by Doors4ever
10/21/2005 | 11:44 AM
The revolution has been accomplished even though many people are not aware of it. Most of us have been confident that liquid-cooling systems are going to become an indispensable component of any future computer considering the rapid growth rate of heat dissipation of modern central processors.
Yet it seems that water-based cooling which has been trying to find its way into our system cases for a few years will still remain a choice of some isolated enthusiasts rather than a widespread solution. Why? Because of the quiet revolutionaries – coolers with heat pipes!
They are comparable with liquid cooling systems in noise and efficiency but are much better in terms of installation and maintenance. As for the price factor, they will cost you two times less than a do-it-yourself system and two to five times less than an off-the-shelf water-cooling system from a respectable brand. So, liquid cooling is done with while the future belongs to heat-pipes-based coolers, if nothing more efficient comes up.
The problem of choice, however, is still persistent. What model is better out of the variety of coolers from numerous manufacturers?
We want to clarify the issue right here and now by performing a comparative test of several coolers on heat pipes: Scythe Shogun and Ninja, Thermaltake Big Typhoon and Sonic Tower, and a Zalman CNPS9500 LED.
Before checking the coolers in action we must first choose the testbed configuration and the testing methodology. There can’t be any argument about the CPU – Intel’s Prescott-core processors are “unrivalled” in terms of power consumption and heat dissipation. Our tests show that an Intel Pentium 4 processor overclocked to 4GHz without increasing its default voltage consumes as much as 130 watts under load (for details see our article called FSP BlueStorm AX500-A Power Supply Unit Review)! This number will grow up much more at overclocking and at a higher voltage since power consumption is in a squared relationship with voltage.
So, I took an Intel Pentium 4 521 (2.8GHz, 1MB L2 cache, Prescott E0 core) for the tests – this processor can work at 4.06GHz at its default 1.35V voltage and at 4.2GHz at 1.425V voltage. The choice of the processor necessitated the choice of the rest of the testbed configuration which included:
I took a Matrox Millennium graphics card not only because I’m not going to run any graphical benchmarks but because it doesn’t carry an active cooling system. This graphics card is absolutely silent, giving me the opportunity to better estimate noise produced by the tested CPU coolers.
In fact, the SilverStone Zeus ST65ZF power supply proved to be the loudest component of the testbed. This powerful PSU is targeted at modern top-end computers that include a voracious processor and two top-end graphics cards at once. Unfortunately, the fan of this power supply becomes rather loud soon after you turn it on, even if the system includes a non-overclocked processor and a weak graphics card like Matrox Millennium. This is no doubt a first-rate power supply that ideally suits for tests and experiments and for setting various records, but I wouldn’t put it into my own home computer.
The next problem to be discussed is the method of testing coolers. There are two popular approaches, in an open testbed or in a closed system case, and each approach has its pros and cons. Tests in a system case seem to be closer to reality and more objective as concerns comparing different coolers. True, few people use their computers in a dismantled state while most users usually put the components into a closed system case. This fact is considered by the cooler developers when they design new models. For example, coolers with a vertically positioned fan which have become popular exactly after the transition to heat pipes, drive the stream of hot air right towards the exhaust fan on the system case’s rear panel. This simple trick helps to reduce the temperature in the case and improve the cooling efficiency. It means that the full potential of such coolers as Thermaltake Sonic Tower will only be obvious in a closed system case.
This orientation of the cooler has its downside, though. It’s no secret that high power consumption of current processors makes the mainboard’s components in the CPU power circuit heat up much. I know cases when the MOSFETs literally melted on the mainboard due to overheat. The leading mainboard manufacturers long noticed this problem and came up with various methods of passive and active cooling of the MOSFETs (Active MOS from MSI, OTES from Abit, or ASUS Fanless Design). From this point of view, coolers with the traditional horizontal positioning of the fan, like Thermaltake Big Typhoon, look preferable since they also blow at the mainboard’s elements near the CPU socket.
Well, the Big Typhoon is not a good example; its fan is positioned too high above the mainboard’s PCB and rotates too slowly to cool the mainboard normally. I know only two types of coolers that can really cool the mainboard with its components and even the memory modules which are usually located nearby and also require cooling for stable operation. First of all, it is one of the first heat-pipes-based coolers, Gigabyte 3D Rocket Cooler. Unfortunately, its efficiency and noise are not the best possible. Then, Zalman 7000 and 7700 series coolers can cool the mainboard, but their efficiency is not enough to cool a top-end or overclocked Intel processor.
