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[nextpage title=”Introduction”]

Today we are testing the Deepcool Ice Blade Pro CPU cooler, which has a tower heatsink, four 8-mm heatpipes, and one 120 mm fan. Check it out!

The Ice Blade Pro box has a transparent window that shows part of the cooler heatsink, as you can see in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Box

In Figure 2, you can see the cooler heatsink and the accessories that come with it: fan, manual, installation hardware, and a tube of thermal compound. Although only one fan is supplied, the Ice Blade Pro supports two fans and comes with all the hardware needed to install a second one, including anti-vibration rubber pads.

Figure 2: Accessories

In Figure 3, you can see the heatsink of the Ice Blade Pro.

Figure 3: The Deepcool Ice Blade Pro heatsink

In the next pages, you will see this cooler in detail.

[nextpage title=”The Deepcool Ice Blade Pro”]

In Figure 4, you see the front of the heatsink. The design is the same we are used to see in a lot of good coolers, with U-shaped 8 mm heatpipes and aluminum fins.

Figure 4: Front view

In Figure 5, you see the side of the heatsink, as well as the four nickel-plated copper heatpipes.

Figure 5: Side view

In Figure 6, you can check the top of the cooler. The tips of the heatpipes are covered by the top fin.

Figure 6: Top view

[nextpage title=”The Deepcool Ice Blade Pro (Cont’d)”]

In Figure 7, you can see the base of the cooler. The heatpipes make direct contact with the CPU, but the surface doesn’t have a mirror-like finishing.

Figure 7: Base

In Figure 9, you can see the fan. It has blue LEDs, giving a nice looks when it is working. The connector is a four-pin one, so the fan supports PWM automatic speed control. There are also four rubber pads preinstalled on the fan to absorb vibrations.

Figure 8: Fan

In Figure 9, you can see the clips and backplate used to install the cooler. A pity that the backplate seen at the right low corner of the photo is only compatible with AMD processors and Intel socket LGA775 CPUs: when installing this cooler on a socket LGA1156 or socket LGA1366 CPU, no backplate is used, which may cause the motherboard to bend.

Figure 9: Clips

[nextpage title=”Installation”]

In order to install the Ice Blade Pro on our socket LGA1156 processor, we needed to install two supporting pieces first, shown in Figure 10. These pieces are screwed in four independent nuts at the solder side of the motherboard.

Figure 10: Supporting pieces installed

After that, the heatsink is set in place by putting an H-shape clip over the cooler base and fastening it to the pieces we installed before. This step is not as easy as it sounds, since the clip is not screwed to the base of the cooler, so all things are kept in place only after all the screws are fastened.

Figure 11: The heatsink installed

After that, attach the fan to the heatsink and connect it to the motherboard.

Figure 12: The Ice Blade Pro installed in our case

[nextpage title=”How We Tested”]

We tested the cooler with a Core i7-860 CPU (quad-core, 2.8 GHz), which is a socket LGA1156 processor with a 95 W TDP (Thermal Design Power). In order to get higher thermal dissipation, we overclocked it to 3.3 GHz (150 MHz base clock and 22x multiplier), keeping the standard core voltage (Vcore), which was the maximum stable overclock we could make with the stock cooler. Keep in mind that we could have raised the CPU clock more, but to include the stock cooler in our comparison, we needed to use this moderate overclock.

We measured noise and temperature with the CPU idle and under full load. In order to get 100% CPU usage in all threads, we ran Prime 95 25.11 (in this version, the software uses all available threads) with the "In-place Large FFTs" option.

We compared the tested cooler to the Intel stock cooler with a copper base (included with the CPU), as well as with other coolers. Note that in the past, we tested coolers with a socket LGA775 CPU, and we retested some "old" coolers with this new methodology. This means you can find different values in older reviews than the values you will read in the next page. Every cooler was tested with the thermal compound that accompanies it.

Room temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermom
eter. The core temperature was read with the SpeedFan program (available from the CPU thermal sensors), using an arithmetic average of the core temperature readings. During the tests, the left panel of the case was open.

