When settling on a high end air cooler that most people can afford, we really had no hesitation in shortlisting the Noctua NH D14 heatsink, which we affectionately have dubbed the “Austrian Sandwich”. This cooler has yet to be dethroned as the best heatsink on the market, and while some publications have been rather dismissive of this solution, we simply have yet to use a more formidable air cooler.
The only downside is the £70 asking price, but in this case it really is worth every penny. I can think of no better partner for an unlocked processor.
For our review today, we added an additional 14cm Noctua fan, settling on a 14cmx2 and 12cmx1 configuration – blowing air in tandem from right to left. This produces very little noise but creates massive levels of airflow, and even at 4.4ghz with 1.6 volts coursing through the processor, the heatsink remained cool to the touch. While the Antec Dark Fleet DF 85 has also received critical attacks due to its somewhat unusual appearance, it is one of the best airflow chassis on the market with 7 large (quiet) fans installed.
It is worth addressing the AMD temperature guidelines, because they state that a 62c thermal threshold should not be exceeded. We actually agree with them on this, and prefer to see the 6 core X6 processors hitting load at no more than 55c. AMD motherboards can be rather flaky when it comes to temperature readings so we placed a diode on our 1100T to measure temperatures at various speeds and voltages.
Room temperature was held at 25c with air conditioning.
As you can see, our faith in the epic Noctua NH D14 is well placed. Even under extended load with 1.57 volts pumping through the chip, the 1100T remained under 50c. Excellent results and safe, long term temperatures for a 1ghz overclock on a 6 core cpu.
bloody hell, nice overclock man. that is a cracker processor.
Love the cinema4d information, i use an older quad core for rendering a lot and this seems like my next upgrade. price point is better than I thought. I remember the 1090t was 250 when it came out.
Like the idea of a review/OC guide. I never know how the fuck to overclock my chips. the 1055T guide you did helped me alot.
Id love to say ill get this for my upgrade, but its a bad time of the year, maybe in the new year.
Love it. well done.
Nice overclock. I only managed to get 500mhz out of my 1055T which was pretty poor. Good to get your views on voltage also, not many ocing guidelines on that and hard to know from forums who is talking out of their ass and who is right.
OCUK are selling this for £225 inc vat? thats a deal and a half, just ordered one.
Ive been holding off on a new platform for ages. Im a multiple core fan, I bought the first core quad eons ago and havent upgraded since. Might look into this in the new year when I have some spare cash to burn.
I agree this is one of the best looking AMD chips yet, the overclocking potential seems high. that noctua NH D14 cooler is insane however, covers the motherboard basically !! not exactly easy to work around it.
unusual review style, but I like the overclocking guide concept. My friend used the 1055T guide here months ago and it helped him. headroom seems higher on this chip, but I think it might be a hand picked review sample? possible ?
If you arent overclocking then its not worth the premium over the 1090t. pointless really. I hope this review sample is a good indication of headroom. I watercool and I got the 1090T to 4.3ghz easy enough with 1.65 volts. potential for 4.5ghz here.
I like this editorial. its a boring release so getting the max from air cooling is a nice way to differentiate the test results. Seems to be a good purchase, but its hard to fault for the price. its a strength of AMD’s releases in the last year. aim for the lowest point possible and max the cores.