Sunbeamtech Twister 120 and ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium Coolers

In our previous article dedicated to processor coolers we discussed two new products that couldn’t become the leaders even in their categories, not to mention become absolute winners in the competition against the existing highly efficient coolers. The products we are going to talk about today are highly ambitious and are ready to fight for the super-cooler title. However, they both use different approaches. The first cooler, Sunbeamtech Twister 120, bets on two carefully selected fans, while the second cooler, ZEROtherm ZT-10D, bets on a powerful heatsink built around six heatpipes with 8 mm diameter. At the same time, the new coolers are priced very similarly. So, our today’s test session is going to reveal, which approach works better.

Sunbeamtech Twister 120

If any of you believe that Sunbeamtech Company is a newcomer in the cooling market, they are seriously mistaken, because they were the inventors of such great products as the legendary Tuniq Tower 120, the still current Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme, Tuniq Propeller 120 and the latest Twister 120.

The cooler ships in a sturdy cardboard box with an additional decorative slip-cover put over it. The second slip-cover is covered with all sorts of info about the cooler, and photographs of the cooler with the fans.

The cooler specifications, as well as the technical specs of its fans and thermal paste are listed on one of the sides. By the way, Sunbeamtech Twister 120 is shipped with very efficient and pretty expensive Tuniq TX-4 thermal paste. Besides the paste, the accessories kit includes a backplate, screws, nuts and washers, rotation speed variator on a back panel bracket and an installation guide.

The cooler is made in China and is priced at about $40 in retail.Sunbeamtech Twister 120 is a tower cooler measuring 125x116x151 mm. Its distinguishing feature is the use of two 120 mm fans installed according to ISO-Turbo technology principles.

This sophisticated name in reality implies that the fans rotate in different directions.

In other words, the first fan that sucks the air into the heatsink rotates clockwise, while the second fan blowing the air out – counterclockwise. According to Sumbeamtech engineers this creates higher airflow concentration on heatsink fins and heatpipes, and as a result improves the overall cooling efficiency of the system.

The rotation speed of the fans based on fluid dynamic bearings with 50,000 hours MTBF can be adjusted in two ways, but only for both fans synchronously. Using the rotation speed variator included with the cooler, you can set the desired rotation speed manually, or have it adjusted automatically in the interval between 1000 and 2000 RPM using pulse-width modulation approach. The maximum airflow is claimed to be at impressive 90.65 CFM, while the noise level is obviously claimed to be too low – 20 dBA.

The fans are attached to the heatsink with eight anti-vibration silicone mounts, which are inserted into special slits in the heatsink.

Other than that, Twister 120 seems to be pretty ordinary against the background of similar cooling solutions. Moreover, since it has only three 8 mm heatpipes and features a relatively small heatsink, it can be considered more of a mainstream product, than a super cooler, despite Sunbeamtech’s positioning.

As for the peculiarities of the Twister 120 heatsink, we should point out that it consists of 46 aluminum plates, each 0.4 mm thick, that are spaced with 2.0 mm gaps between them. I also have to stress that the fan is a single-directional one. It means that the fan is designed in such a way that the airflow moves only in one direction as indicated by the arrows on the top heatsink plate.

Among other peculiarities I could also mention the bumpy surface of the aluminum heatsink plates as well as the fact that their semicircular ends are shifted away from one another it order to reduce the airflow resistance.

The heatsink without the fans weighs 531 g.We didn’t find any traces of soldering or thermal glue where the heatpipes meet the heatsink plates. I dare assume that the heatsink of the Twister 120 cooler is built by pressing plates firmly against the heatpipes.

As you may have already noticed, this cooler uses heatpipes direct touch technology. The heatpipes form part of the cooler base and are locked in place with an aluminum cover-plate. They are also very nicely polished.

There are 2 mm gaps between the heatpipes. He contact surface is very even, and it is the convex heat-spreader of our test processors, which we should blame for the imperfections in the thermal compound imprint on the photo below.

