Frosty Acoustic Sampling Chamber:

The FrostyTech Acoustic Sampling Chamber is the newest addition to our box of heatsink testing tools. Since heatsinks and cooling fans have always gone hand in hand, we thought it was about time you were able to listen to the heatsinks in action!

To record the noise generated by a particular fan and heatsink combination, we use a special aluminum box lined with 2" of foam that is sealed from the outside environment during the recording process. The thick layer of foam helps to ensure that the sound we are recording is that which is generated by the particular cooler inside the enclosure. A standard computer powersupply is located outside the chamber to power the heatsinks' fan.

The monophonic microphone is positioned about 6" from the center of the test chamber out of the direct air flow path generated by the fan. A solid state digital recorder is used record the sound picked up by the non-directional mic inside the case. The digital recorder has a frequency range of approximately 500Hz to 3500Hz.

The purpose of the enclosure is to record an accurate representation of the noise generated by a heatsink and fan combo - separate from any other external computer noises like hard drives or powersupplies.

FrostyTech Synthetic Temperature Test Platform:

The FrostyTech Synthetic Temperature Test Platform consists of an aluminum block heated by a 120V 250 Ohm precision resistor producing 50W of heat. That heat is transmitted to the heatsink via the aluminum block and up through special copper die templates with thermistors embedded directly in them.

A temperature reading for a particular heatsink is taken once the temperature stabilizes in the copper die template. Since each of the die templates have the approximate surface area of either a silicon topped or heatspreader-topped processor the flow of heat to the base of the heatsink accurately mimics a real life configuration.

Shown with the copper die template for a silicon-topped processor, the synthetic heatsink test apparatus awaits a coating of silver-based thermal compound and the Thermalright SK6 heatsink. A slightly larger copper die template was used to test the effective cooling ability of the SK6 atop a heatspreader-based processor like an overclocked PGA Celeron processor.