Cooler Master ATC-201A: High performance Aluminum

Benchmark

We have a few heat and sound intensive tests lined up for the Cooler Master ATC 201A.  The Heatsink reading is actually the temperature inside the heatsink.  CPU temperature is also recorded.  All temperature is recorded in degrees Celsius.  The heat tests were each performed inside the closed case with the external temperature of 23.0 degrees Celsius, during a full system load.  Our test bed consists of:

The thermal readings for the different components during operation were as followed:

Cooler Master 201A

Kingwin KT-436-WM

We can see that the temperature reduction claims that Cooler Master makes are indeed true. The internal temperature of the unit suffers a little because of the poor placement of the sole rear exhaust fan.  However, we can see that the CPU temperature is dramatically lower.  Even though the ATC-201A was collaboration between Intel and Cooler Master, there is no reason why it should not provide full functionality to an AMD CPU as well.

Sound is recorded in decibels from 12” away from the closed case to most accurately replicate a production system.

The ATC-201A demonstrated itself fairly competitive to the KT-463 case, but at the sacrifice of internal temperature and sound.  The lower performance in noise is obviously due to the near exposed HSF, which is only separated from the outside by a thin fan grille. Since we use a very loud HSF combo to test our units, a Zalman or Swiftech unit would significantly lower the total noise of the case.