Thermaltake’s Frio & Frio OCK can take the heat!
The Test
We have been living with the Frio OCK inside our case for many weeks and we love it for all of our needs including extreme CPU overclocking. The last time we ran a comparison, we got our Core i7 920 to 3.5 GHz on the stock Intel cooler. However, the temperatures were excessively high – well over 80C in games and thermal protection would throttle the CPU speed if we tried running Vantage or any synthetic test like OCCT that stress the CPU. We would say that relatively safe temperatures can be achieved at 3.2 GHz with the stock Intel cooler. In contrast, we managed to get our Core i7 to 3.5 GHz with Hyper 212 Plus rather safely. Unfortunately, at 3.8 GHz we could run games but with either Vantage or OCCT, we would throttle our Core i7-920 and once we saw 99C (which is shockingly high) with the Hyper 212 – even with two 120mm fans in push-pull.
So, the stock Intel cooler runs out of safety margin at about 3.2 GHz and our Hyper N212+ quits between 3.5-3.8GHz. In contrast, our Noctua NH-U12P SE 2 cooler handled both of these speeds with temperatures maxing out in the low-60s Centigrade. So we went for a much more extreme overclock on our Core i7, this time raising our voltage +.2V; somewhat dangerous to its chances of its having a long life but definitely raising the i7-920’s core temperatures for our tests. This time, we managed to remain stable all the way to 3.8GHz for 24/7 use and we could even run benches at 4.0GHz.
Now we are going to set up our Frio and Fruio OCK CPU coolers. Let’s take a look at our setup:
The Setup and the Test
Test Configuration
- Intel Core i7-920 (stock, 2.66GHz) overclocked to 3.8GHz, 4.0GHz and at 4.2GHz
- Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R (latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire or SLI 16x + 16x).
- 6 GB Kingston DDR3-PC1800 RAM at 1200MHz (3×2 GB in tri-channel; 2×2 GB supplied by Kingston)
- AMD HD 6970, 2GB, reference clocks, supplied by AMD
- 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.2 hard drive
- ToughPowerXT 775 W power supply (supplied by Thermaltake)
- Thermaltake Frio OCK Universal Cooler (supplied by Thermaltake)
- Thermaltake Frio Universal Cooler (supplied by Thermaltake)
- Noctua NH-U12P SE 2 Universal CPU cooler (supplied by Noctua)
- Element G oversize mid-tower case (supplied by Thermaltake)
Test Configuration – Software
- Catalyst WHQL 12.2 Driver; high quality filtering and optimizations off
- 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
We evaluated the Noctua NH-U12P SE 2 CPU cooler over two years ago. It uses four heatpipes and was able to keep our Core i7-920 cool at 3.8GHz for 24/7 use. The issues arose when we tried to turn turbo on for 4.0GHz. Idle temps are fine.
As you can see temps rise quickly and we saw over 85C.
And we have a shutdown at 4.0GHz
As you can see, the Noctua CPU cooler is fine for 3.8GHz but runs into thermal issues at 4.0GHz. Let’s install the the Thermaltake Frio.
The Frio CPU cooler
Next we installed the Thermaltake Frio and we checked our temps before starting OCCT. The Frio also does fine at idle.
Now we raise the clocks to 4.0GHz and watch the temps again climb.
Sadly, the Frio cannot keep the 4.0GHz overclock although it lasts longer in the test than the Noctua cooler and is a couple of degrees cooler. It is also perfectly fine for 3.8GHz and will also play games at 4.0GHz.
We were pretty convinced that we would not get 4.0GHz stable without accepting dangerous full-load temperatures in some applications. Our last chance for this evaluation is the Frio OCK. Will it’s 6-heatpipe design allow us to reach 4.0GHz? Higher?
The Thermaltake Frio OCK
As usual, we begin testing and to our amazement, 4.0GHz is a breeze! Temperatures definitely get warm, however, this is a synthetic test and you will never see all 4 cores loaded 100% for ten minutes in any real world situation. It looks like temperatures peaked at 79C.
So, we upped the ante and turned on Turbo to give us the 21x Multiplier and 4.2GHz. First up, the idle temps seem fine. So we begin the test. Here is the report after more than ten minutes – and it can be continued indefinitely.
Looking at the graph, 81C appears to be the peak temperature. Very warm but not extreme for real world testing where the temperatures never get over 70sC under the most extreme gaming.
The Frio OCK is an amazing cooler as these temperatures were not even run with its fans rpm at maximum. The OCK’s maximum speed is far too irritating and so we backed it off down to tolerable; to about 85% of the maximum.
Let’s head for our conclusion
