EVGA P55 Classified 200 LGA1156 Motherboard Review

Heat & Acoustical Testing

We are now at the point where we test the cooling and the acoustics of the motherboard. We can rule out acoustics straight off though since the EVGA P55 Classified is completely passively cooled. No fans means there is no noise to report. So that leaves us with just the heat testing. First though, let's take a look at the heat sink thermal paste application.

Both the NF200 and PCH chipset heat sinks had what looks like a thermal pad applied to the heat sink itself that is then placed on the component they each cool. The only catch is that the 'thermal pad' isn't a thermal pad at all. It is actually soft malleable thermal paste as you can see in the second photo above of the PCH chipset. Because the thermal paste is like any other thermal paste, the application on these heat sinks works quite well. The contact on both heat sinks is absolutely perfect and a very nice solution to applying the thermal compound in our opinion.

The digital PWM on the EVGA P55 Classified is powered by dual CPL-5-50 Cooper Bussmann inductors and ten Volterra VT1185SF integrated voltage regulators. The CPL-5-50 spec sheet can be downloaded by clicking on the link of the model, but the Volterra regulators specifications are guarded by an army of MP5 carrying ex-militia in a Fort Knocks-like armory. We couldn't obtain the pass cards, retinal scans, or finger prints necessary to obtain those documents. Essentially, this is a very robust and high quality PWM. The components run relatively cool and the heat sink accompanying them should be more than ample at maintaining operating temperatures, even with limited air flow.

We will now take a look at the two different setups we used for testing the PWM heat sinks effectiveness. This is really the only component on the motherboard that we can actively measure with an onboard sensor so it is all we will have to present today.

The image on the left is the setup while running the 'w/ 1 Fan' configurations, with the image on the right being the setup that was ran for the 'w/3 Fans' configurations. The image on the right is of a typical setup with a single CPU fan pushing air through the TRUE. Keep in mind this typical setup would also usually receive some cooling help in the area from a rear exhaust fan. The 3 Fan setup is how I normally run a bench setup and is exaggeratedly overkill. Let's have a look at the numbers.

We ran two configuration with each fan setup, the same as we used in the Memory and System benchmark sections. The 'stock' setup is with the BIOS defaults and our i6 760 processor with the 'overclock' results being from the overclocked 4.3GHz i5 750. We used a quick 20 minute run of OCCT load to test the PWM temperatures for the chart above.

With BIOS defaults and only the single fan, the PWM doesn't reach 70C. With three fans, we can see that the PWM temperature really doesn't increase from idle to load state at stock settings. This temperature is stuck around 50C the entire time.

Moving to the overclocked configurations we can see the system stays plenty stable and runs the entire 20 minute test without a problem, but the temperature of the PWM does increase by a good margin from the three fan setup. Even with a single fan, the temperature stays below 85C. With three fans the PWM stays around 60C under load.

The PWM temperature we would imagine is an average temperature of the Volterra VT1185SF voltage regulators. It is hard to say what these particular components are rated for since the specification sheet requires a signature in blood, but it is safe to say that 85C is far from the limits of the component. Many high end GPU's use similar Volterra regulators and often operate in much warmer climates so we think the stock PWM cooling is quite capable of cooling adequately. Obviously we would always recommend some form of active cooling as cooler temperatures are never a bad thing. With that said, it doesn't look like the EVGA P55 Classified absolutely requires it for the PWM.