CPU Cooling - Does temperature impact performance?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,742 words · ~13 min read
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now this is something i've been asked a lot of times a shocking number of times
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does running my CPU cooler
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make it go faster and the answer to that is always well
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it's complicated you know if you do this business and all these things then yes
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it can but in general no but i realized
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that i've never actually tested it
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so today we're gonna find out
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does your CPU being colder make it perform better in any meaningful way
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so our first test here is actually fairly real world this is cinebench r15
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and we are just getting our our baseline i mean this machine hasn't been touched
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since we filmed the build guide so exactly the way we had it set up
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readings you can see it's running at five gigahertz pretty much on the nose
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with that benchmark running and then the way that we're actually going to get
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temperature readings is not necessarily
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while running benchmarks but rather using ida 64 in order to
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stress the CPU or not stress the CPU and then there's a couple different ways
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that we're going to take temperatures so i'll bring this up right here so you can
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see right now okay well that was what CPU load looked like while we were
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actually running a benchmark but now it's falling back down again so we're
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going to use this stability test and then we're going to use a couple of different programs for measuring CPU
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temps and the reason for that is they're both measuring it in different ways real
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temp pulls the temperature off the CPU die which actually doesn't go below zero
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so right now it is below zero and then we're also going
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to use um ASUS ai suite because this one
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is pulling CPU temperature off a sensor that's near the CPU again
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not perfect for sub-zero readings but it's pretty much all we have to go on so
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i'm going to go ahead i'm going to start up our test here because i've already
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collected my minus 11 and not applicable temperatures off of uh
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off of my software for temps and we're gonna go ahead and see what they rise to
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okay so while we're running fire strike here i'll go ahead and discuss our
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temperature results which are about what we expected i mean frankly we've tested
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this system before and while we are presenting this as like a range of
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values as opposed to a real value as far as load temperatures are concerned
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all we really need to know is much lower than the other one because
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we're not trying to determine how much faster does your CPU run if you cool it
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a lot we're just trying to determine if it helps at all at all so
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yeah let's see how this goes
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is she like an ice lady all right so apparently our fire strike
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score is better than 97 of all other results we actually only have a single
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gtx 980 hall of fame in this system but
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anyway that's pretty much it for the results that we need in this
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configuration so i'm just going to save this
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now we need to reboot the system and run it
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at stock speed extreme stock speed
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sub-zero benchmarking lightest tech tips
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so i loaded optimize defaults there are actually a couple of things i don't want
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to change so i do want our memory at 1866.
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okay so that's not there anymore and we should probably also stay in raid mode
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since that's how we're booting now just for the sake of convenience
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okay so we've got our results at stock speed now you can see that we fell by
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about 400 points in 3dmark fire strike
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and now all that's left is to shut this
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baby down we're going to use restart because i
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don't want to apply updates in the middle of benchmarking between
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runs here and then we're going to pull off the
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phase change and go ahead and unplug the
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phase change and put this stock cooler on there mmm so sexy
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okay hold on i gotta power it down right now
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i mean the results were about what we expected you're going to see a drop in
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score um and it doesn't really tell us
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anything about our objective today because what we need to know is how that
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last number compares to the one we're about to get with the
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stock cooler that's cool we weren't really getting any uh
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any condensation around there or anything this was cool or it wasn't cool
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wow it was cool but not cool in the wrong places how's that oh balls this is
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like gonna take a bit to remove
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oh and it's really cold so it's hard to work with
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dang it way to go ed
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you can turn the pc on and let it warm
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up whoa you can see the condensation just
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evaporate instantly well you missed it but you would have
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been able to see that it was cool
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i'm sorry you couldn't experience it wow it's still
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like really cold to the touch is that still cold oh no it's warming up
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cool well less cool but
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cool for different reasons ah terrible process
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the dark side of face change cooling kind of oh it's her foot
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yeah i just kind of figured you were propositioning me and i was okay with
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that it made me comfortable okay the pinky
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toe is the most sensitive toe i don't actually know that to be a fact but it
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could be in which case that probably came across
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even weirder than i meant it to okay
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so now this kneaded eraser needs to come
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out which does not look like it's actually going
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to be that easy so i put nuts around the
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bottoms of those
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bolts which is why all the needed eraser needs to come
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off before i can mount any other cooler
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great mate we're not going to worry about our
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maintenance board back to jj you probably know not to take an rma from me
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this way i'm trying from the other side just yeah
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keep twisting yeah the problem is that i also have to hold the nut in place and i'm having
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trouble with that you know what i'll get a screwdriver
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it took off the serial number sticker so much for my rma
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oh no
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this is going faster so that's good oh yeah there's a big chunk
