Performance:

So. Now that we've finally gotten it mounted on the motherboard, how does it perform? As mentioned previously I used the Asus A7V. The CPU used is an AMD Athlon (Thunderbird) 950 running at stock speed and the default 1.75v core voltage. This is wrapped up in a generic midtower with a GeForce2 Ultra card, also at default clock, an SBLive! and a small PCI network card. The only real nod towards additional cooling in this case is that the Leadman 400W PSU used has an extra front fan to help exhaust hot air.

Testing consisted of 45 minutes of looping the Unreal Flyby demo under Win98SE. The temperature was recorded by the A7V - it has a thermal diode located under the CPU core, inside the socket, and another on the motherboard for "case" temperature. Remember that the Athlon does not have an internal thermal diode like the P6-cored Celerons and Pentiums. Ambient temperature for the duration of the test was 24C. I tested the unit with the rubbery stock thermal pad and with some Radio Shack thermal paste. I also used a Super Orb (from insanehardware.com) for comparison.

Well, the results tell the story. Interestingly, the thermal pad seems slightly more efficient than the thermal paste. The Titan heatsink gets blisteringly hot to the touch, so thermal transfer from the CPU seems to be occurring fine, but unfortunately the unit is just not capable of getting the heat into the surrounding air. The box rates the fans at 3200rpm and they were doing between 3200 and 3400 according to the A7V's monitoring.

Admittedly, the test system was fairly poor in the case-cooling department but when compared to the Super Orb it really seems that the Titan unit was simply overwhelmed by the heat load from the Thunderbird 950. Perhaps this cooler is intended for slower CPU's, but the box says simply "SocketA and Socket370 CPU's". Keeping in mind that this chip is running at stock speed and stock voltage, and adding in the intensely frustrating (and potentially chip-threatening) time I had mounting it, I find it very hard to recommend the Titan Majesty Twins cooler to anyone who cares about anything other than sheer looks or novelty value.