14 DAY TRIAL // In today's environment, PC's thermal and acoustic performance is becoming more and more important. A desirable PC should be cool and quiet, and that's why Gigabyte Technology, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, VGA cards and other computing hardware solutions, introduced Gigabyte i-Cool, a CPU performance and fan noise control utility
Gigabyte i-Cool utility allows users to reduce heat generated by CPU through reducing the CPU clock speed and enabling CPU fan to run slower and quieter. The Gigabyte i-Cool utility achieves this through 5 CPU power usage settings targeting applications that require different performance levels. Additionally, the company claims that it also reduces the CPU fan speed to achieve best thermal and acoustic performance ratio.
The levels claimed by Gigabyte look like this: - Level 1 - most suitable for Internet browsing or productivity applications such as word processing, where CPU performance is set to 12.5% of its maximum value. Level 2 - sets the CPU performance to 25% and is well suited for playing DVD movie and music where reduced unwanted noise drastically improves the user experience. Level 3 - sets the CPU performance to 50% and is well suited for applications such as file copying and disk defragmenting.
More demanding applications such as virus scanning and music or photo editing are well suited to level 4, where it sets the CPU performance to 75%, while the most demanding applications , such as gaming or 3D editing, require level 5 - where sets the CPU performance to 100%.
Targeting technical and mainstream users alike, i-Cool wants to provide a simple indication of current status of CPU by indicating estimated power usage, fan noise and performance in each level when selected. An auto mode can be selected so that CPU performance is dynamically adjusted to cater for user's requirements as applications are opened or closed.
The Gigabyte i-Cool utility will initially support Gigabyte Intel 945 series chipset motherboards, and can be downloaded for free from the official Gigabyte website together with a full list of supported motherboards.