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Home » Corsair H45 CPU Cooler Review

How We Tested

Contents

We tested the cooler with a Core i7-6950X CPU (ten-core, 3.0 GHz), which is a socket LGA21011-v3 processor with a 140 W TDP (Thermal Design Power). In order to get even higher thermal dissipation, we overclocked it to 3.8 GHz (100 MHz base clock and x38 multiplier), with standard core voltage (Vcore).
We measured noise and temperature with the CPU under full load. In order to get 100% CPU usage in all cores, we ran Prime 95 25.11 with the “In-place Large FFTs” option. (In this version, the software uses all available threads.)
We compared the tested cooler to other cooling systems we had at the time. We tested each cooler with the fans controlled automatically by the motherboard.
Room temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermometer. The core temperature was read with the SpeedFan program (available from the CPU thermal sensors), using an arithmetic average of the core temperature readings.
The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed near the top of the case. This measurement is only for comparison purposes, because a precise SPL measurement needs to be made inside an acoustically insulated room with no other noise sources, which is not the case here.
Hardware configuration

Operating System Configuration

  • Windows 10 Home 64 bit

Software Used

Error Margin
We adopted a 2°C error margin, meaning temperature differences below 2°C are considered irrelevant.