Review

Vigor Monsoon II Review
by Thomas Gribble

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Tests

When we received the Monsoon II TEC CPU Cooling System, we already had a Thermaltake Big Typhoon installed in our system. What better cooler to test against the Monsoon II than what is widely considered to be the best air cooling solution around? The CPU was also at stock speeds at the time, as well as slightly under-volted to reduce heat output and energy costs (sorry, electricity is expensive in California).

These results don't really accomplish anything except establish a "benchmark", so to speak, of the temperatures obtained on our existing cooling solution. Likewise, the following values give us a general idea of the system's power consumption with the 'stock' configuration - data we can use to compare future measurements with.

After the base measurements were established, we put a pretty decent overclock on the system to 3668 MHz, a 25% increase from stock. This information provides us with a general idea of the increased heat output we created by pushing the processor significantly further than it is supposed to go.

It should be noted that under full load with this overclock, temperatures got quite high and every fan in the system was ramped up to full speed. We kept conditions this way for 10 minutes instead of the normal 30, because we didn't want anything to accidentally get fried and not work anymore.

Also note the increased power consumption when overclocked. This rise is generated by fan speed increase and higher processor power consumption.

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