Introduction
Over the recent years we have observed that the practice of using aftermarket cpu cooler has flourished in India. Now this aftermarket cpu cooler basically comes in two flavors,i.e air and water cooler respectively. The advantage of using aftermarket cooler is to reduce processor temperature and overclocking. You all know how bad the stock coolers are.
Air coolers in most cases are cheaper than the water variant,air coolers are also hassle free,easy to use in most cases. Well I must mention that there are some advantages of water coolers too,though they are more expensive and requires some maintenance they actually perform better than most air coolers if not all.
Still air coolers are more popular amongst Indian users since they are cheaper and maintenance free.
So today we have Deepcool GAMMAXX S40 in our hand and I’m going to make review of it. Now those of you who don’t know about Deepcool I’m going to give a short intro about Deepcool, the brand was established in 1996, they used to make desktop and server coolers for ODM partners, with rapid expansion of personal computer market Deepcool expanded its business into desktop cooling products and laptop cooling accessories, today Deepcool have a wide range of cooling products of different price segment.
Now lets have a look at the features and specification of the cooler.
Features and Specs
Features:
- Equipped with multiple clips to support Intel 2011/1366/1156/1155/1150/775 and AMD FM2/FM1/AM3+/AM3/AM2+/AM2.
- 120x25mm fan with PWM function offers a perfect balance between airflow and noise.
- Double Airflow Channel(D.A.C.) technology allows more cold air to cool the surrounding components, such as MOS.
- 4 pieces of 6mm heatpipes, Core Touch Technology (CTT) gives perfect contact with the CPU surface.
- The whole heatsink set is nickel plated for appealing appearance and also for gaming spirits.
- De-vibration design absorbs operating noise maximally.
Compatibility:
CPU | Supported Sockets |
Intel Socket 130W: | LGA2011/LGA1366/LGA1156/LGA1155/LGA1150/LGA775 |
AMD Socket 125W: | FM2/FM1/AM3+/AM3/AM2+/AM2/940/939/754 |
Technical Specs:
Overall Dimension | 120 X 81.3 X 143mm |
Fan Dimension | 120 X 25mm |
Net Weight | 610g |
Bearing Type | Hydro Bearing |
Rated Voltage | 12VDC |
Operating Voltage | 10.8 ~ 13.2VDC |
Started Voltage | 7VDC |
Rated Current | 0.13 +/- 10% A(MAX) |
Power Input | 1.56W |
Fan Speed | 900 +/- 150 ~ 1600 +/- 10% RPM |
Max. Air Flow | 54.25 CFM |
Noise | 17.8 ~ 26.1dB (A) |
Product Dimensions:
Looking at the product dimension we can conclude that this cooler should fit in most pc cases and the nice part is,its an universal cpu cooler. Now lets proceed to the showcase section.
Product Showcase
Well not much to speak here lets enjoy the pictures.
The cooler comes within a cardboard box.
The cooler and all the accessories,well personally I love the blue coloured PWM fan. You guys can notice that I have already installed the AMD bracket in the cooler as I’ll be testing it on an AMD system. You can notice the Intel brackets in the left hand side.
The base of the cooler.
Now lets have a look at the performance of the cooler.
Performance Benchmarks
Test Setup:
Processor | AMD FX 8150 |
Motherboard | Asus M5A97 Evo R2.0 |
Graphics Card | MSI HD 6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition 2GB unlocked @ HD6970 |
Ram | 2x 4GB Kingston HyperX Blu 1600MHz CL9 |
Psu | Corsair GS600 80+ Bronze |
Cooler | Deepcool GAMMAXX S40 |
Cooling Paste | Coolermaster IC Value |
OS | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit SP1 |
Ambient Temp | 17c |
I’ve performed the test under an ambient temp of 17c. Intel Burn Test v2.54 is being used here for doing the stress testing part and Asus AI Suite II 2.01.01 is used here to take the temperature readings. I have used Coolermaster IC Value as the cooling paste,though its cheap its a very potential cooling paste,I’ve used it in the past and it always gave me good results so I’ve used this time too.
I ran 5 loops of Intel Burn Test 2 times so as to have the most accurate readings.
The cooler ran silently all throughout the testing,even when the fan was spinning at full speed it was not audible but the downside of the cooler is,it couldn’t handle the FX8150 (125w TDP) even in stock settings when put under load. With an ambient temperature of 17c the temperature was hitting 61c,after the stress testing was completed I reinstalled the cpu cooler thinking that the reason of so high temperature was probably a bad installation,so I performed the stress test again but sorry to disappoint you guys it still touched the 60c mark with the cpu at stock. The temperature was actually worse than the AMD’s stock copper heatsink cooler. This clearly suggests that this cooler cannot handle a 125w cpu. I even tried some overclocking but as I expected the temperature reached 78c and the processor throttled and downclocked itself to prevent itself from damaging. This is really not expected from an aftermarket cooler.
Conclusion
This is currently the cheapest LGA2011 cooler available in the market but as you guys saw in the testing,this cooler couldn’t handle a 125w AMD cpu thus it won’t be able to handle any LGA2011 cooler since all the LGA2011 cpu have 130w TDP. So users who have 125W cpu or people who would like to try overclocking should consider looking at other choices. The reason why this cooler cant handle 125w cpu is,it lacks cooper heatpipes.
I never expected this cooler to perform worse than an AMD stock copper heatsink cooler. Well this cooler has some good part too, like it ran extremely quiet all throughout the testing, so it can be ideal for a HTPC with a cpu of max tdp of 95-100w but don’t try overclocking with this cooler.There is a possibility that if you have a 65-77w cpu you can try some overclocking but don’t expect too much. The cooler is priced at Rs1800,cheap! but considering its performance its recommended to pay slightly more for better coolers.
Pros:
- Affordable
- Silent
- Good for HTPC
- Can possibly give decent overclock if you have a 65-77w cpu
- Comes with a PWM fan
Cons:
- Can’t handle a 125w cpu even in stock settings
- Lack of copper heat pipes
- Poor build quality
- Overclocking is a strict “NO” on a 125/95w TDP cpu,only cpu which have 65-77w TDP might give you little overclocking performance.
- Better alternatives at slightly more price.
Its time to say bye! See you all again…..