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Four new coolers on heat pipes: Autumn 2006

Author: Date: 11.10.2006

SilverStone Nitrogon NT06

This new cooler by SilverStone should have been attributed to the top end of systems for cooling CPUs, but in view of the rather powerful competitor solutions we'll be examining it within our today's review. The cooler is shipped in a big box looking much like a briefcase with a transparent window:

What didn't fit into the window size is drawn on the box itself - looks quite smart. Inside the box, all the components of the cooling system are recessed into a porous material and thus are protected against damages during transportation.

Apart from the radiator and the fan, you can find a regulator of rotational speed made as a cap for a PCI slot onto the rear panel of the housing, and a small pack of fasteners. There is also an instruction manual.

Here are the specifications of the new cooler by SilverStone:

From this table we are sad to note that this cooler does not support the new AMD Socket AM2 platform, which is regrettable. Also, the dimensions are far from neat.

The design is not new: it uses a large radiator positioned in parallel tot he motherboard, with the heat to the radiator is transferred from the base with three thick heat pipes.

Remarkably, that on the upper part of the base the manufacturer has also placed a small radiator for additional heat dissipation at the very start of the heat path.

Together with the installed fan, the cooler appears to be a structure of impressive size:

The used fan is quite out of the ordinary which is seen from the increased thickness: 32 mm versus 25 mm in standard housing fans. Besides, the impeller consists of ten blades with aggressive tilt, which promises impressive air flow, especially in view of the fact that the fan is able rotating at 2400 rpm. By the way, note that even at the minimum rotational speed 800 rpm the manufacturer declares a 21 dB noise level, and at this speed most of the regular fans should be almost noiseless. In practice, all turned out to be just this way - the cooler makes some noise at even the lowest RPMs, and at high speeds it roars so that staying nearby is quite uncomfortable.

During the tests, we found out a serious engineering shortcoming of the cooler: the regulator of RPM which comes bundled with the cooler can downstate the supply voltage below the operability level. That means, even if you set the RPM to the minimum, you stop the fan completely, and in the end the fate of the CPU will depend solely on the hardware protection against overheating. The regulator starts providing the voltage required to the fan only when you turn it from the minimum position by 35-40 degrees.

The base is protected against scratches with a transparent film and as usual is a copper plate but this time we did not pay enough attention to it:

The mirror effect here is out of the question, and the cooler can's boast uniformity of the base, unfortunately. To clarify that point, we conducted an additional test of the base on a glass plate with the thinnest layer of thermal paste.

The results proved not very comforting:

In the central part, the base is concave, which results in the lack of a direct contact with the area of the processor core which is positioned right beneath the processor lid. In such a situation, only a very high-quality thermal paste of high thermal conductivity rate can save the day. But a syringe of proprietary thermal interface does not look very much of an angel the Survivor - inside it, there is some sort of a silvery mass with well seen lumps which looks pretty much the same as the notorious "silvery paint" so hard to wash off your hands once you touch it.

The system of fastening of SilverStone NT06 in any case forces the user to demount the motherboard out of the housing and then tighten the cooler with spring-loaded nuts to the thrust plates on the reverse side.

That wouldn't be bad at all, but remember that the cooler widely hangs above the motherboard and during assembly it is sometimes almost impossible to reach the fastening nuts with your hands. For instance, on the LGA775 platform we had to remove the memory modules. Despite the low hanging of the cooler above the motherboard, it doesn't rest against either memory or radiator on the chipset. But it can easily block access to the memory modules. We were happy to see that the cooler comes bundled with an additional kit of brackets to fasten the cooler on LGA775 motherboards with heavily restricted area of the space near the processor. They are more compact and are made as four lamps of minimum extra space.

On the whole, the cooler produces a mixed impression, the engineers certainly did their best, but anyway many points were missed or simply ignored. We will find that out if that is good or not, but for now we are going on with our review, and the next contender is a cooler by ThermalTake.

ThermalTake Mini Typhoon (Value Pack)

ThermalTake is one of the largest grandees of computer cooling and produced all types of cooling devices which may be used in a computer. Among the processor coolers produced by this company these days, the ThermalTake Big Typhoon stands out most, which we reviewed in October last year. ThermalTake Big Typhoon is rightfully regarded as one of the most popular super coolers and our today's hero is its direct heir which has turned more compact and a has a bit changed in appearance.

The new Mini-typhoon has turned fully copper and acquired a new 92 mm fan of improved design. Let's take a quick look at the specifications of the new kid.

