Benchmarks: overclocked
These high-end coolers make more sense when you're running an overclocked CPU, so how do they fare when we speed things up a little?
To find out, we feed 1.35V to our Core i7 980X processor and raise the core clock speed by 25 per cent to 4.15GHz.
The extra voltage is frankly no cause for concern when idle. Interesting to note that the Antec Kuhler 920 and Corsair Hydro H80 have delivered near-identical performance thus far.
Crank up the load on an overclocked chip and the Hydro H100 manages to pull ahead. An actual CPU temperature of close to 60ºC after 30 minutes of Prime95 at 4.15GHz is mighty impressive, and with the increase in liquid temperature causing fan speed to ramp up dynamically, the cooler also scores well in Quiet mode.
There's once again little to separate Corsair's Hydro H80 and Antec's Kuhler 920 - they're both vying for the runner-up spot, and with this amount of load applied to an overclocked chip, both struggle to keep up when operating in their respective low-speed modes.
The Hydro H100 is the stand-out choice in terms of cooling performance, but does it sacrifice noise levels in order to achieve these results?