Sunbeamtech Twister 120 is compatible with all contemporary PC platforms, without any exceptions. It installs exactly the same way as the already mentioned Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme cooler. The installation for all platforms requires you to attach the cooler firmly with spring-screws to the backplate on the reverse side of the mainboard PCB.

Although, when you install Twister 120, you should first remove the fans from the heatsink. Otherwise, they will be in the way when you try to tighten the retention screws. The cooler is pressed very well against the processor.

This is what Sunbeamtech Twister 120 cooler looks like inside the system case.

The distance between the mainboard PCB and the bottom of the attached cooling fan (the fans hang a little below the heatsink) is 42 mm. this should be more than enough to avoid conflicts with tall heatsinks over the VRM components around the processor socket. I also have to stress that the first fan doesn’t block the nearest memory DIMM slot on the mainboard.

ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium cooler uses a totally different design concept than the previously discussed Twister 120 from Sunbeamtech. This cooler is shipped without any fans at all and it should probably be called a heatsink rather than a cooler, although it could definitely cope with a few CPUs even without any fans. But let’s start from the beginning here.

The new cooler is shipped in a medium-sized box with a cut out window on the front panel that reveals part of the heatsink inside.

The heatsink is accompanied by the same type of retention as the one with Sunbeamtech Twister 120, an installation guide and a large syringe of ZEROtherm ZT100 thermal compound (3.1 W/m*K).

ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium is manufactured in China. Its recommended retail price is set at $49. The company also offers ZEROtherm ZT-10D Smart cooler model that differs from the Premium by a fan included with it. I think the Smart could be even more interesting than the Premium, especially since its price is only $10 higher. However, we only got our hands on the Premium model so far.

ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium heatsink is very large. It measures 128x74x160 mm and weighs 885 g. The heatsink impresses with its solid even monolithic looks. Large heatsinks usually tend to have some plates bent, shifted or just loose, but not in this case: the manufacturer took great care of all contact spots, so there is nothing like that anywhere to be found. Overall, the cooler looks very beautiful due to its stylish black nickel finish.

The key feature of the new ZEROtherm tower is the use of six heatpipes with 8 mm diameter. In the past five heatpipes of this size used to be the maximum we would find in coolers, and in most cases, there would be only four. ZT-10D breaks all records in this aspect. I believe that this particular fact allowed cooler developers to claim that their product was not only developed for six-core processors but could also dissipate up to 300 W of heat easily. It is very impressive, but we all remember that they claimed the same for Zalman CNPS9900 MAX, although it didn’t manage to boast super-efficiency.

So, ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium consists of six copper heatpipes, each 8 mm in diameter, that go through the copper base. The heatpipes hold an array of 47 aluminum plates, each 0.5 mm thick. The interpolate gaps are 2.0 mm.

The bent edges of the heatsink plates cover about 65% of its sides, and we see a semicircular opening going into the heatsink body between them.

There is a ZEROtherm logo and a few additional decorative elements embossed on the top heatsink plate.

Here you can also clearly see that the heatpipes inside the heatsink are arranged in a semicircular rather than linear pattern. This way they could make the heatsink plates narrower, although ZT-10D could use a bit bigger effective surface, because right now it is only 8800 cm2, which is a modest number for contemporary super-coolers. Speaking of the lower part of the heatsink, we should mention the protective film sticker that needs to be removed from the base before installation, as well as high quality of the contact spots implementation between the heatpipes and the base: they lie in specially cut grooves and are soldered to them.

The thinnest part of the copper base plate beneath the heatpipes measures 2.5 mm. The contact surface doesn’t look too nicely finished, but it feels very smooth to the touch.

The heat-spreader is 45×34 mm big.Despite a barely noticeable unevenness of the base (when checked with a steel ruler), the thermal compound imprint left by our test processor turned out quite nice.

