Valkyrie Surge SL125 CPU Air Cooler Review
Thermal Testing – Heavy CPU Loads
OC3D CPU Cooler Stress Test
We want to push CPU coolers to their limit, and that requires a workload that will place maximum load on our i5-14600K CPU. Why didn’t we choose an i7 or an i9? The simple answer is that we want to test various CPU Cooler options. If we put the hottest CPU we could in our system, only the best of the best CPU coolers would even pass our testing procedures. Since not everyone uses such a power-hungry CPU, we decided to tone the wattage and thermal loads down by using an i5-14600K. Even so, this CPU consumes a lot of power and generates a lot of heat under all-core workloads.
For testing, we have used Cinebench R24. This is an all-core workload that places heavy strain on all available CPU cores. This load pushes CPU thermals higher than any other and does so consistently. We use Cinebench R24 for 30 minutes to see how hot our CPU gets over that time. If CPU temperatures rise to 100 degrees Celsius or over, that CPU cooler has failed our testing. This is part of the reason why there are more coolers on our higher fan RPM cooler charts. Some coolers will pass our thermal testing at higher fan RPMs but fail at lower fan RPMs.
1,000 RPM Fan Test
Why is there no graph below? The simple answer is that the Valkyrie Surge SL125 failed this test, but so did every heatsink in this category. The Intel i5-14600K is a hot-running CPU, and it demands strong cooling when placed under high loads. No CPU cooler of this price category or style has passed this test. As such, this result in unsurprising. If CPU cores hit 100-degrees, that’s a fail.
1,500 RPM Fan Test
The Surge S125 has become the first 120mm single-tower air cooler to pass out 1500 RPM fan tests. That said, it only passed when two fans were installed. Even so, this is an impressive achievement. When using a single fan, the cooler only had a few cores hit 100 degrees, but a fail is a fail, so we can’t graph that data.
Max RPM Fan Test
With it fans full loaded, the Surge SL125 passed in both its single-fan and dual-fan configurations. It bested the Arctic Freezer 36, delivering notably lower CPU thermals. Again, this is the best CPU cooler of this form factor that we have tested on our current test rig.