The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed 4" (10 cm) from the fan. We turned off the case and video board cooler fans so they wouldn’t interfere with the results. 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

• Processor: Core i7-860
• Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD6
• Memory: 2 GB Markvision (DDR3-1333/PC3-10700 with 9-9-9-22 timings), configured at 1,200 MHz
• Hard disk: Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
• Video card: Zotac GeForce GTS 250
• Video resolution: 1680×1050
• Video monitor: Samsung Syncmaster 2232BW Plus
• Power supply: Seventeam ST-550P-AM
• Case: 3RSystem L-1100 T.REX Cool

Operating System Configuration

• Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

Software Used

• Prime95
• SpeedFan

Error Margin

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

[nextpage title=”Our Tests”]

The table below presents the results of our measurements. We repeated the same test on all coolers listed below. Each measurement was taken with the CPU at idle and at full load. In the models with a fan supporting PWM, the motherboard controlled the fan speed according to core load and temperature. On coolers with an integrated fan controller, the fan was set at the minimum speed on the idle test and at full speed on the full load test.

		Idle Processor			Processor at Full Load
Cooler	Room Temp.	Noise	Speed	Core Temp.	Noise	Speed	Core Temp.
Intel stock (socket LGA1156)	14 °C	44 dBA	1700 rpm	46 °C	54 dBA	2500 rpm	90 °C
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 G1	14 °C	47 dBA	2050 rpm	33 °C	56 dBA	2900 rpm	62 °C
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme	14 °C	45 dBA	1400 rpm	27 °C	53 dBA	1950 rpm	51 °C
Thermaltake Silent 1156	14 °C	44 dBA	1200 rpm	38 °C	49 dBA	1750 rpm	69 °C
Noctua NH-D14	14 °C	49 dBA	1250 rpm	27 °C	49 dBA	1250 rpm	53 °C
Zalman CNPS10X Performa	14 °C	46 dBA	1500 rpm	28 °C	52 dBA	1950 rpm	54 °C
Prolimatech Megahalems	14 °C	40 dBA	750 rpm	27 °C	60 dBA	2550 rpm	50 °C
Thermaltake Frio	14 °C	46 dBA	1450 rpm	27 °C	60 dBA	2500 rpm	50 °C
Prolimatech Samuel 17	14 °C	40 dBA	750 rpm	40 °C	60 dBA	2550 rpm	63 °C
Zalman CNPS8000A	18 °C	43 dBA	1400 rpm	39 °C	54 dBA	2500 rpm	70 °C
Spire TherMax Eclipse II	14 °C	55 dBA	2200 rpm	28 °C	55 dBA	2200 rpm	53 °C
Scythe Ninja3	17 °C	39 dBA	700 rpm	32 °C	55 dBA	1800 rpm	57 °C
Corsair A50	18 °C	52 dBA	1900 rpm	33 °C	52 dBA	1900 rpm	60 °C
Thermaltake Jing	18 °C	44 dBA	850/1150 rpm	34 °C	49 dBA	1300 rpm	60 °C
GlacialTech Alaska	18 °C	43 dBA	1150 rpm	36 °C	51 dBA	1600 rpm	60 °C
Deepcool Gamer Storm	18 °C	43 dBA	1100 rpm	35 °C	48 dBA	1600 rpm	62 °C
Corsair A70	26 °C	56 dBA	1900 rpm	40 °C	56 dBA	1900 rpm	65 °C
Deepcool Ice Blade Pro	23 °C	45 dBA	1200 rpm	38 °C	52 dBA	1500 rpm	64 °C

In the graph below, at full load you can see how many degrees Celsius hotter the CPU core is than the air outside the case. The lower this difference, the better is the performance of the cooler.

[nextpage title=”Main Specifications”]

The main features of the Deepcool Ice Blade Pro CPU cooler include:

• Application: Socket LGA775, 1156, 1366, AM3, AM2+, AM2, 939 and 754 processors
• Fins: Aluminum
• Base: Aluminum, with heatpipes keeping direct contact to the CPU
• Heat-pipes: Four 8-mm copper heat-pipes
• Fan: 120 mm
• Nominal fan speed: 1,500 rpm
• Fan air flow: 60.29 cfm
• Maximum power consumption: 3.0 W
• Nominal noise level: 32.1 dBA
• Weight: 2.32 lbs (1 kg)
• More information: https://www.deepcool-us.com
• Average price in the US: We couldn’t find this cooler been sold in the US

[nextpage title=”Conclusions”]

The Ice Blade Pro uses a very common and conservative design, which is simple, inexpensive to build, and efficient, bringing a very good cooling performance.

The blue LEDs give the fan a very nice looks, and even under full load, it was not too loud.

In short, the Deepcool Ice Blade Pro is a beautiful and quiet CPU cooler, with good cooling performance and flexibility.