As we have already mentioned above, ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium comes without any fans, but with the retentions for them, such as soft silicone mounts that should go into special slots in the heatsink body. Since the heatsink is of symmetrical shape and there are eight mounts among the bundled accessories, we assume that it can accommodate two fans. This is what it is going to look like.

We are not going to discuss the compatibility and installation procedure for ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium, because it comes with exactly the same retention as the Sunbeamtech Twister 120 and many other contemporary CPU coolers. If you experience any difficulties with installation, you can always consult the detailed bi-lingual guide available here. In conclusion I would like to add that the new cooler is fully universal and supports the new LGA1155 processors. The distance from the lowest heatsink plate to the PCB surface will be 45 mm.

Testbed and Testing Methodology

We performed all cooler tests inside a closed system case. Here is our testbed configuration:

• Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-X58-UD9 (Intel X58 Express, LGA 1366, BIOS F5i);
• Processor: Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition, 3.33 GHz, 1.225 V, 6 x 256 KB L2, 12 MB L3 (Gulftown, B1);
• Thermal interface: Gelid GX-Extreme;
• Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 5770 1 GB GDDR5 128 bit, 850/4800 MHz;
• Memory: DDR3 3 x 2 GB OCZ Platinum Low-Voltage Triple Channel (Spec: 1600MHz / 7-7-7-24 / 1.65 V);
• System drive: RAID-0 of 2 x Kingston V-series SNV425S2128GB SSD (SATA-II, 128 GB, MLC, Toshiba TC58NCF618G3T controller);
• Drive for programs and games: Western Digital VelociRaptor (300GB, SATA-II, 10000 RPM, 16MB cache, NCQ) inside Scythe Quiet Drive 3.5” HDD silencer and cooler;
• Backup drive: Samsung Ecogreen F4 HD204UI (SATA-II, 2 TB, 5400 RPM, 32 MB, NCQ);
• System case: Antec Twelve Hundred (front panel: three Noiseblocker NB-Multiframe S-Series MF12-S2 fans at 900 RPM; back panel: two Noiseblocker NB-BlackSilent PRO PL-1 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).

We overclocked our six-core processor (with its default non-lapped heat-spreader) with the multiplier set at 25x and “Load-Line Calibration” (Level 2) enabled to 4.3 GHz. The nominal processor Vcore was increased to 1.4 V in the mainboard BIOS.

Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading technologies were disabled during our test session. The memory voltage was at 1.64 V and its frequency was 1.4 GHz (7-7-7-16_1T timings). All other parameters available in the mainboard BIOS and related to CPU or memory overclocking remained unchanged.

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

• CPU Stress Test (CST) version 0.18b – to load the processor (matrix # 15, 10-12 minutes);
• Real Temp GT 3.59 – to monitor the processor core temperature;
• CPU-Tweaker 1.5 – to visually monitor temperatures and frequencies using graphics.

The CPU was loaded with two consecutive CST 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 CPU core for the results charts. Moreover, we will also provide a table with the temperature readings for all cores including their average values. The ambient temperature was checked next to the system case with an electronic thermometer with 0.1 °C precision that allows hourly monitoring of the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. The room temperature during our test session varied between the annoying 23.8-24.2 °C.

Since both new coolers are candidates for the super-cooler title, they will be competing against the today’s best cooling solution – Thermalright Archon.

As we see, this cooler was tested not only with a single default fan, but also with two identical Thermalright TY-140 fans in two speed modes: in quiet mode at 800 RPM and at maximum rotation speed of 1300 RPM. Sunbeamtech Twister 120 was tested only with two default fans at 1000, 1500 and 2000 RPM, because I doubt that anyone who buys this cooler will remove one of the fans (in this case it makes more sense to consider other products, where you won’t need to pay extra for a second fan). We tested ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium with the same fans and at the same rotation speeds. However, the ZEROtherm cooler was tested with two as well as with only one fan.

