Igloo 5710 Plus Silent and F101 PWM Coolers Review

The Taiwan-headquartered GlacialTech Inc. is known for its affordable but effective CPU coolers in the first place. The Igloo series has earned a good reputation in the entry-level sector due to a lucky mix of two important factors: price and performance (read – efficiency). GlacialTech also offers a premium product called UFO V51 but this cooler has not yet gained much recognition among overclockers. Right now, the company is making a second attempt to roll out a high-performance air cooler capable of competing with the best opponents. I mean the new F101 model (or even two versions of it with different fans). I’ve got a sample to test and will focus on it in this review. Additionally, I will take a look at anIgloo 5710 Plus Silent which represents the current stage of the Igloo 5710 series.

Igloo 5710 Plus Silent

Package and Accessories

The cooler comes in a small square box with a plastic handle. A photo of the cooler and heatsink is pictured on the face side. The supported types of CPU sockets are indicated with icons. On the back of the box you can find a list compatible CPUs and the specs of both versions: Silent and PWM.

Included with the cooler are retention kits of three types, a back-plate for LGA775 mainboards, screws with bushings, wire clips for fans, and an installation guide.

The fan and heatsink lie separately inside the box. The fan sits inside a cardboard casing, while the heatsink is placed into a polyurethane foam casing, which protects it very well against all transportations mishaps. Igloo 5710 Plus is made in China and is recommended to be priced at $34. It comes with a 1 year warranty.

Design and Functionality

The cooler measures 75x99x139 mm and weighs 425 g. Igloo 5710 Plus heatsink is of pretty simple design. Three copper nickel-plated heatpipes 6 mm in diameter are soldered to the copper nickel-plated base and hold 49 aluminum plates, each 0.35 mm thick. The gaps between the heatsink plates are about 1.9 mm wide. That’s about it.

I also wanted to say a few words about the sides of the heatsink plates that are of variable height. I should also mention two slits on the heatsink sides for the wire clips holding the fans.

The base plate measuring 33×34 mm is covered with a pre-applied layer of gray thermal interface (which GalcialTech claims is extremely efficient). Beneath the thermal interface we find exceptionally even mirror-shining surface.

Even though the cooler uses a push-pin type of retention, the thermal interface imprint of the CPU heat-spreader on the base is quite satisfactory.

Igloo 5710 Plus comes equipped with one fan of very unusual size: 100x100x25 mm. Its frame is half-open on both sides.This nine-blade fan is made by Power Logic, however, we couldn’t find a fan of this size with the PLA10025S12L model name in their product range. The fan rotor diameter is 41.5 mm and it has a 310 mm long sleeved cable attached to it.

Igloo 5710 Plus Silent is equipped with a fan rotating at 1300 (+250/-150) RPM speed. It created 25 CFM airflow and generates 25 dBA of noise. The PWM model is equipped with a fan that supports pulse-width modulation rotation speed control in the interval from 800 (±300) to 2200 (±250) RPM creating maximum 45 CFM airflow and 32 dBA noise. We don’t know what the MTBF of an improved fan EBR (Entering Bearing) is, but it is most likely no more than 30,000 hours.

There is a specific lug on the ends of the fan blades, which serves some unclear purpose (most likely it should lower the generated noise and increase the pressure).

As you may have already understood, the fans are attached with wire clips. There are four of them bundled with the cooler, which means that you can install two fans at a time.

Compatibility and Installation Tips

Igloo 5710 Plus coolers are compatible with all contemporary platforms, except LGA1156. The cooler is installed through the PCB using a backplate onto Intel LGA775 and AMD platforms. Here are the retention kits that you will need for each of them.

Unfortunately, the cooler can only be mounted onto anLGA1366 platform using awkward plastic push-pins. When we tried to install our Igloo 5710 Plus Silent, they locked very easily and only seemed to really hold the cooler in place. We had to slightly bend the retention loops of the mounting plates to increase the holding pressure.

There is very little room between the PCB and the lowest heatsink plate – only 32 mm, but since the heatsink is very compact, we didn’t have any “conflict of interest” during cooler installation.

By the way, you can download the step-by-step Igloo 5710 installation procedure with illustrations from the official GlacialTech web-site. It will guide you through the entire process, which is, in fact, pretty similar to the installation of the preceding cooler models from the same series.

Igloo 5710 Plus Silent was tested in two different positions with one default fan and two alternative 92 mm fans.

