Thermal paste comparison


All the tests on the previous page were done using Thermalright's Chillfactor II thermal paste for consistency and to give a better idea of actual heatsink efficiency. Since the HR-02 is bundled with Thermalright's latest iteration of the thermal paste, I thought it would be a good idea to see how it compares, should it give the heatsink a greater advantage over its competition. The Chillfactor III thermal paste performs 1C better in almost all scenarios.

Passive Result - 2.66GHz


Passively, it's disappointing that the HR-02 didn't perform as well as the Noctua NH-D14 or the Thermalright Silver Arrow. Nonetheless, it coped with the i7 sufficiently that no instability was found after prolonged stress tests and gaming. One thing we have to note is that the Noctua comes with inferior thermal paste and the HR-02 was only tested using Chillfactor II thermal paste, so straight out of the box the HR-02 has the potential to perform better. As we saw at the top, the Chillfactor III thermal paste shaves off 1C.

Passive Result - 4GHz


The story is very much the same at 4GHz. The HR-02 does a terrific job keeping the i7 cool but fails to match up to the Noctua and more so the Silver Arrow. The test highlights the effectiveness of the Silver Arrow as a passive cooler despite not being designed to do so. Again, I have to iterate that out of the box, the HR-02 will perform better than the Noctua thanks to superior thermal paste. Note that a good airflow was required during the test and limiting this caused the temperatures to rise beyond acceptable levels (up to 100C in absolute values).

Noise

The HR-02 doesn't come with any fans bundled and was designed to run passively so as you can imagine, it was silent. Their recommended fan is the Thermalright TR TY-140 at low RPM. The fan remained very quiet at low speeds and even at its maximum 1300RPM, it was inaudible over the case fans.