Cooler Master Storm SF-19 Strike Force Notebook Cooler

Testing

In order to get a good idea of how effective the SF-19 Strike Force was at cooling, we put it through a series of tests. Each test was using Avidemux to transcode an AVI/MP3 movie into a MP4/AAC movie. Each test was run with the priority set to maximum. What this basically means is that the CPU was running at 100% for about 50 minutes in each test. The test system was a Dell XPS M1710 laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 CPU, 4GB of RAM, an nVidia GeForce 7950 GTX, and Windows 7 Professional 32-bit. The M1710 has five different settings for the internal fans: Both fans off; one fan on "low" (around 1500RPM), one off; both fans on "low;" one fan on "high" (around 3600 RPM), one on "low"; and both fans on "high."

Temperatures were recorded with I8kfanGUI, a third party program designed to read the GPU, CPU, chipset and RAM temperatures of Dell Inspiron laptops, and used as an alternative fan controller to the one built into the BIOS. While there were thoughts of testing the temperatures that occurred during gaming, the notion was dismissed due to the lack of consistency in the testing variables. Finally, because this cooler has the ability to lower the fan speed, we also tested how well the SF-19 Strike Force worked on its lowest and its highest speed settings.



As you can see, the SF-19 Strike Force is an absolute monster when it comes to performance. It pumps out pretty ridiculous performance, especially with the internal fans working in tandem with it. For example, take a close look at the idle temperatures. They may not seem that impressive with the cooler on, but keep in mind that those are the temperatures that the laptop is running at with the internal fans off, and the normal idle temperature is with the internal fans on. Another notable bit of performance is the time taken to reach the peak temperature during full load. With the laptop simply running by itself, it took under a minute for it to reach the peak temperature. However, with the laptop running the SF-19, it took well over two minutes to reach peak temperature. Quite a difference.

There are some drawbacks to this, though. First of all, this is not really a passive cooler by any means. While most active coolers can be used passively and still get decent performance, the SF-19 doesn't seem to have been made with such a thing in mind, particularly considering the plastic construction and large rubber feet. Of course, this should be rather obvious considering the hefty power adapter that it uses. It is for this reason that we didn't do any tests of the cooler without the fans on.

Finally, although the SF-19 does boast some impressive performance, it also boasts some pretty loud noise as well. The lowest setting isn't really that bad. The fans move air efficiently, and aren't much louder than the internal fans. It actually sounds somewhat like a muted airplane propeller, with a deep kind of growl that is much easier to ignore than the internal fans are at any speed. However, with the fans turned all the way up, the noise begins approaching a level similar to a handheld vacuum cleaner.