This is already the second revision of ThermalTake Mini Typhoon which has acquired additional fans for blowing within the space around the CPU, for which it was given the «Value Pack» title to the name. But like the first revision, this cooler is shipped again the same plastic case with bright labels.

In terms of design, the cooler is made up of two halves, with hear from the base transferred to each with three heat pipes.

The upper part of the radiator fins has a wavy edge to reduce resistance to the air flow and for noise reduction.

All the six heat pipes are neatly recessed into the copper base and remove heat from all the area of the processor, and the margin for heat transfer rate is good enough. The foot of the cooler is processed quite neatly.

The new fan stands out with its increased thickness as much as up to 38 mm, and the impeller has merely five but big blades.

In the end, the fan has proved to be of high enough 65 CFM air flow, it makes a low non-importunate rumbling noise, so at that we rate the cooler as "excellent".

The fastening of the cooler is produced for both AMD (s754/939/940/AM2) and Intel (LGA775) platforms, without the need to demount the motherboard from housing, which is a definite plus. The interior of the plastic housing of the cooler package is shown on the photo:

As you can see, on the AMD platform the cooler is fastened with a simple pressing bracket straight by the frame around the processor socket, and to mount on the LGA775 platform there is used a special Z-shaped frame around the corner of which there are the same clips as those in a standard boxed Intel cooler. By the way, in both cases, the pressing proves to be strong enough. On this photo, you can see the additional fans which added the «Value Pack» label to the name of the cooler, and the frame for their fastening is already fitted on the cooler. All the structure in assembly looks like this:

The fans can be directed in almost any direction from the cooler. Therefore, it is possible to provide additional blowing around such important components like memory modules, radiator of the chipset, the power scheme of the motherboard. At the same time, the fans are almost noiseless and have a trendy blue backlight - this will appeal to the modding fans. For example, in the night time the housing with a window built into the lateral lid looks like this:

But on this photo, apart from the two fans from the pack of ThermalTake Mini Typhoon (Value Pack) cooler, there is one more cooling device which ThermalTake sent us together with the cooler. I mean the special cooler for cooling the memory modules, which is called ThermalTake Cyclo.

This device is put on one of the memory connector on the motherboard like a clothes-peg and with two fans it blows about the memory modules. It's not a secret for anyone that in overclocking the memory its heat emission rises substantially, and unless the overclocking is accompanied by voltage raise, it then can be one of the hottest system components. That is why in such cases ThermalTake Cyclo can come pretty handy.

This cooler for RAM modules is shipped in compact plastic package but it is still unavailable on the territory of the Russian Federation. Finally, let's look at its specifications because it may soon may appear at our place.

By the way, we were unable to hear the noise coming from this little kid against the quiet rumbling of housing fans, which is certainly is nice.

The reviewing part at that has come to an end, and the processor cooler ThermalTake Mini Typhoon (Value Pack) has produced a nice impression for its well-thought-out design and the ease of installation. And even externally it looks pretty nice - ThermalTake has always been loved by modders and enthusiasts.

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	Content:
	Page 1 - Zalman CNPS8000, Titan TTC-NK32(34)TZ Page 2 - SilverStone Nitrogon NT06, ThermalTake Mini Typhoon Page 3 - Tests Top Stories: MoBo: ECS X58B-A (Intel X58) ASUS Rampage II Extreme (Intel X58) MSI DKA790GX and ECS A780GM-A Ultra MSI P7NGM (NVIDIA GeForce 9300) Intel X58 and ASUS P6T Deluxe MSI P45 Neo2 (Intel P45) Foxconn A7GMX-K (AMD 780G) VGA Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 – a new leader in 3D graphics! ECS HYDRA GeForce 9800GTX+. Water-cooled and SLI "all-in-one" Radeon HD 4830 CrossFire - better than Radeon HD 4870! XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition in the SLI mode Leadtek WinFast PX9500 GT DDR2 – better than GeForce 9500GT DDR-3 Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic: exclusive, with unusual features Palit HD 4850 Sonic: almost Radeon HD 4870, priced as HD 4850 CPU & Memory: GSkill high-capacity memory modules CPU Intel Core i7-920 (Bloomfield) DDR3 memory: late 2008 CPU AMD Phenom X3 8750 (Toliman) AMD Phenom X4 9850 – a top-end CPU at affordable price CPU Intel Atom 230 (Diamondville) Chaintech Apogee GT DDR3 1600