[nextpage title=”Introduction”]
Today we are testing the Deepcool Ice Blade Pro CPU cooler, which has a tower heatsink, four 8-mm heatpipes, and one 120 mm fan. Check it out!
The Ice Blade Pro box has a transparent window that shows part of the cooler heatsink, as you can see in Figure 1.
In Figure 2, you can see the cooler heatsink and the accessories that come with it: fan, manual, installation hardware, and a tube of thermal compound. Although only one fan is supplied, the Ice Blade Pro supports two fans and comes with all the hardware needed to install a second one, including anti-vibration rubber pads.
In Figure 3, you can see the heatsink of the Ice Blade Pro.
Figure 3: The Deepcool Ice Blade Pro heatsink
In the next pages, you will see this cooler in detail.
[nextpage title=”The Deepcool Ice Blade Pro”]
In Figure 4, you see the front of the heatsink. The design is the same we are used to see in a lot of good coolers, with U-shaped 8 mm heatpipes and aluminum fins.
In Figure 5, you see the side of the heatsink, as well as the four nickel-plated copper heatpipes.
In Figure 6, you can check the top of the cooler. The tips of the heatpipes are covered by the top fin.
[nextpage title=”The Deepcool Ice Blade Pro (Cont’d)”]
In Figure 7, you can see the base of the cooler. The heatpipes make direct contact with the CPU, but the surface doesn’t have a mirror-like finishing.
In Figure 9, you can see the fan. It has blue LEDs, giving a nice looks when it is working. The connector is a four-pin one, so the fan supports PWM automatic speed control. There are also four rubber pads preinstalled on the fan to absorb vibrations.
In Figure 9, you can see the clips and backplate used to install the cooler. A pity that the backplate seen at the right low corner of the photo is only compatible with AMD processors and Intel socket LGA775 CPUs: when installing this cooler on a socket LGA1156 or socket LGA1366 CPU, no backplate is used, which may cause the motherboard to bend.
[nextpage title=”Installation”]
In order to install the Ice Blade Pro on our socket LGA1156 processor, we needed to install two supporting pieces first, shown in Figure 10. These pieces are screwed in four independent nuts at the solder side of the motherboard.
Figure 10: Supporting pieces installed
After that, the heatsink is set in place by putting an H-shape clip over the cooler base and fastening it to the pieces we installed before. This step is not as easy as it sounds, since the clip is not screwed to the base of the cooler, so all things are kept in place only after all the screws are fastened.
Figure 11: The heatsink installed
After that, attach the fan to the heatsink and connect it to the motherboard.
Figure 12: The Ice Blade Pro installed in our case
[nextpage title=”How We Tested”]
We tested the cooler with a Core i7-860 CPU (quad-core, 2.8 GHz), which is a socket LGA1156 processor with a 95 W TDP (Thermal Design Power). In order to get higher thermal dissipation, we overclocked it to 3.3 GHz (150 MHz base clock and 22x multiplier), keeping the standard core voltage (Vcore), which was the maximum stable overclock we could make with the stock cooler. Keep in mind that we could have raised the CPU clock more, but to include the stock cooler in our comparison, we needed to use this moderate overclock.
We measured noise and temperature with the CPU idle and under full load. In order to get 100% CPU usage in all threads, we ran Prime 95 25.11 (in this version, the software uses all available threads) with the "In-place Large FFTs" option.
We compared the tested cooler to the Intel stock cooler with a copper base (included with the CPU), as well as with other coolers. Note that in the past, we tested coolers with a socket LGA775 CPU, and we retested some "old" coolers with this new methodology. This means you can find different values in older reviews than the values you will read in the next page. Every cooler was tested with the thermal compound that accompanies it.
Room temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermom
eter. The core temperature was read with the SpeedFan program (available from the CPU thermal sensors), using an arithmetic average of the core temperature readings. During the tests, the left panel of the case was open.
The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed 4" (10 cm) from the fan. We turned off the case and video board cooler fans so they wouldn’t interfere with the results. This measurement is only for comparison purposes because a precise SPL measurement needs to be made inside an acoustically insulated room with no other noise sources, which is not the case here.
Hardware Configuration
- Processor: Core i7-860
- Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD6
- Memory: 2 GB Markvision (DDR3-1333/PC3-10700 with 9-9-9-22 timings), configured at 1,200 MHz
- Hard disk: Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
- Video card: Zotac GeForce GTS 250
- Video resolution: 1680×1050
- Video monitor: Samsung Syncmaster 2232BW Plus
- Power supply: Seventeam ST-550P-AM
- Case: 3RSystem L-1100 T.REX Cool
Operating System Configuration
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Software Used
Error Margin
We adopted a 2 °C error margin, meaning temperature differences below 2 °C are considered irrelevant.
