Testing & Results

Testing Methodology

During the test procedure temperatures were monitored by CPUID Hardware Monitor 1.16. No specific stress test programs were used to raise temperatures as the laptop gets hot enough on its own, instead I decided upon running a popular MMORPG (Fly For Fun) to raise temperatures. For the first test the game was loaded and once the laptop was sufficiently warmed up the game was turned off and it was allowed to cool without any assistance to give a reference temperature, then the laptop was cooled with the ZM-NC2500 Plus cooler on it's lowest fan speed setting until temperatures stabilized and finally cooled further by the ZM-NC2500 Plus on it's highest fan speed setting. Tests were replicated three times for accuracy and an average result is represented in the first graph below.

For the second test the temperatures were taken while the laptop was in use (load temperatures). Once again the laptop was warmed up by running Fly For Fun and temperatures were taken under the following conditions 1) Laptop under load with no cooler, 2) Laptop under load with the ZM-NC2500 Plus cooling, with fans on their lowest speed setting, 3) Laptop under load with the ZM-NC2500 Plus cooling, with fans on their highest speed setting. Tests were replicated three times for accuracy and an average result is represented in the second graph below.

Test System

• Laptop Model:Compaq Presario CQ61-110SA
• System Memory: 3Gb PC2-6400
• Processor:Pentium Dual Core T4200 @ 2.0Ghz
• Disk Drive: WD Scorpio Blue 160 GB SATA
• Operating System: Windows Vista Basic

Results

During the test procedure the ambient room temperature was monitored and was between 27C and 28C for the entire duration of the tests. The temperatures in the graphs below are in degrees Celsius and represent the cooling capabilities of the Zalman ZM-NC2500 Plus notebook cooler.

As previously mentioned this particular laptop does get pretty hot while in use, after a session of gaming it was allowed to idle and the temperatures were monitored. The laptops internal cooling leaves a lot to be desired, the three temperature sensors on the CPU, Motherboard and HDD respectively were hovering at 56C ~ 57C. The Zalman ZM-NC2500 Plus was Able to drop those temperatures quite considerably, knocking 20C off the CPU temperature, 14C off the Motherboard temperature and 6C off the HDD temperature. Not much difference was seen between the high and low fan speed settings.

In the second test the results are understandably different, once again there is not a big difference between the results for high and low speed fan settings, but a definite improvement was seen with the use of the Zalman ZM-NC2500 Plus notebook cooler. Temperatures were reduced by 9C on the CPU, 10C on the motherboard and 4C on the HDD.

While the Zalman ZM-NC2500 Plus was able to reduce temperatures across the range it is noticeable that it tends to cool components towards the back of the Laptop (CPU and Motherboard) better, compared to the front of the laptop where the HDD is installed. This can be attributed to the rear intake design of the cooler, as the cold air will meet the back of the laptop more.

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