But let’s get back to system cases. What’s the downside of testing coolers in a system case? The result of such a test will depend not only on the type of the system case, but also on the type and placement of the system fans as well as on the rest of the system components. So, the results would only be indicative of the performance of a cooler in the given system case, with system fans placed this particular way and with this particular graphics card. And the numbers may change dramatically if the configuration of the computer changes. Tests on an open testbed are not influenced by other system components and give you a picture of the pure, ideal performance of a cooler. This ideal picture will of course differ from the cooler’s real-life performance, but we are interested in comparing coolers rather than systems they are used in, aren’t we? That’s why I performed all the tests on an open testbed.
Since the reviewed coolers have roughly the same efficiency, it was necessary to provide the same test conditions for them by maintaining the same ambient temperature. I used a thermal chamber that could keep a specified temperature nearly constant. But which temperature should be set? I first wanted to set it at 35°C but then decided on 30°C. The choice seems random, but I made it after due deliberation.
First of all, I wanted to make sure that all the coolers would pass the test under the given conditions. By the way, that’s why I didn’t overclock the central processor to the limit but stopped at 4.06GHz without any voltage increase. The tests proved that the choice of the test conditions was correct – the temperature of the CPU was rather too high even at 4.06GHz frequency.
Then, if the air temperature is, say, 22°C in your room but 35°C inside your system case, you should think about replacing this case or installing additional fans or changing the placement of the components for better airflows. And if the room temperature is 30°C and the case temperature is 35°C, you should better buy an air conditioner which will do both yourself and your computer much good.
As for the software employed in the tests, I loaded the CPU with the help of the version 1.7.3 S&M utility, selecting a 100% CPU load in its settings. This utility is very efficient for testing purposes since the CPU load it creates can hardly be achieved in real-life games or other applications. By testing the CPU under such a high load we can be sure the overclocked CPU will be stable in even harsher conditions in ordinary applications. I read the temperature data with SpeedFan 4.26 and controlled the CPU thermal throttling by means of RightMark CPU Clock Utility 1.8.
The preliminaries over, we can now proceed to the coolers.
It was the CNPS9500 LED model from Zalman broke a lull in the cooler wars. Its original design should be already known to you. If not, refer to our “First Look at Zalman CNPS9500 LED: the Power of Air, the Efficiency of Water” review for details. However, I didn’t have an intention to single this cooler out by testing it first. This order came naturally since this cooler’s fastening was already installed on the mainboard.
A side note about the fastening: although the fastening of this cooler is not ideal (there are no perfect things in this imperfect world, so we may see a simpler, easier and handier way of mounting a cooler in the future), the Zalman CNPS9500 LED has no competitors in this respect among the coolers I’m going to test in this review. The mainboard’s standard fastening frame is used with Socket 754, 939, 940 or 478. The cooler design permits you to turn it on the socket as you think necessary. A back-plate and a frame enclosed with the cooler are used to mount it on Socket LGA775.
Important : the frame is screwed up to the front and not the back side of the mainboard. You should put the back-plate on a flat surface, line it up with the mounting holes around the mainboard’s CPU socket, put the frame on top and screw it up. The whole operation takes as little as a minute of your time. We’ll have an opportunity to compare this fastening with that of other coolers later on.
Since I have begun to talk about how coolers are installed and fastened, I want to add some words about thermal paste. Every beginner faces the problem of how much paste should be applied to the CPU. And I think this problem is more serious than it seems. For example, I admit that the photo below is not very illustrative and in reality there’s a thin layer of paste on the CPU:
But there can’t be two opinions here – there’s too much of thermal paste:
Let’s recall why too much thermal paste is bad and why thermal paste is at all necessary. We’ve got a well-polished base of the cooler and a rather flat heat-spreading cap of the CPU – so why do we need the additional resistance of thermal paste? Or do you doubt that thermal paste is a hindrance to heat transfer? Think that no one produces heatsinks out of thermal paste – all heatsinks are made from metals and alloys!
Heat transfer is really worsened by thermal paste since it is a worse heat conductor than metal. In this case, however, we have to choose the lesser of two evils – air is such a poor heat conductor that it can even be regarded as a heat insulator. And since it is virtually impossible to make the surfaces absolutely flat, there is a thin layer of air between the cooler’s base and the processor. This layer of air inhibits heat transfer. Replacing it with a layer of thermal paste improves the heat transfer but we must not replace metal with thermal paste! The thicker the layer of thermal paste between the CPU and the cooler is, the worse cooling you have. It usually helps to press the cooler down tightly so that the excess thermal paste went out along the edges, but what if there’s the same thick layer of paste all along the contact zone, including the edges? As a result, two completely different coolers, a copper and an aluminum-copper one, for example, may show the same performance if their capabilities are limited by a thick layer of thermal paste rather than by the properties of the metals employed in them.
