Why Most Cooler Tests Are Flawed: CPU Cooler Testing Methodology

This video defines our benchmarking methodology for the next several years of CPU cooler testing, highlighting common errors made that we've solved for.
Sponsor: Support our testing overhauls on Patreon ( - this is a great way to help us fund staying true to our content style and focus on depth, but to also get some behind-the-scenes videos in return.

Article/notes:

CPU cooler testing is always flawed, in every execution, almost no matter what you do. You can solve for the many flaws created by the test bench by using dummy heaters, but then new issues of realism are introduced, and resolution of real-world impact can be lost. We've worked for 6 months to narrow-down the list of issues on test benches and, over that time, we briefly crippled ourselves with the knowledge of how inherently flawed most cooler tests on real platforms are. Our new testing approach resolves much of this, but also introduces custom-built dummy heaters that we've collaborated with an engineering firm to create. Between the refined 'real' computer test bench and the dummy heaters, we now have enough to create what we believe to be among the most accurate cooler reviews we can do. There will always be flaws in CPU cooler testing, it's just a matter of mitigating them to a point where testing becomes accurate.

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Editorial, Testing: Steve Burke
Video: Keegan Gallick, Andrew Coleman, Josh Svoboda
Additional Research: Jake Henderson

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