I have to point out right away that the cooler efficiency doesn’t depend on the way it is installed, but as for the effects of different fans, you should definitely check the corresponding section of our review. Now let’s move on to the next testing participant – a much more exciting and promising new solution from GlacialTech.

F101 PWM

Package and Accessories

The new GlacialTech cooler is called F101 – the name borrowed from the General Electric turbo-fan engine, which was installed onto a supersonic strategic bomber with variable sweep-wing design – B-1 Lancer. This aircraft owns a total of 61 world records. GlacialTech uses the aircraft theme on the front of a relatively large cooler box already.

There you can also see a list of supported processor sockets. The back of the box bears technical specifications of the newcomer side by side with a list of its key features and peculiarities.

A smaller box contains all the bundled accessories.As you see, everything necessary to install GlacialTech F101 onto any contemporary platform is here. Besides, there is also a 1.5 g syringe with GlacialTech’s new IceTherm thermal paste. We are going to check the efficiency of this thermal interface in the upcoming roundup.

Design and Functionality

The cooler measures 143x86x148 mm and weighs 750 g. let’s take a look at its heatsink first.

It looks pretty attractive and unusual. Five copper heatpipes 6 mm in diameter are covered with a nickel alloy and soldered to the copper nickel-plated base. They hold an array of aluminum plates of two different types pressed against them firmly. Lower part of the heatsink consists of 20 plates measuring 109×52 mm that sit on five heatpipes on one side and three heatpipes on the other. Next comes the major heatsink array of 39 plates measuring 143×52 mm and sitting on all five heatpipes on both sides.

The gaps between the heatsink plates are 1.7 mm and each is 0.35 mm thick. I believe GlacialTech engineers decided to implement a non-symmetrical heatsink design in order to ensure that F101 would be compatible with all mainboards including those with tall heatsinks over the chipset, MOSFET and even tall memory heat-spreaders.

Had the heatsink been 143 mm wide everywhere, F101 wouldn’t be able to fit onto most mainboards, because there are only 32 mm between the lowest heatsink plate and the cooler base. On the other hand, there is some efficiency loss attributed to additional curving of the heatpipes and shifted plates.

I also can’t help mentioning the fact that the heatpipes are shifted away from one another inside the plates array for more even heat distribution over the heatsink. This solution has long been used by the leading manufacturers in this field.

The base plate is 50×38 mm big. It has exceptionally even surface with nice polished finish.The base finish quality together with very secure hold provided by screw-on retention produce a good thermal paste imprint off the CPU heat-spreader.

F101 comes with a seven-blade 120x120x25 mm fan. Just like by Igloo 5710 Plus, this fan is also made by Power Logic and again we couldn’t find a PLA12025S12M model anywhere in their product catalogue.

The rotation speed of the F101 fan is adjusted automatically in the interval from 800 (±300) to 1700 (±10%) RPM creating maximum 70 CFM airflow and generating up to 32 dBA of noise. There is also a Silent model available in this lineup with a fan working at 1100 (±200) RPM (44 CFM, 21 dBA). The manufacturer doesn’t specify the MTBF of the enhanced slide bearing employed in this fan. The fan rotor is 40 mm in diameter and its sleeved cable is 300 mm long.

You should use plastic push-pins to attach the fans to the heatsink (you can install up to two fans).

For some unknown reason, GlacialTech claims that this retention is “vibration-proof”, although in fact, it provides sturdy hold unlike silicon mounts from Xigmatek or Noctua. Looks like only GlacialTech marketing specialists really know how this retention absorbs vibrations.

Once the fan was in place we noticed that the blades were hanging 4-5 mm below the heatsink and 11 mm above it.

Taking into account the heatpipes ends that stand out at the top of the heatsink, the cooler is only 143 mm tall that I why I can’t really figure out why GlacialTech didn’t make their cooler another 11 mm taller by adding 5-6 plates to the heatsink array and thus increasing its effective surface. By the way, note that while the airflow is wasted at the top of the cooler, the heatpipes and plates on the right-hand side aren’t cooled by the fan at all. Very strange solution.

Compatibility and Installation Tips

GlacialTech F101 is compatible with all contemporary platforms including the recently launched LGA1156. You can check out the detailed installation instructions on the official web-site. Here I would only like to add that you will use several types of retentions that need to be screwed on to the cooler base, each for a specific platform type.

