800D Cooling with Noctua - Results

ethos · 14 Sep 2011 at 19:35

I decided to invest and upgrade the standing cooling in the 800D, so purchased 2 x NF-P14s and 1x NF-P12 for the Corsair A50 cooler.

I've performed two simple and not particularly scientific tests on the following hardware: i7-2600k @ 4.6GHz and ATI 5970.

First off, here's a picture of the fans installed- all of them running at maximum speed.

The test

20 minutes of Prime95 over all cores and furmark burn-in test.

GPU and CPU Idle - Before Upgrade

GPU and CPU Idle - After Upgrade

GPU and CPU Loaded - Before Upgrade

GPU and CPU Loaded - After Upgrade

Conclusion

As you can see very little change in cooling performance over stock. I don't have anyway to measure the noise difference but if I had to guess I'd say it was the same if not slightly louder.

In the picture you'll see I've added a second 140mm fan in the bottom chamber (after I had performed the tests above). I can confirm with my setup this additional fan makes no difference... I've seen people commenting on drops of up to 10c but I simply haven't seen this.

Money well spent

shamzzz · 14 Sep 2011 at 20:25

maybe its worth putting another fan on the A50, assuming there is a way to fit it

ethos · 14 Sep 2011 at 21:23

shamzzz said:
maybe its worth putting another fan on the A50, assuming there is a way to fit it

I don't think you can, you need the A70 for that. I'm not actually that concerned with the temperatures, but it would have been nice to reduce the temps if possible.

Guessing the lack of reduction in temperatures is also down to the 800D being so large.

Another thing I *may* try is turning the heatsink around and having the rear fan blow onto it, instead of extracting out of the case.

...but I'll probably just run as is for a while now.

PhilipPalmer85 · 1 Oct 2011 at 16:19

ethos said:
I don't think you can, you need the A70 for that. I'm not actually that concerned with the temperatures, but it would have been nice to reduce the temps if possible.

Guessing the lack of reduction in temperatures is also down to the 800D being so large.

Another thing I *may* try is turning the heatsink around and having the rear fan blow onto it, instead of extracting out of the case.

...but I'll probably just run as is for a while now.

Hey, did you reverse your rear fan? Any improvement?
Would you recommend the 800d? Any concerns over cooling on air?