Akasa Venom Voodoo Cooler Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and unboxing3. Akasa Venom Voodoo4. Installation5. Testing methodology and performance6. Acoustic Performance7. Closing thoughts8. View All Pages

Today we are going to test the Akasa Venom Voodoo with the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition CPU. The AMD PII X6 1090T Black Edition ships at 3.2ghz but can hit 4.0 GHz (and above) when paired with the right cooling system.

We like to try and mirror ‘realistic’ conditions when possible, so instead of the ‘open bench concept’, we are mounting the build inside the NZXT Switch 810.

Room ambient temperatures were maintained at a steady 20c throughout testing.

AMD System:

Processor: AMD PII X6 1090T Black Edition
Coolers: Akasa Venom Voodoo, NZXT Havik 120
Motherboard: MSI 990FXA-GD80
Thermal Paste: Arctic MX-4
Power Supply: Corsair HX 850W
Chassis: NZXT Switch 810
Memory: 16GB Mushkin Enhanced Silverline Stiletto DDR3 1333mhz Cas 9-9-9-24- 1T
Graphics Card: Sapphire 6950 2 GB (1536 unified shaders)

There are several different applications available that will load a processor to the limit while running through a series of complicated calculations. For today’s testing we are going to use the latest version of Prime 95.

Prime95 is a popular freeware application that can be used to stress test the CPU.

Validation Link

When testing at stock speed the Venom Voodoo does a fine job cooling our Phenom II X6 1090T keeping our maximum temperature below 50c with the fans running just over 50% or 1000 RPM. After increasing the fans to full speed they become rather annoying but do manage to take another 2c off the Prime 95 test results.

Now we are running at 4.0 GHz. The Akasa Venom Voodoo survives at 4.0 GHz but the temperatures are getting to the point that I would not be comfortable with for long periods of time. With fans @ 1000 RPM the CPU peaked at 61c and with the fans @ 100% we still reached 59c. While this is not immediately going to cause our system to fail we would prefer lower temperatures under load.

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