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i feel like i'm picking my nose right now i'm having a lot of success you know
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that felt like a pretty unsatisfying little pick where you know you left a big chunk behind that should have been
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easy to get but you just it just didn't come with the rest
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because the you know the tensile strength of the booger
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wasn't equal to the attachment force to the wall of the inside of the nose did
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you say booger yeah
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hey we're doing pretty well here actually
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not too shabby now all we got to do is not get any kneaded eraser into the CPU
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socket and we'll be fine this computer will power back on
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you know what i'm not going to appease my idle curiosity and pull this CPU out
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because i think there's a good chance we'll accidentally get some gunk
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in the uh in the socket so instead
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uh we're just gonna we're gonna go for it so we'll be back when we're booted up
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on the stock cooler
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the line between bravery and stupid
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is one often traveled atlantis media group
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what do you think that there's not a line separating the two but instead it's
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more of a venn diagram let me just sit in there
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we just chill that's where our building is
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all right that's a good sign oh those CPU temps are a little high i
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guess we gotta reapply the thermal group
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those temps look really high still what is going on here
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do you think it's because i don't have the socket hold down on
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like what happens when i load it oh you don't
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no i didn't put it on i just put the cooler on top of it
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it should be fine the cooler puts yeah it's definitely not working right well
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you know what we're going for worst case scenario here
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as long as it's stable this will tell us the difference between
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sub-zero and like 80 degrees i guess so yeah let's let's
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push forward here we go jj has asked me on occasion
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why do you not like ai sweet i don't know because it behaves like this i mean
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the system is under load it wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't under load but
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these other programs work when the system's under load
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i can move them oh crap i did that thing okay stock
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speed phase cinebench score
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700. here we go
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here we go 8 17.
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what that doesn't make any sense
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the phase score seems to be bugged which i should have noticed back
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when we ran it because you can see we got 700 versus their stock
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4770k that does 822. so it's performing
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normally now and was actually okay well we'll have to come back to this
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i don't know what we're gonna do i all i can do right now is save these results
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so stock speed stock
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cooling cinebench
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and then i'll run 3d mark since it seems to be running normally like this is in
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line with its 4770k score
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so i'll run 3dmark and then
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maybe we will we'll ghetto mount
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the phase cooler back on there temporarily and uh let me see if we can
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get one benchmark out of it before it condenses and drips all over the
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motherboard so i'm just basically going to put this around here
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so the only sort of
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this is do not do this at home
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here we go well there's a difference between being
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a professional and being professional
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oh balls
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oh i did not want that to happen no
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that's a bad thing okay uh why
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why can't anything go right right now
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well let's use the technique we should have a counter in the corner
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of this video for the things not to do that's what
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that is for yeah
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yeah that does do that normally oh this is bad this is really
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bad
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those are like sitting next to the pins if not on them
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if i just kind of jerk it that seems to work better
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watch this video i jerk it
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i never recommend mounting a CPU vertically
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but if you ever wanted to know how to do it this is it
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put your finger through the socket to hold it into place
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while you lower the retention ARM there
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never do that the 3d mark one is actually very close
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to what we got with the air cooler but we'll rerun both just in case
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we need a stress ball right now this thing just shuts down mid benchmark
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you'll know it died from the condensation
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i don't know probably less than ten percent he made up completely off the
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top of his head and run run my pretties
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know the convenient definition of handy as opposed to the other one it's got
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one of the handiest things about it is the fact that it has an integrated micro
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you can plug in whatever it is that you could possibly want so if you wanted to
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so back to our results 8 23
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there we go that is more like it what
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the heck happened last time
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i don't know whether i'm happy or mad i'm happy it worked i'm mad it didn't
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work the first time than last time
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12 545 3d marks
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and last time what we got with phase was 12 401 so i'm really glad we re-ran that
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now let's have a look at what we got with stock speed stock cooling
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hmm
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let's put the stock cooler back on and see if we can take another crack at that
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oh i didn't save it no oh well whatever you saw it
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all right so it's final conclusion time
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and the answer is no your CPU running cooler does not affect
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your performance our hypothesis our prediction whatever
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you want to call it was correct
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um so you actually have to turn the speed up
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in order to have it run faster which makes perfect sense because can you
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imagine with the kind of precision and precisional precision engineering that
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goes into a product like this if just cooling it down made like some parts of
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it like go faster be completely out of whack it makes no sense so there you go
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like the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it
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