Four new coolers on heat pipes: Autumn 2006

Hi-End coolers have always stood out among their cheaper brethren. It is often a huge radiator, a lot of heat pipes, and 120 mm fans. But there are coolers of a bit lower class which are not so big but carry more compact fans and of course are somehow inferior to these huge monsters at performance. The most important thing is that these coolers cost much less because you have to fork out for 45 to 75$. Today's review is devoted to a few coolers which can't catch up with the champions at performance, so they should take the niche right beneath them. Therefore, we are comparing their efficiency and the "price/quality" ratio, because it's just this parameter that is the most important for the cooler which does not pretend for uncompromising performance.

Zalman CNPS8000

The new cooler of the known Korean company is much different from what we have seen so far. The most surprising is that it's the first time the company is producing a cooler for processors that is not striving to set the world on fire. Even its reduced cardinal number hints to that: the model CPNPS8000 was released after the model CNPS9500. In fact, the new cooler offers what others haven't had so far, and we are examining it.

The cooler is shipped in a compact box which traditionally distracts the review over to describing the front side of the structure and the base. The rear side of the box presents a list of the cooler's advantages and its specifications:

Inside, the cooler is shock-proof and protected with a plastic corset that has an additional compartment for the package bundle. Cleared off all the wrappings, here comes the cooler:

Zalman CNPS8000 is of quite extraordinary design and combines the features of a regular radiator with parallel fins spiced with four heat pipes, as well as a recessed fan confined from both sides with plastic walls to keep the air flow within.

The compact copper base of the cooler transmits heat to four heat pipes which spread it over all the radiator fins. The base itself stands out with its exceptional uniformity,but the manufacturer decided not to bring it to the mirror gleam.

As we can see, the resultant design is of very small height - merely 62 mm. t's just this parameter which is of paramount importance to Zalman. The cooler CNPS8000 is primarily positioned as an efficient and light-weight solution for compact systems and thin housings. The method of fastening on the motherboard is quite original and convenient in practice: the base has special "eyes" on the sides, and these eyes are used to fasten the demountable press plate with with the cooler is fastened on a motherboard.

Both halves of the pressure plates enter into one another up to a click of the lock, and the cooler is ready for installation. As you can see on the photo, a pressing bracket for fastening on top of AMD processors hooks at the central teeth of the frame around the processor socket, and thus it fits well on any of today's AMD platforms, including Socket AM2, which is especially important in view of some shortage for coolers for this platform. To fasten on top of the Socket LGA775, a similar dismountable plate is used which has four feet, and the cooler is tightened through these feet over to the thrust plate on the reverse side of the board.

You can see all the ingredients of installation on the photo of the package bundle:

We can also note that the cooler comes bundled with Zalman Fan Mate 2, a proprietary regulator of rotational speed, which allows smoothly adjusting the fan's speed within 1400 to 2600 rpm. While busy with the assembly, you can notice the rather strong clamping of the cooler on the platform for both AMD and LGA775 processors. This is good rather than bad, but in any case you have to be very careful dismantling the cooler from AMD processors and only with a screwdriver.

The major trait of the cooler installation is the the rather wide area of the base as a sacrifice to the small height. This imposes substantial restrictions upon the free space around the processor socket. Prior to installation of Zalman CNPS8000 on your motherboard, you must be well aware that it has no high add-on components at 45 mm distance from the three sides, and 60 mm from that side towards which the bend of heat pipes will be turned. In fact, that means substantial limitations, for example, we were able to install the cooler in only one of 2(4) positions upon both the tested motherboards. On the whole, the cooler looks quite neat and compact, but there is a tradeoff of some restrictions for installation that you have to pay for. What is confusing is its price - 50 US dollars for a small cooler on heat pipes is a bit too much... Let's wait for the results of tests, but for now let's move on to the next hero of the review.

Titan TTC-NK32(34)TZ

This cooler on heat pipes has been released recently enough, together with the known thermoelectric giant Titan Amanda TEC. While the latter was aimed at the top-end of systems for cooling CPUs, then Titan TTC-NK32(34)TZ on the contrary should take up a value niche. Although it can hardly be referred to as "value" device, this is a cooler of the «tower on heat pipes» type.

There are two models of this cooler. The manufacturer decided to divide them by the type of fastening on top of processor coolers. TTC-NK32TZ for Intel LGA775 processors, and TTC-NK34TZ for AMD processors of sockets s754,939,940,AM2.

You have noticed the most important thing, have you? The real market price for this cooler at Moscow shops is merely 17$! Indeed, it's getting better… Titan has not announced the weight of the cooler, but it is light enough and comparable to Zalman CNPS8000 which weighs merely 350 g.

