Cool'N'Quiet

A much lauded feature we really like is SilentTek on AOpen motherboards. Long story short, it adjusts the fan speed of the CPU based on temperature. We have covered the benefits of AOpen's implementation in several places and readers are invited to check it out here. Cool'N'Quiet takes this a step further and throttles the CPU speed and voltage when 2.2 Ghz is not required, ie whenever the processor is not being fully utilized. Fan speed is also adjusted accordingly so that it will not be as loud. Most of these features are not new as they have been in place for a few years in notebook processors but it is nice to see this migrate to the desktop as well seeing as how CPU temperatures have risen dramatically in the last couple years as Intel and AMD have really pushed the envelope for their top end CPUs. Remember how we just claimed that Athlon 64s will be multiplier locked? Apparently this is only true when you try to raise the multiplier but not true when the multiplier is dropped. Unfortunately current implementations of the HyperTransport bus get fairly unstable quickly when the FSB speed is adjusted. Hopefully in the future this can be remedied so that enthusiasts have a chance to drop the multiplier and crank the FSB. Unfortunately, Cool'N'Quiet was not supported on our motherboard so we did not have a chance to test this particular feature. The Cool'N'Quiet CPU driver for Windows XP gives the user an extra option under the Display -> Power -> Power -> Power Scheme drop down box - Minimal Power Management. Wiith this on it should poll the CPU every few minutes to adjust the clock rate accordingly.