[nextpage title=”Our Tests”]
The table below presents the results of our measurements. We repeated the same test on all coolers listed below. Each measurement was taken with the CPU at idle and at full load. In the models with a fan supporting PWM, the motherboard controlled the fan speed according to core load and temperature. On coolers with an integrated fan controller, the fan was set at the minimum speed on the idle test and at full speed on the full load test.
Idle Processor |
Processor at Full Load |
||||||
Cooler | Room Temp. | Noise | Speed | Core Temp. | Noise | Speed | Core Temp. |
Intel stock (socket LGA1156) | 14 °C | 44 dBA | 1700 rpm | 46 °C | 54 dBA | 2500 rpm | 90 °C |
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 G1 | 14 °C | 47 dBA | 2050 rpm | 33 °C | 56 dBA | 2900 rpm | 62 °C |
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme | 14 °C | 45 dBA | 1400 rpm | 27 °C | 53 dBA | 1950 rpm | 51 °C |
Thermaltake Silent 1156 | 14 °C | 44 dBA | 1200 rpm | 38 °C | 49 dBA | 1750 rpm | 69 °C |
Noctua NH-D14 | 14 °C | 49 dBA | 1250 rpm | 27 °C | 49 dBA | 1250 rpm | 53 °C |
Zalman CNPS10X Performa | 14 °C | 46 dBA | 1500 rpm | 28 °C | 52 dBA | 1950 rpm | 54 °C |
Prolimatech Megahalems | 14 °C | 40 dBA | 750 rpm | 27 °C | 60 dBA | 2550 rpm | 50 °C |
Thermaltake Frio | 14 °C | 46 dBA | 1450 rpm | 27 °C | 60 dBA | 2500 rpm | 50 °C |
Prolimatech Samuel 17 | 14 °C | 40 dBA | 750 rpm | 40 °C | 60 dBA | 2550 rpm | 63 °C |
Zalman CNPS8000A | 18 °C | 43 dBA | 1400 rpm | 39 °C | 54 dBA | 2500 rpm | 70 °C |
Spire TherMax Eclipse II | 14 °C | 55 dBA | 2200 rpm | 28 °C | 55 dBA | 2200 rpm | 53 °C |
Scythe Ninja3 | 17 °C | 39 dBA | 700 rpm | 32 °C | 55 dBA | 1800 rpm | 57 °C |
Corsair A50 | 18 °C | 52 dBA | 1900 rpm | 33 °C | 52 dBA | 1900 rpm | 60 °C |
Thermaltake Jing | 18 °C | 44 dBA | 850/1150 rpm | 34 °C | 49 dBA | 1300 rpm | 60 °C |
GlacialTech Alaska | 18 °C | 43 dBA | 1150 rpm | 36 °C | 51 dBA | 1600 rpm | 60 °C |
Deepcool Gamer Storm | 18 °C | 43 dBA | 1100 rpm | 35 °C | 48 dBA | 1600 rpm | 62 °C |
Corsair A70 | 26 °C | 56 dBA | 1900 rpm | 40 °C | 56 dBA | 1900 rpm | 65 °C |
Deepcool Ice Blade Pro | 23 °C | 45 dBA | 1200 rpm | 38 °C | 52 dBA | 1500 rpm | 64 °C |
In the graph below, at full load you can see how many degrees Celsius hotter the CPU core is than the air outside the case. The lower this difference, the better is the performance of the cooler.
[nextpage title=”Main Specifications”]
The main features of the Deepcool Ice Blade Pro CPU cooler include:
- Application: Socket LGA775, 1156, 1366, AM3, AM2+, AM2, 939 and 754 processors
- Fins: Aluminum
- Base: Aluminum, with heatpipes keeping direct contact to the CPU
- Heat-pipes: Four 8-mm copper heat-pipes
- Fan: 120 mm
- Nominal fan speed: 1,500 rpm
- Fan air flow: 60.29 cfm
- Maximum power consumption: 3.0 W
- Nominal noise level: 32.1 dBA
- Weight: 2.32 lbs (1 kg)
- More information: https://www.deepcool-us.com
- Average price in the US: We couldn’t find this cooler been sold in the US
[nextpage title=”Conclusions”]
The Ice Blade Pro uses a very common and conservative design, which is simple, inexpensive to build, and efficient, bringing a very good cooling performance.
The blue LEDs give the fan a very nice looks, and even under full load, it was not too loud.
In short, the Deepcool Ice Blade Pro is a beautiful and quiet CPU cooler, with good cooling performance and flexibility.
Leave a Reply