Intel Core i7 Nehalem 965 XE 3.2GHz review

Page 6 - Temperatures and Overclock

Right from the start we saw how HOT is the processor. That however is common with engineering samples and Intel assures us that mass produced processors will generate less heat. All tests were conducted at room temperature of about 20 degrees centigrade with the Noctua NH-C12P cooler, which we mentioned earlier.

65 degrees are in no way low temperature considering the CPU runs on 1.225 V by default! And that while we tested in a special stand - a rig without case in order to prevent accumulating hot air around the cooler. Inside a case a raise of few more degrees is to be expected. Pity our processor was TRAY variant, we would pretty much like to find out how will the box cooler that has no heatpipes and much smaller heat dispersing surface handle the monstrous heat emitted from Intel Corei7 965 XE in ill-ventilated case!

We got overclocking pretty fast. In this instance we did it using the ASUS P6T Deluxe X58 motherboard. We can say that Intel Core i7 overclocking is elementary! At first of course you'll have to shake of the shock from not having FSB. There is the QPI clock speed, the main BUS clock, multiplier and numerous voltages. Only thing we changed to get frequency of 3840MHz was the BUS Clock from 133 to 160, the multiplier from 25 to 24 and the voltage of the CPU to 1.35V! And that was nowhere near the maximum of the processor, it was merely the maximum we were able to supply as voltageно because of this:

Over 90 degrees centigrade with one of the best air coolers we've tested at ModReactor! Ain't that something... Intel claims the processor will go as high as 1.45 V, just like Core 2, as long as there is sufficient cooling. But we having reached dangerous boundaries decided to stop. We do intend however to repeat the tests with water cooling as soon as mounting brackets for the blocks we have become available.