It is quite natural that coolers of this low enough price will not be packaged into huge glossy boxes with a lot of transparent notches - they are shipped in a simple cardboard box with minimum info on the sides.

Among the package bundle items, there is only the cooler itself with a fastening bracket and a tub of proprietary thermal paste Titan TTG-G30010. Let me remind you that it is the very thermal paste which is put as a bundled item to Titan Amanda TEC and it is one of the most efficient thermal interfaces to date. It's a bit pity that the manufacturer has not pre-applied it on the base, so it is rather difficult to spread this sticky paste on the base manually.

There is not much to tell about the design of the cooler itself - it is the most classical sample of the "colossus on heat pipes" concept, but the really high density of fins is worth of a special mention.

This feature allows to increase resistance to the air flow because a 92 mm fan of permanent 2200 rpm rotational speed is used for blowing around. The fan is not at all noiseless, but its advanced design allows producing acceptable non-importunate rumbling which is not a hindrance to work.

Of issue was the system of fastening the fan to the radiator. The thing is not about the method of fastening but that the fastening clips are made of very brittle plastic which crumbles even after a weak impact. It was not only we who noticed this problem, so the high fragility of the fastening clips is typical of all coolers of this series.

The base is made in a very simple way: inside the copper blank there is a notch into which three heat pipes are soldered, and on the top they are pressed by a metal bar into which a small pin is screwed in.

This pin is used to fix fastening brackets of the cooler. The processing quality of the base is good enough, the foot of the cooler is flat albeit not ideally smooth.

The fastening system can't be simpler: for AMD processors it is just a pressing bracket which hooks at the teeth of the frame around the processor socket:

This method of fastening allows directing air flow from the fan to only two of four possible sides, whereas the fan itself can't be moved to the other side at all.

For Intel LGA775 processors, a somehow different pressing bracket and a thrust plate on the reverse side of the board where the bracket presses the cooler.

Since the assembly holes of LGA775 form a perfect square, the flow of hot air can be directed to any of the four sides.

What is nice is that both types of the fastener provide for only manual assembly without using a screwdriver, although you would have to dismantle the motherboard out of the housing to fasten the cooler on top of LGA775.

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.

Benchmarking

We will be examining the performance of the cooling systems as usual on two CPU platforms: AMD and Intel, with their configurations looking like this:

We intentionally selected not the "hottest" processors but overclocked, because we are not testing value systems. Note that on AMD Athlon 62 3200+ the voltage was raised from 1.4V to 1.7V, which is a substantial voltage rise. In this situation, heat emission of this processor can be compared with that of its dual-core brethren AMD Athlon X2.

The testing method should be familiar to you, and the coolers are compared in the three most popular operation modes:

Simple. In this mode, the computer is simply idle, with the power-saving technologies disabled. This mode of testing shows a typical temperature of the CPU while you are surfing around the Internet, working with the office application, watching films or performing other simple tasks on the computer. That is the second most popular operation mode. While you are playing your favorite 3D game, inside the CPU unit the processor and the video card are exploited to the full emitting much heat. The special feature of this mode is that the atmosphere inside the housing is strongly heated up by the video card. Maximum load. That is the mode of maximum load upon the processor in which the processor makes use of all of its computational resources and emits maximum heat it is able for. To run tests in this mode, we used the S&M 1.8.1 utility.

The coolers which allow for regulation of the fan's rotational speed are tested on the maximum and minimum speeds, respectively. The room temperature on the moment of tests was 26-27°С. On the graphs, as you can see, under the cooler name there is the real rotational speed of the fan (in parentheses).

First, let's see what the coolers can show with AMD processors:

Practically all the coolers showed the same cooling efficiency, and among them it was ThermalTake Mini Typhoon which ran a bit ahead but not so much to be called a leader. It is much more surprising to see that both the coolers with variable rotational speed show almost the same results at the maximum and minimum rotational speeds. Needless to say, we ran a number of additional rechecks and their results showed the same pattern. The only thing to blame is the specific nature of air flows within the housing and which strongly affect the cooling efficiency. As a recheck of this theory, we conducted an additional test of two coolers with the opened side wall of the CPU unit, and here are the results:

The results for Zalman CNPS8000 have essentially reversed, and the pattern of results produced with the SilverStone cooler has changed by a bit less than expected – the coarse base makes itself felt. It should be noted that the housing used on the test bench has no airway from the side wall to the cooler fan (CAG) because most modern coolers are already equipped with it. With this uncomplicated device, the blades of the CPU fan will be blown by cool air from outside of the CPU unit but not the heated air from within, which means the CPU temperature will be less dependent on other system components and air flows inside.

