Evercool Buffalo HPFI CPU Cooler Conclusion

Test Setup

• Motherboard: Asus P5GC-MX/133
• CPU: Intel Core 2 E2200 2.2Ghz processor
• Memory: 1GB PC6400 DDR2
• Hard Drive: 80GB SATA
• CPU Cooler: Evercool Buffalo HPFI-10025
• Power Supply: 400Watt PSU

Seriously, you can't get more bargain basement than this setup. There's a dual purpose in a setup like this. First, since it doesn't cost a lot of money, if you do burn the processor, you're not going to lay in bed crying about it for days. Second, for general home use, this system does most everything you would want to do. It's not a gamer's PC, but it does the trick for media, internet, and some gaming. With this in mind, we quickly got to work building it out, and heating it up.

Performance

For this review we started with the Retail box Heatsink and took measurements at each step of overclocking to get a base benchmark to compare to. We set the base multiplier at 10x and stepped up the bus speed in increments of 10. Starting with a speed of 220 (e.g. 220x10=2.2ghz) and stepping until the resting temperature was above 35c. At each step we booted into Windows XP, and ran Rightmark to monitor temperatures and clock speeds. To keep the clock up we also ran CPUFree to test the processors performance at each speed. The results are shown below.

As you can see the Buffalo kept the temperature at or below 35 in all situations. I would have tested higher because the E2200 should be able to handle temperatures up to 70 degrees, but at 2.6Ghz the processor became unstable. It failed booting windows with a “Blue Screen Of Death” twice in a row even thought the temperature on the processor was only 30. I am attributing this to a lack of better cooling on the Northside controller, and the onboard video.

Remember that in this review we were only looking for increase in processor speed, but there is only so far you can go without properly cooling all of the heat generating pieces on your motherboard. I've seen many a dead motherboard where they overclocked their CPU by 20%, checked their CPUcore temperature, and then started playing World Of Warcraft on an onboard video controller. These have at best a small heatsink with no fan, and will die very quickly in an overclocked environment. This is why we stayed at a processor temperature of less than 35 degrees for this review.

Evercool Buffalo HPFI CPU Cooler

Overall the Buffalo HPFI-10025 comes in with fairly impressive numbers when compared to it's relatively low price point. While it's not going to floor your processor temperature like an expensive liquid cooling system or an expensive, high-end CPU cooler - it definitely will give you those few extra MHz you've been looking to get, It would also make a great investment to protect that expensive CPU you just spent your last few months of savings on.

Pros:

• Inexpensive
• Effective cooling
• Nice looks
• Whisper quiet

Cons:

• Not Direct Touch Heatpipe
• No shroud to direct air out the back fan vent

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

www.evercool.com