System setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.- Zalman TNN 500A / Poweroid 5336 fanless PC. Specs on previous page.
- HEXUS FX-51 system, comprising of:
- AMD Athlon FX-51 CPU
- ASUS SK8V S940 VIA K8T800 motherboard
- 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3500R registered ECC memory, run at 2-3-2-6 timings
- ASUS Radeon 9800 XT 256MB video card
- 160GB Western Digital 160JB hard drive
Software
- Windows XP Professional
No problems to report during testing. The only problem, insofar as it can be legitimately called a problem and not a feature, is knowing whether the system is operational or not. For example, I thought I had switched it off. I only found out, hours later, that I hadn't, and only from seeing the keyboard's light on. Stupidly quiet comes to mind.
The difficult issue of performance comparison comes to mind. The Zalman / Poweroid combination would beat out any regular OEM PC in sound tests. That's absolutely not an issue. We've decided to compare it against a premier air-cooled setup. An AMD Athlon 64 FX-51-based machine will undoubtedly be faster. We're attempting to see just how far behind Zalman's effort is behind almost the best that money can currently buy. Of course, we wouldn't be surprised to see an FX-53-based Zalman system available shortly.
Overclocking
The use of a VIA K8T800 motherboard
(non-Pro) doesn't bode well for overclocking. However, having said that, we
managed a solid, overclocked speed of 2150MHz (215MHz driven clock).
Overclocking in silence. That'll be the day!. This day.
