Performance
Test setup and Testing Methodology
The system used for testing is listed in the table below. Ambient temperatures were kept at 24 degrees Celsius +/- 1 degree. The thermal paste used was Noctua’s NT-H1 (for testing consistency). For the overclocked results I upped the voltage to 1.25v and attained a clock speed of 4.2GHz. The cool and quite mode was disabled to prevent the CPU idling at lower voltages to attain accurate temperatures at idle. The fan speed was set to Full. The idle temperatures were recorded after 10 minutes of idle and max temperatures were recorded after a 5 minute torture test using Adia 64 System Stability Test and recording the CPU value.
Now we get to the good stuff the results. I apologize for my cooling catalogue being rather slim, but as more coolers come in we will continue to grow this list. As you can see in the graph below we have the Idle temps for the MasterLiquid Pro 280. This chip hovers at a cool 20 degrees Celsius. Keeping pace with the larger Triton 280.
Alright LOAD temps! The ones that really matter. The MasterLiquid Pro 280 faired pretty well coming in at 48 degrees Celsius. Only time will tell where this cooler will rank in future tests but I am pretty confidant it will compete with the best of them as the cooler manages to pace the larger Triton within 2 degrees.
Noise can be a important factor for some. If we have a open case design and the fans might be exposed, we do not want record setting noise coming from our cooler. This not the case with the MasterLiquid Pro 280. As you can see in the graph below the fans at full speed hit 38 dBs. Just to note, the actually hearable noise from the fans are not distracting at all.
Now lets move on to the Conclusion and Verdict!
