AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Review

When settling on a high end air cooler that most people can afford, we really had no hesitation in shortlisting the Noctua NH D14 heatsink, which we affectionately have dubbed the “Austrian Sandwich”. This cooler has yet to be dethroned as the best heatsink on the market, and while some publications have been rather dismissive of this solution, we simply have yet to use a more formidable air cooler.

The only downside is the £70 asking price, but in this case it really is worth every penny. I can think of no better partner for an unlocked processor.

For our review today, we added an additional 14cm Noctua fan, settling on a 14cmx2 and 12cmx1 configuration – blowing air in tandem from right to left. This produces very little noise but creates massive levels of airflow, and even at 4.4ghz with 1.575 volts coursing through the processor, the heatsink remained cool to the touch. While the Antec Dark Fleet DF 85 has also received critical attacks due to its somewhat unusual appearance, it is one of the best airflow chassis on the market with 7 large (quiet) fans installed.

It is worth addressing the AMD temperature guidelines, because they state that a 62c thermal threshold should not be exceeded. We actually agree with them on this, and prefer to see the X6 or X4 processors hitting load at no more than 55c (especially when under extra voltage). AMD motherboards can be rather flaky when it comes to temperature readings so we placed a diode on the CPU to measure temperatures at various speeds and voltages.

Room temperature was held at 24c with air conditioning.

As expected the Noctua NH D14 delivers fantastic cooling levels, recording a maximum temperature of 53c at 4.4ghz.

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