Thermaltake Contac 29 Direct Touch CPU Cooler Review

Test Configuration

Thermaltake Contac 29 on the left, Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus on the right.

For today’s testing I’ll be using my Intel X58 setup with a temperature probe secured against the processor IHS to measure IHS temperatures. Windows 7 Professional x64 was used with processor loading performed by executing individual Super Pi 32M threads. Testing was performed at a one, two, four, and eight threads with fan speeds at 25%, 50%, and 100%. To make things a bit more interesting the CPU was run at 4GHz with 1.35vcpu, 1.30vtt, and 1.65vdimm with the memory at DDR3-2000 and the uncore at 4GHz. Temperatures were measured by CoreTemp 0.99.5 and with my UEI DT302 and the factory k-type probe. Arctic Silver Ceramique was the thermal grease used for both the processor and the IHS probe. Lastly a half-pea sized dab of Ceramique was applied to the center of the IHS. For each heatsink the system was warmed up to 80C after which it was rotated slightly to thin the thermal grease. For temperature measuring each value was recorded after 5 minutes of the indicated loading. For instance, after 5 minutes of sitting at idle in Windows the measurement for idle was recorded.

Intel X58 Test Platform
Component	Brand/Model	Live Pricing
Processor	Intel Xeon w3570	Click Here
Motherboard	EVGA X58 E760 Classified	Click Here
Memory	Corsair Dominator GT DDR3-2000 C7 3x2GB	Click Here
Video Card	Asus HD 4890 1GB	Click Here
Hard Drive	Seagate 7200.10 320GB	Click Here
Case	Dimastech Bench Table Hard V2	Click Here
Cooling	Thermaltake Contac 29	Click Here
Power Supply	Corsair HX1000	Click Here
Operating System	Windows 7 Professional x64	Click Here