These retention plates are attached with screws. Very simple and reliable. The heatsink is installed without the fan(s), otherwise you won’t be able to reach for the retention screws.

There is no mention of the preferable cooler position anywhere in the installation guide. In our case the cooler proved more effective (3-4°C) when installed as follows.

Technical Specifications and Recommended Pricing

I would like to remind you that we only got our hands on two GlacialTech coolersL Igloo 5710 Plus Silent and F101 PWM. However, we decided to provide the technical specifications of two additional modifications of the same coolers in the summary table below.

Testbed and Methods

We are going to test the cooling efficiency our today’s testing participants inside a closed system case with the following configuration:

• Mainboard: ASUS P6T Deluxe (Intel X58 Express), LGA 1366, BIOS 1611;
• Processor: Intel Core i7-920, 2.67 GHz, 1.2 V, 4 x 256 KB L2, 8MB L3 (Bloomfield, C0, SLBCH);
• Thermal interface: Tuniq TX-2;
• Graphics card: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP2! Edition 896 MB, 648/1404/2108 MHz (~1030 RPM);
• Memory: DDR3 3 x 2 GB OCZ Platinum Low-Voltage Triple Channel (Spec: 1600 MHz / 7-7-7-24 / 1.65 V);
• System HDD: Western Digital VelociRaptor (SATA-II, 300 GB storage capacity, 10,000 RPM, 16 MB cache, NCQ) inside Scythe Quiet Drive 3.5” silencer and cooler chassis;
• Backup HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS (SATA-II, 1000 GB, 5400 RPM, 32 MB, NCQ);
• Optical drive: Samsung SH-S183L;
• System case: Antec Twelve Hundred (front panel: two Noiseblocker NB-Multiframe S-Series MF12-S1 fans at 900 RPM and Scythe Gentle Typhoon fan at 900 RPM; back panel: two Scythe SlipStream 120 fans at 900 RPM; top panel: standard 200 mm fan at 400 RPM);
• Control and monitoring panel: Zalman ZM-MFC2;
• Power supply: Zalman ZM1000-HP 1000 W (with a default 140 mm fan).

By replacing the traditional Arctic Silver 5 thermal interface with Tuniq TX-2 we got a 1.5-2°C improvement in the peak CPU temperature, which is not too much, but is still worth it. We improved the temperature by another couple of degrees by increasing the case fans rotation speed from the traditional 820-840 RPM to 900 RPM. Besides, during the cooler tests at 1500-2000 or higher fan rotation speeds, we increase the speed of the top 200 mm case fan from the usual 400 to 600 RPM.

During this test session we managed to overclock our 45nm quad-core processor (with polished heat-spreader) with the multiplier set at 21x and “Load-Line Calibration” enabled to 3.86 GHz using the weakest cooling system of the today’s testing participants. The nominal processor Vcore was increased to 1.3125 V in the mainboard BIOS.

The memory voltage was at 1.62 V and its frequency was around 1.45 GHz (7-7-7-14_1T timings). All other parameters available in the mainboard BIOS and connected with CPU or memory overclocking remained unchanged (set to Auto).

All tests were performed under Windows 7 RTM x64 operating system. We used the following software during our test session:

• Real Temp 3.30 RC11 – to monitor the processor core temperature;
• Linpack 64-bit with LinX shell version 0.6.3 – to create maximum CPU load (two test cycles, 5 Linpack runs in each cycle with 3072 MB RAM capacity involved);
• RivaTuner 2.24 – for visual control over temperature changes (with RTCore plagin);
• Everest 5.02.1850 beta – to monitor default fans rotation speeds;
• CPU-Z 1.52.2 – to monitor processor core voltage and frequency.

The CPU was loaded with two consecutive Linpack test runs with the settings as indicated above. The stabilization period for the CPU temperature between the two test cycles was about 8-10 minutes. We took the maximum temperature of the hottest processor core of the four for the results charts. We will also provide a table with detailed results for each processor core and the average mean value. The ambient temperature was checked next to the system case with an electronic thermometer with 0.1 °C precision that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperature was at 19.8-20.3 °C.

Besides the today’s newcomers we will also include the results of Cooelr Master Hyper 212 Plus cooler for comparison purposes. Its recommended retail price is only $29.

Besides the default fan, the cooler was equipped with two Thermalright TR-FDB-2000 fans working in moderate acoustic mode at 1020 RPM as well as at a full speed of 2040 RPM. We used our special controller to adjust and monitor the fans rotation speeds. We also tested GlacialTech F101 with the same exact fans installed for air intake and exhaust.

