ThermalRight Ultra-90 LGA775 Cooler

Installation and Testing

To install this cooler, I applied a very small amount of Arctic Silver 5 to the top of the CPU, and spread it thinly and evenly across the top of the CPU prior to mounting the cooler.  Surprise, you do NOT have to remove the mainboard for this one as it uses the stock cooler mounting holes around the socket as does the OEM cooler.

I then placed the ThermalRight Ultra 90 on top of the CPU, and secured it firmly to the motherboard using the plastic clamps on the mounting bracket.  This provided a firm hold, and there was no movement after these were secured.

Because the ThermalRight Ultra-90 was packaged without a cooling fan  I'm going to test it without a fan as well as with an Akaka 90mm fan installed.  I placed the cooler so that the exhaust fan on my case is positioned directly behind it, so this should provide a little airflow over the fins to dissipate some heat.

Securing a fan to the ThermalRight Ultra 90 is a bit different than usual.  The Heatsink was packaged with two wire clamps to secure the Fan to the Sink.  These clamps secure to small holes in the fins, and are used to attach a fan to either side of the cooler.  This was a very easy procedure.  I didn't not even have to remove the cooler from the inside of my case to attach these after the original testing.  Although I thought this type of clamp would cause some trouble (such as rattling of the fans), it did not.  There was no additional motion, and the fan was held very securely.  It was quite a pleasant surprise.

  

Testing

As mentioned, I'm going to test the ThermalRight Ultra-90 with and without a cooling fan.  As a comparison, I'm also going to test it against the Thermaltake Blue Orb II. 

Each cooler will be installed.  The CPU will be brought to 100% utilization using Stanford's Folding @ Home Client for 20 minutes.  The first Load temperature reading will be taken.  The CPU will be allowed to idle for 10 minutes, and the Idle temperature will be taken after this time.  This will be repeated five times for each cooler.  The high and low readings will be discarded, and the remaining three averaged.

Test Bed

• AOpen i945Ga-PHS

• Intel Pentium 4 640 (3.2GHz)

• HIS Radeon X850XT

• 2x1GB Mushkin PC2-5400 DDR2 Enhanced Memory

• Western Digital 250GB 7200rpm SATA HDD

• Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 and all update

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Pg 1 - Introduction
Pg 2 - Components
Pg 3 - Installation and Testing
Pg 4 - Results and Conclusion