I used Zalman’s thermal paste for my tests. I can’t tell you anything about its name, composition or marking, except that such thermal paste in included with noiseless system cases like Zalman TNN500AF (for details see our review called Zalman TNN500AF Case Review or +1 Kilogram of Silence ).
The die size of modern processors is rather large, yet it is considerably smaller than the size of the heat-spreading cap, so you should pay special attention to the center and not bother much about the edges. So I put a thin layer of paste on the CPU.
You don’t have to smooth out the paste since the excess of it will be pressed out and distributed evenly on the entire contact area, if you have not put too much of it.
As you see, I’ve got rather much paste left on the sides, but the result is overall satisfactory since the metal shows through the thin layer of paste.
We should see a similar picture on the cooler’s base, too.
I’ve almost got to the tests proper, there is one more question. Which fan speed should be set for this cooler? Like with the choice of the ambient temperature, the answer is arguable and more subjective. People differ in their sensitivity to stray sounds. Someone may go mad at the screeching sound of a tree in the yard, while another wouldn’t even notice some building work done under his/her window.
The fan of the Zalman CNPS9500 LED rotates at about 2600rpm and I think this is rather loud. The FAN Mate 2 controller allows varying the speed from 1400 to 2400rpm. The cooler is silent at 1700rpm and lower and its noise becomes ever more noticeable at higher speeds. I decided to test the cooler at 2400rpm. I hope most users will think this amount of noise acceptable, especially since it is going to be suppressed by the system case.
So, the Idle temperature of the Prescott-core Intel Pentium 4 processor overclocked to 4.06GHz was 41°C at the launch of the system. It grew up and stabilized at 47°C after I had started the thermal chamber. The Load temperature was 59.5°C -61.5°C at a 100% CPU load created by means of the S&M utility. The whole process is represented on the following graph which is a little shortened for better readability.
The sinusoidal temperature fluctuations within the 59.5-61.5°C range are due to the operation mode of the thermal chamber. It is automatically turned on and off to keep the temperature near the specified 30°C.
So, we’ve got our first point of reference. Next goes Scythe’s Shogun.
My encyclopedia says Shogun was the title of the military dictators who ruled Japan from 1192 to 1867. It is a contraction of seii tai shogun – Japanese for “barbarian-subduing generalissimo”. The high title signifies the leading role this cooler is expected to play. The Shogun Heatlane CPU Cooler is the only cooler in this review to use heatlane technology instead of heat pipes.
The wide rectangular box with a plastic transparent window shows you a 120mm fan and various captions in English and Japanese.
The cooler itself is depicted on one side of the box in two views; you can learn its technical characteristics on the other side of the box (in four languages). It is written that the device comes with a 2 year warranty. Curiously enough, the warranty becomes void if the cooler is used on an overclocked processor. :)
And here’s the Shogun Heatlane cooler in person:
The cooler consists of a large heatsink (123 x 98 x 147mm) made using the heat-conductive lanes technology patented by TS Heatronics. The core of this cooler is a 2mm heat lane that contacts with the 4mm sole. 52 thin aluminum plates diverge on both sides from this lane along its entire height. These plates take the thermal load from the main core. I am not absolutely sure but the plates seem to be not just soldered to the heat lane but are kind of collected in a special lock. An additional 20mm heatsink is also located in the bottom of the cooler.
A 120mm speed-controllable fan is snapped on the assembly by means of two wire braces.
The fan is unusual, by the way. It features “Hypro Bearing” technology which, according to the manufacturer, ensures long service and quiet operation of the fan. The cooler’s heatsink is symmetrically designed. In other words, you can attach the fan on either of the two sides intended for it.
The base of the cooler is protected with cellophane film; the cooler’s copper sole is polished satisfactorily well:
Let’s see what accessories are included with the Scythe Shogun Heatlane cooler:
The box contains:
Some reviewers pass over the installation process, producing the test results right after giving the description of a cooler, but installation is in fact one of the main problems with the Scythe Shogun. It seems easy to mount the cooler on Socket 754 or 939. You insert special screws into the back-plate. These hollow screws are threaded both inside and outside.
Then you should put the necessary bracket on the cooler and screw the bracket (or brackets) up to the back-plate. Seems easy enough.
