Cooling Efficiency

At first let’s check out the cooling efficiency of our today’s testing participants. Since top-coolers prove more efficient in cases that have a fan on the side panel (and my Antec case doesn’t have that), we decided to test the coolers not only inside a closed system case but also inside the case with the removed side panel. These results have been singled out into a separate group on the diagram:

Unfortunately, Zipang 2 in its standard configuration yields in efficiency to Kabuto and this yield is pretty significant: 5 °C in a closed system case and 4 °C in a case with removed side panel. However, as soon as you replace the default fan with Scythe Slip Stream 120 borrowed from Kabuto, and the gap reduces to 3 and 1 °C respectively. Another remarkable thing is that the cooling efficiency of Zipang 2 with Scythe Slip Stream 120 fan at 1800 RPM is at least as high as that of the same cooler with a 140 mm Scythe Kaze Maru fan at 1830 RPM. Although a 140 mm fan seemed to suit better for a heatsink of that size, things turned out completely different in reality. In other words, Slip Stream with its small rotor and good airflow cools the hottest part of the Zipang 2 cooler (two middle heatsink arrays), while Kaze Maru is not too good at that.

Both Scythe coolers fall about 3-4 °C behind the copper giant XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER in medium fan rotation speed mode and about 4-6 °C at maximum fan rotation speed. As for the top Thermalright IFX-14 equipped with a pair of highly efficient fans, all other three today’s testing participants cannot even dream of competing against it. However, I have to say that their cooling efficiency improves greater inside the system case with removed side panel than the efficiency of IFX-14, which allow to lower the gap between them and the test session leader.