facebook rss twitter

Review: TriGem KLOSS KL-I915A

by Ryszard Sommefeldt on 4 February 2005, 00:00

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Trigem

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qa64

Add to My Vault: x

Noise and Thermals

Noise

Noise wise, in Normal mode, the rough 2400rpm rotation speed of the CPU's fan means that KLOSS is pretty quiet in normal usage. The 80mm exhaust fan doesn't seem to rotate quickly either, limiting its volume. The pitch of both fans is unobtrusive meaning that your hard disk, especially in the case of the Raptor I used for testing, is going to make a bit more noise than the chassis cooling.

In silent mode with the processor frequency drop and the CPU fan's rotational speed dropping, the KLOSS then gets quieter still, falling into the realms of serious quietness. It's never totally silent - moving parts see to that - but to my old ears it gets quite close.

Thermals

Using ThrottleWatch to check CPU throttling while using the Turbo modes showed the cooling system limiting any kind of throttling at all settings. The 6.7% setting for Turbo mode gives 3830MHz from the 3.6GHz Prescott processor I used for testing and under load, temperatures were a reported 64°C but throttling was absent. Maybe it's the cold Sheffield air at this time of year, but I'd tentatively say that a 570J processor would be fine in the KLOSS, although my sensible side says limit it to the 3.6GHz model (which makes more financial sense anyway).