The problem is that the CPU socket can be oriented vertically or horizontally on the mainboard while the cooler should be placed in such a way that its fan was blowing the hot air towards the system fan on the rear panel of the system case. Two types of fastening are used for that purpose: one big bracket for a vertically positioned socket and two separate brackets for a horizontally positioned socket.
Choose the necessary type and screw the bracket(s) up to the cooler.
Note, however, that you can fasten the cooler easily and quickly only when you use two separate brackets and nothing interferes with the fasteners. If you have to use one big bracket, the mounting holes will be right below the heatsink ribs, making it impossible for you to use a screwdriver. The screws will have to be fastened in a slow and inconvenient way with a small spanner (included with the cooler). Unfortunately, Socket 754 and 939 are usually positioned vertically rather than horizontally on the mainboard, so you are likely to meet some difficulties during the installation of the Shogun on K8 processors.
The hardest step in installation of the Shogun on LGA775 is assembling the fastening frame.
It looks easy on the picture, but I’ll tell you how it is in reality. You put the mainboard on its edge and hold it in this position with your elbows, for example. Then you press the first bracket on the face side of the PCB, trying not to lose the spacers from under it. With your other hand you press the back-plate to the reverse side of the PCB. And then you use your third hand to turn in the screws. Then, this operation is repeated for the second bracket. I don’t know even now how I managed to cope with the procedure.
The rest of the installation is much easier. You insert steel bars with folded ends into the openings in the brackets. The bars have screw holes in their center. The screws are tightened and press the cooler down to the CPU.
The result is shown on the snapshot.
I want to note that the fan must be hitched to the heatsink only after the heatsink is seated on the CPU. You can download instructions for installing the cooler on all CPU sockets here (5.1MB, PDF file).
When assembled in a system case, the whole arrangement looks like shown on the picture:
The cooler is so tall that there’s a gap of only 1 centimeter between the cooler’s top and the side panel of the system case. But despite its large size the cooler weighs only 790 grams (or 128 grams less than the Zalman CNPS7700Cu).
The cooler is mounted on Socket 478 in the same manner, but using the standard frame on the mainboard.
In this case you avoid the laborious frame-assembly step, but still face the socket orientation problems as with Socket 754/939.
The orientation problem does not arise with Socket LGA775 since the holes on the mainboard are located in the corners of a square rather than of a rectangle as with Socket 754, 939 or 478. You just have to fasten two small mounting brackets on the cooler instead of a single large one and put the frame on the mainboard correctly. I’m ashamed to say I did it the incorrect way. I installed the frame first and then realized that I would have to tighten the screw with the spanner under the heatsink ribs instead of quickly turning them in with a screwdriver. I abhorred the idea of reinstalling the frame so I began to tighten the screws with the spanner. The screws were long and there was little space for the spanner so I had to make tens or even hundreds of quarter-of-a-turn movements. People with less strong nerves would fall in a fit of hysterics, so I am proud I carried the operation through without harming anyone nearby.
And then I put the testbed into the thermal chamber. The cooler’s fan was rotating at its maximum 1600rpm speed and was rather quiet at that. The temperature of the CPU was above 60°C at the launch of the system, giving me some apprehensions, but then it went down to about 50.5-51.5°C . So I calmed down and launched the S&M program. The CPU temperature jumped up in a few seconds – 72°C was the last value I could see – and the system shut down.
At first I thought that I had wiped off the thermal paste during my turning in the screws with the spanner. However, the thermal paste was right there it should have been, but the cooler’s footprint showed that the test was failed due to poor contact between the cooler and the processor.
So, I decided to reinstall the Shogun, starting from the frame, for better fastening. The result? The initial temperature of the CPU was below 60°C and then went down to about 49.5-51.5°C . Unfortunately, the events followed the same scenario after the launch of S&M, even though developed less quickly. The system shut down when the CPU temperature got as high as 73°C .
I boasted my self-control a few paragraphs above, but there’s a limit to anyone’s patience. Somewhat maddened, I dismantled the system and got to the other coolers and decided not to return to the Scythe Shogun anymore. And yet my inner voice was nagging me and warning me that if I didn’t make things clear with the Shogun, I would remain in history as a “reviewer who didn’t even know how to install a cooler”. So, as a tester I have to carry the test out to the end and explain every unclear fact.
