X-bit labs

ASUS Silent Square CPU Cooler: New Candidate for Super Cooler Title? (page 4)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 10/20/2006 | 12:20 PM ]

There’s a holographic ASUS logotype on the top of the casing. Coupled with the highlighting of the fan, this looks quite beautiful. The slits in the cap seem to have been cut only to make the highlighting look more effective.

A 92x92x25mm fan is placed between the two halves of the heatsink.

The default speed of the fan is 1800rpm and it produces 18dBA of noise. I checked the cooler out on an open testbed without system fans and at a minimum speed of the two blowers of the graphics card and found that the fan of the Silent Square was not very quiet. At least its 1800rpm sound louder than the 1320rpm of the Big Typhoon’s 120mm fan. The difference won’t be felt much in a closed system case, but anyway.

The cooler’s base is made of two nickel-plated copper halves, about 5mm thick each, that have grooves for heat pipes:

This enlarges the contact area and ensures better heat transfer than, for example, in the well-known Scythe Ninja cooler. I can’t tell you how the plates are fastened (soldering or thermal glue) since there are no traces of anything. Everything is made very tidily in this product.

The cooler’s base isn’t finished well, though:

But the surface is surprisingly smooth and flat. The cooler leaves an almost ideal print in the thermal grease.