So obviously Ian Cuttress and Anand Lal Shimpi both left the site almost a decade ago, and the current crop of writers are whatever. I mean, check out this Zionism 14900KS review in which the phrase "represents the last processor to end an era as Intel is removing the 'i' from its legendary nomenclature for future desktop chip releases" exists. My comrade in chains, Anandtech was one of the first sites I recall reading that complained about how nonsensical the "Core i" branding was! Everybody hates that shit! Intel branding has always been dogshit!!!
There's also this Arctic Freezer 36 which does not feature the cheaper-and-better Thermalright g@mer line coolers which are very popular right now. A lot of their laptop reviews lately lack many comparison data points, so on. It's kinda sad.
Aside from having a really good layout that worked on the 14.4k throttled rural internet I had when I was 15, I also just really enjoyed reading stuff like the 2008 "Best Dual Core At $70" comparison between the Pentium E5300 and Athlon 7850, or basically any graphics card reviews between 2008 and 2013. That GT 240 hitpiece is a banger. The old laptop reviews of stuff like that Gateway Id49c taught me exactly why 768p laptop screens looked like garbage. I got like 70% of my computers autism from Anandtech, it was often a really handy reference guide.
Nowadays I try to read it and it's just junk like you see above. Some of it reads like press copy, almost. Nothing as funny as blowing out multiple AM2+ boards with a Phenom 9950BE, no joy. Makes me sad. Is this what it feels like to be a bitter, nostalgic boomer?
too much ranting about cooler testing
man CPU cooler reviews. I'm usually interested in two things:
I've read a lot of cooler test reports and at least in the older ones, I remember so often they could present useful comparative data but not absolute data. For instance, straight up not measuring the CPU power draw so that unless you have this exact CPU it wouldn't tell you much about how the cooler would perform on your system.
I mean look at this - how much power is "Idle"? and "load"? STOP TELLING ME WHAT THE VOLTAGE AND CLOCKSPEED IS I DON'T CARE. HOW MUCH POWER IS IT
I remember I would have to dig up other reviews of the CPU where they report the power draw at different clock speeds so I could guess at how much power was being dissipated in the cooler tests.
This review kind of has the same issue, though it tries to do better. I do appreciate the attempt at doing a standardized constant power testing, but the results are unrealistically low for core temps. The Hyper 212 absolutely does not hold 32.8C over ambient at 200W of real CPU heat dissipation (at least, unless the ambient temperature is like 50C. what is ambient? I don't think they specified). This doesn't seem like a good approximation of any modern CPU and is still only useful for a comparative test. Or maybe this is more of a Tcase estimate, which is much less useful than Tdie.
Real as fuck, honestly most cooler reviews are pretty damn useless. I'm guessing idle would be like 24°C, maybe?
Exactly, it's probably something like 24C. That would put the 200W loaded Hyper 212 at around 56.8C, which is not very plausible.
Yeah not a goddamn chance lmao. I was overloading that thing above 80°C on an overclocked 4690k running 4.4GHz at some kinda high voltage...
I look at cooler reviews as relative. X cooler is 1 degree cooler than Y cooler. I don't really care what temperature my CPU ends up at, as long as it's not pegged at max temp.