion
