SilverStone Nitrogon NT03
As the SilverStone documentation does any adequate job describing the installation process of the Nitrogon NT03 on any of its supported sockets, below are simply some pictures from the installation process on an Intel LGA-775 CPU. Once the motherboard was removed from the chassis, it only took a matter of minutes to properly install the NT03 heatsink and then we were back in action.
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Of all the possible motherboards to install the SilverStone Nitrogon NT03 on, we decided to test the heatsink on one of our personal favorites when it comes to the i955X Chipset and that is Abit's AW8-MAX. In addition to all of the wonderful onboard features, the Glenwood (i955X) Chipset supports Intel's Pentium D dual-core processors so we can see the true extent of the NT03 cooling capabilities. With the NT03 using two side-mounted 60mm fans, the additional airflow should also assist with Abit's Silent Q-OTES technology for cooling off the MOSFETs as well as the heatpipe radiator at the I/O panel. Below are the hardware, and software, components used during testing.
| Hardware Components | |
| Processor: | Intel Pentium D 820 @ 3.36GHz |
| Motherboard: | Abit AW8-MAX v1.0 |
| Memory: | 2 x 512MB Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 |
| Graphics Card: | Leadtek PX7800GTX 256MB |
| Hard Drives: | Seagate 7200.9 SATA2 160GB |
| Optical Drives: | Sony DVD-RW & DVD-ROM |
| Cooling: | 3 x 80mm & 1 x 92mm fans |
| Power Supply: | Enermax Whisper II 535W SLI |
| Software Components | |
| Operating System: | FedoraCore4 |
| Linux Kernel: | 2.6.14-1.1637_FC4smp |
In addition to testing the Nitrogon NT03, we also brought back the CoolJag JAC16EC. This heatsink, designed for 2U chassis' features a copper C1020 base and vertical fins as well as a single 60mm fan. We chose to test both of the heatsinks in a full ATX system rather than a micro ATX alternative in order to see its true potential in large desktop systems. For testing during the idle process we simply allowed the system to remain on and idling in GNOME for 30 minutes. During the load process, we ran CPU Burn-In v1.00 for 30 minutes. All temperatures were recorded via the motherboard and the ambient room temperature was maintained during the entire testing process. The thermal paste used during testing was Arctic Silver 5. On the next page are our findings.