13 - Testing (Idle, Blu-ray and 3D Rendering)
Thank you everyone for the advice regarding temperature monitoring and stress testing. Based on the advice I have downloaded CPUID Hardware Monitor and performed some testing this evening.
Idle Temperatures
I started by leaving the system idle for about 30mins to get a benchmark to compare against the other tests. Here is a screen shot showing the CPUID Hardware Monitor results:
Motherboard Temps: 32'C / 25'C / 28'C
Fan Speed: 1,000 RPM
CPU Core Temps: 30'C
GPU Temp: 36'C
GPU Fan Speed: 1,200 RPM
GPU Fan Power: 30%
One thing I did notice at this point is that FANIN0, which is the intake fan on the CPU cooller and connected to the CPU FAN header on the motherboard was only showing 26 RPM. Looking at the two fans on the CPU Cooler both appeared to be running at the same speed, and certainly if the fan had been running at just 26 RPM I'm sure this would have been very obvious.
I swapped the two fans over and both the readings in CPUID Hardware Monitor and visual speed of the fans remained constant, so I think this may be an issue with the way CPUID Hardware Monitor is picking up the fan speed from the Gigabyte motherboard, but I'll need to investigate if other owners of this motherboard are having the same problem.
Blu-ray Temperatures
Next I moved onto a Blu-ray playback test using Kung Fu Panda, which gave the following CPUID Hardware Monitor results:
Motherboard Temps: 39'C / 25'C / 30'C
Fan Speed: 1,200 RPM
CPU Core Temps: 40'C
GPU Temp: 50'C
GPU Fan Speed: 1,200 RPM
GPU Fan Power: 40%
Here are a couple of screen shots showing the Blu-ray image quality (click through to high-res):
I've not have chance to reseach the HD audio bit streaming issue any further, but the sound quality is certainly already better than from my PS3, the clarity of speach in particular is significantly improved.
3D Rendering Temperatures
For the final test this evening I decided to try out some 3D rendering using the Nvidia Design Garage. I let the rendering engine run for 1,000 passses which produced the following results in CPUID Hardware Monitor:
Motherboard Temps: 47'C / 25'C / 43'C
Fan Speed: 1,200 RPM
CPU Core Temps: 51'C
GPU Temp: 72'C
GPU Fan Speed: 2,400 RPM
GPU Fan Power: 62%
Here is the rendered image of a speed yellow Porsche GT2 after 1,000 passes (click through to high-res):
More testing to come with 3dmark11, Prime95 and Need for Speed Shift 2 in the next few days, but any thoughts on the low fan speed for the CPU fan would be very much appreciated.
James