Cooling Efficiency Tests

The results speak for themselves. Obviously, Sunbeamtech Twister 120 didn’t show the temperatures worthy of a super cooler. Even with two fans rotating at 1000 RPM, Twister 120 could barely cope with a moderately overclocked six-core processor, which hottest core reached a peak temperature of 93°C. When we sped up the fans to 1540 RPM, the temperature dropped by 7°C and didn’t exceed 87°C. Further increase in the fan rotation speed up to the maximum of 2080 RPM allows lowering the processor core temperature by another 4°C. This high dependence on the fan rotation speed indicate that the Twister 120 heatsink is pretty weak because of small effective cooling surface as well as the use of only three heatpipes positioned far apart from one another inside the heatsink body.

ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium demonstrates totally different results. With only one fan, this cooler easily outperforms Sumbeamtech Twister 120 in quiet mode at 1000 RPM and is almost in par with it when we use two fans at 1540 RPM. By adding a second fan to ZEROtherm cooler we improve its cooling efficiency in quiet mode dramatically, as the peak temperature in this case drops by 6°C. Although at maximum 81°C ZT-10D Premium only competes against itself with one fan at 1540 RPM, because these temperatures remain unattainable for Twister 120 at this point. Further increase in the rotation speed of its one or two fans does not produce the same impressive improvement as we have just seen in quiet mode, even though the maximum temperatures still drop by about 2-3°C.

These results indicate that ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium cooler can easily compete against Thermalright Archon in quite mode of its default fan. When we add a second fan to the Archon cooler, even at 800 RPM the leader is already as effective as ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium heatsink with two 120 mm fans at 2080 RPM. Of course, as you understand, the acoustics of both cooler is incomparable in this case. Archons advantages increases even more when we speed up its fans, although for ZT-10D it doesn’t really mean anything anymore. However, when we equip ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium with two powerful fans, it allows our six-core processor to overclock almost to its absolute maximum and remain stable at 4.6 GHz with 1.45627 V Vcore.

If we closed our ears, this would be an excellent result. In its turn, Thermalright Archon with two TY-140 fans at 1300 RPM cools the same processor 2°C better.

I would also like to say a few words about two fans rotating in different directions. In fact, it would be unfair to try and estimate their efficiency on a weak heatsink like Twister 120. Therefore, I compared them against two fans rotating in the same direction using ZT-10D Premium heatsink. For this test I chose Thermalright TR-FDB fans with similar blades and impeller shape. It turned out that ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium with two TR-FDB fans at 1000, 1500 and 2000 RPM cooled the CPU the same way as with two fans of the Twister 120 cooler at the same speeds, but rotating in different directions. If you believe that I should have used Twister 120 heatsink, which is specially optimized for such fans, I will have to disappoint you: even on this heatsink the two Thermalright TR-FDB fans didn’t yield even one degree to the default fans! Overall, Sunbeamtech came up with a very interesting fan technology, which, however, turned out to be not as effective in the end. However, I have to point out that the fans do not produce any parasitic sounds and work within the acoustic comfort zone at up to 1100 RPM.

Conclusion

Different approaches to cooling system design produced different results in our today’s test session. The dual-fan Sunbeamtech Twister 120 proved demonstrated mediocre efficiency because of an insufficiently powerful heatsink. I think that with an extra heatpipe going through the base and at least 15 mm wider aluminum plates of the heatsink could significantly improve the cooling efficiency with the same fans. However, the developers bet primarily on the fans rotating in different directions and that was a mistake. Unfortunately, Twister 120 doesn’t become a super-cooler just yet.

The second cooler, on the contrary, deserves our best feedback. ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium boasts excellent cooling efficiency and can cool even the hottest contemporary processors easily. It would be a great choice for overclockers. At the same time, keep in mind that it is 20% more expensive than Twister 120 and comes without any fans, which will end up increasing its price by another 10% or so.

Both coolers also sport a few common features: they are both fully universal, easy to install and use the same reliable retention mechanism with high pressure hold. These are definitely indisputable advantages of both.