The second stage was testing coolers on the Intel platform.

Again, the coolers show very close results, with some advantage of ThermalTake Mini Typhoon and Titan TTC-NK32TZ. Zalman CNPS8000 has given in its positions a little bit, but let's not judge it strictly – this is first a very compact cooler which despite its minimum size was able competing on par with such strong contenders. On the other hand, we can find any excuse for the poor results of the cooler SilverStone NT06 - it is one of the largest and one of the most expensive cooling device of all the reviewed, but it is well behind all the other competitors. Judging by the numerous flaws in the design, we can blame the engineering shortcomings and carelessness in production for that.

In the end, we produce four coolers which are approximately close at performance but are very difference in the design and price. Finally, let's give a brief summary for each.

Zalman CNPS8000

Despite its small size, the cooler is quite capable of competing against quite massive cooling systems, and most importantly, it can cope with any modern processor without much pressure upon the ear of the users. For compact multimedia systems, that is an important factor. Among the design specifics, we note the compatibility to all the most relevant processor sockets and ease of installation. Of the shortcomings are restrictions imposed upon the space around the processor, but you can't do anything about that - this is a tradeoff for compactness and very small height of the cooler. For all these niceties you would have to fork out for as much as 50 US dollars. Therefore, this cooler can be recommended to owners of compact systems where only low-profile coolers are installed. On the other hand, for owners of standard coolers it makes sense to turn to other coolers which could provide higher cooling efficiency at lower cost.

Titan TTC-NK32(34)TZ

This absolutely typical cooler on heat pipes has shown excellent efficiency as compared to other participants of the tests, but its most important advantage is not in the design features but in its incredibly attractive price – as low as 17(!) US dollars. This is almost three times as cheap compared the cooler by Zalman. Although the noise level produced by this cooling device is distinctly heard from outside the housing, it can't be called annoying. Among the shortcomings of Titan TTC-NK32(34)TZ, we call its compatibility to only one platform: either LGA775 or s754/939/940/AM2, despite that the fastening system itself is different in only the pressure plates. If necessary, this cooler could be easily turned into a universal cooler. To all appearances, Titan preferred the path of dividing the platforms for some marketing considerations. Another shortcoming is the brittleness of fastening the fan to the radiator, but that is not critical unless you plan a frequent replacement of the cooler. All in all, we can state with confidence that Titan has produced incredibly cheap coolers on heat pipes which demonstrate a decent efficiency and are a good value for money. That is why we award them with our "Best Buy" reward.

SilverStone Nitrogon NT06

The new cooler by SilverStone looks impressive: a massive radiator with three thick heat pipes, a powerful thickened 120x120x32 mm fan, so we can say it has all it takes to be the best. But it isn't. The only cause of that is seen in the defect of the cooler base which is not uniform and thus worsens the heat transfer. Perhaps other specimens will be free from this shortcoming, but we won't state that with certainty. Another shortcoming is the noisy fan which buzzes even at low RPM. The third shortcoming is the lack of support for Socket AM2, the fourth is the inconvenient installation on motherboards with closely positioned memory banks and massive radiators on the chipset. We'd rather not mention the engineering flaw in the speed regulator which can stop the fan completely.

Well, we've got quite a long list of shortcomings, but what about the advantages? Frankly, I can hardly recall any, let alone the powerful blowing of the space near the processor. There is one more thing to recall - the SilverStone Nitrogon NT06 cooler has demonstrated the poorest efficiency based on the results of test, despite being the most expensive of all the <65$ coolers in this review. In the end, we'd rather not recommend this cooler for purchase. Let's hope that SilverStone will do a serious error-correction and make the right conclusions.

ThermalTake Mini Typhoon (Value Pack)

Another superb coolers by ThermalTake stands out with its efficiency and is indeed pleasant to the eye. With the release of the second revision, the cooler has acquired two additional fans which overclocking fanciers can make use of for additional blowing such important system components like the radiator of the north bridge or memory modules. Of high praise is also that the cooler is fastened to all the platforms manually without any other tools and most importantly, without having to remove the motherboard out of the CPU unit! Few coolers can boast that. With good performance level, ThermalTake Mini Typhoon does not get on the user's ears and so deserves a high rank based on the results of today's test. The price of this cooling device is also affordable enough: about 39 $. Our verdict: "Recommended".

We appreciate Sunrise-Rostov for the hardware presented for tests.