As for Igloo 5710 Plus Silent, we tested it with its default fan as well as with two 92 mm Thermalright fans from the T-Rad2 GTX kit working at 1490 RPM. Unfortunately, I didn’t have more powerful fans in this size available at the time of tests.

Cooling Efficiency Tests

First of all let’s see the results obtained from all coolers with their default fans (Igloo 5710 Plus Silent was also tested with two Thermalright fans here).

As you can also see from the detailed table, the results are quite predictable. GlacialTech Igloo 5710 Plus turned out the weakest cooler in this test session, but nevertheless, it coped just fine with an overclocked quad-core processor. This is a pretty good result, but Igloo 5710 Silent is priced at $34, which is more than the recommended retail price of Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus ($29), which leaves the competitor no chance whatsoever. Moreover, Hyper 212 Plus can successfully compete against F101 PWM too, even though the latter is almost twice as expensive. However, at equal fan rotation speeds F101 PWM appears 1°С more efficient than Hyper 212 Plus.

Now let’s see how well these coolers will perform with two fans working at 800-2000 RPM with 100 RPM (±10 RPM) increment. While the maximum rotation speed has been determined by the maximum specification for the fan, the minimum has been selected at 800 RPM for a reason. The thing is that Thermalright TR-FDB fans are extremely quiet at this speed. Besides, 120 mm fans are very rarely used at lower speeds in home desktop systems.

During this test session we checked the maximum CPU frequency at 800 RPM fan speed, according to the weakest cooler’s ability. We got system to run stably at 3970 MHz with 1.3625 V Vcore. Here are the results.

As you see, at low and medium rotation speed of our 120 mm fans, Hyper 212 Plus is ahead, which is quite logical considering that the F101 has a denser heatsink than the Cooler Master solution with the same effective surface size. The coolers’ efficiency levels out at 1500 RPM. Further increase in the fans rotation speeds allows new GlacialTech solution to take the lead. We see the same result during the test for maximum CPU overclocking when the cooler fans were running at 2050 RPM.

Both coolers performed fairly well, but it is important to remember that we not only changed our testing methodology a little this time, but also performed the tests at very low room temperature. For example, our respected guest – Thermalright IFX-14 – in the same testing conditions and with the same fans maintained the peak CPU temperature at 5-6°C lower level than both these testing participants although the CPU was overclocked to higher frequency and worked with higher Vcore.

As for the acoustic performance of GlacialTech coolers, we could say the following. Igloo 5710 Plus Silent is a truly quiet solution, although you can in fact distinguish the noise from its fan against a quiet system case. If we lower its rotation speed to 1100-1150 RPM, the cooler becomes really quiet. The F101 fan is also very quiet up to 1150 RPM speed and is acoustically comfortable up to 1200 RPM. Taking into account that in case of low CPU utilization the fan doesn’t accelerate beyond this point and works at less than 800 RPM in non-resource-consuming applications, then we could definitely consider GlacialTech F101 a great choice for noise-concerned users. Power Logic fans didn’t produce any crackling sounds in the entire speed range.

Conclusion

Summing up the results of our today’s test session it is fairly difficult to make a definite conclusion in favor of new GlacialTech coolers. The primary concern is the too high recommended retail price, which is set at $34 for Igloo 5710 Plus Silent and at $55 for F101. At the same time, Igloo 5710 Plus Silent can’t boast any advantages over a much cheaper Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus ($29). The only thing I could probably mention is a more compact size, but it is very unlikely to be a good fit for an HTPC system anyway. F101 is quite comparable against the Cooler Master solution in efficiency and acoustics and even outperforms it with two fans at 1500+ RPM. However, the price difference between the two is quite tangible. Besides, F101 will be competing against totally different rivals in the higher price range where it is initially positioned (take, for instance, Scythe Mugen 2).

All in all, looks like GlacialTech won’t conquer the market with their new Igloo 5710 Plus and F101 and won’t repeat the world records of the legendary B-1 aircraft on the F101 engine from General Electric. But as usual, we leave the choice with our readers, when the above mentioned cooler efficiency and acoustics data will be just something else to consider alongside with the specifics of your particular system case, availability of these and other cooling solutions, personal preferences and some other reasons that we may not be aware of in your particular case.