I scrutinized our ASUS P5WD2 Premium mainboard and found no elements that might have prevented the cooler from sitting properly, but I made note of the CPU’s own fastening. It was rumored before the transition to LGA775 that this socket would be able to last through no more than 20 installations. Fortunately, these fears were exaggerated, but the fastening is still far from perfect. It is hard to install a modern processor “with pins” wrongly, yet I had a number of situations when an assembled LGA775 system did not start up until the CPU was reinstalled. Obviously, some of the socket’s contacts deflected or lost contact with the processor altogether. I often saw bent contacts in an LGA775 socket and, unlike with the processor’s own pins, it is virtually impossible to straighten them back. These are all well-known defects of Socket LGA775, but I noticed another one.
Take a look at this socket. It is made by Foxconn and this fastening type is most popular on mainboards. It works simply: the processor is pressed down by the frame which is fixed by a steel lever.
The pressure comes from the lever (in the top left of the snapshot). The frame is asymmetrical – its left part is wider, so the lever presses on the left part of the processor (in the given view).
And here are more snapshots of the same processor from other perspectives:
You can see that the processor has a noticeable tilt to the left! It is not positioned strictly horizontally! The cooler is supposed to press down the contacts on the right, too, but what if it doesn’t do so?
I had never come across the problem of poor contact between a cooler and an LGA775 processor before, but I had mostly used Zalman CNPS7700Cu and 7000 models. A special feature of the fastening of Zalman coolers I had not noticed before is that it locks the cooler’s position firmly. The cooler is fastened with screws in two points and the clip can move up and down but not sideways. The Scythe Shogun (as well as other coolers I’m testing in this review) is not firmly fixed on the socket as the Zalman CNPS9500 LED. Although the pressure of the Shogun on the CPU is the strongest of the tested coolers, its fastening permits the cooler to deflect sideways from the ideal position right above the center of the processor. Could it be then that the cooler failed the tests because it was not installed exactly above the center of the socket and because the CPU’s position was tilted?
By the way, I found a Socket LGA775 of another design – from the less known Lotes Company.
The concept is the same, but the frame has lobes above the center of the processor. As a result, the processor is positioned horizontally relative to the mainboard’s PCB.
Unfortunately, Foxconn’s LGA775 sockets are much more popular than Lotes’ ones.
So I don’t know if I should blame Intel who introduced its new socket or Foxconn who makes sockets that permit the processor to be positioned unevenly or Scythe who manufacturers the Shogun cooler with the inconvenient fastening. Or should I put all the blame on my own clumsy hands? Well, even if it was my own fault, I “managed” to install the cooler wrongly two times. I think some other people may have the same situation, so the cooler’s fastening should be improved exactly for such clumsy users as I am.
So, I tried to test the Scythe Shogun cooler a third time. For once I placed it facing towards rather than leftwards. This placement is acceptable since the air is driven towards the power supply. It is especially good if the PSU is equipped with a large 120mm fan. The disadvantage of this placement is that the warm air from the graphics card will be going through the cooler, but it didn’t matter in my tests (on an open testbed and with a cold graphics card from Matrox).
Perhaps it was the non-standard orientation of the cooler or I was just very, very careful during the installation, but there were no problems with the contact and the cooler passed my tests. I even checked it outside the thermal chamber first (to make sure the installation had gone right): the CPU temperature was about 41.5-42.5°C in the Idle mode and about 60 .5- 61.5°C under the S&M load, the room temperature being 23.5°C . In the thermal chamber, when the environmental temperature was 30°C the Idle and Burn temperatures of the CPU were 48-49 and 65.5-68.5°C , respectively.
Although the box with the Ninja looks more modest than the Shogun one, it tells you as much of valuable information:
The technical characteristics of the cooler, supported CPU sockets, warranty obligations, numerous warnings and so on are listed here in two languages, English and Japanese.
The cooler feels very light for its dimensions. On the other hand, why should it feel heavy? The copper base, six copper heat pipes and 23 aluminum plates put on those pipes yield a total of 665 grams which is very modest by today’s standards.
The cooler looks beautiful and dignified, like a real ninja. By the way, people at Scythe gave a very fitting name to this model. As you may have noted, the Scythe Ninja Heatpipe is a fanless or passive cooler. It works without any noise, just like a real ninja must do!
The developers and the assemblers made their job conscientiously – everything is fitted neatly and tightly together in this cooler. The overall design of the Ninja as well as that of its parts (heat pipes, foundation, ribs) is flawless.
The aluminum plates are not just put on the copper heat pipes. The contact area between them is additionally increased by means of the so-called bottlenecks which seem to have been made deliberately during the assembly of the cooler.
The material of the aluminum plates is rather soft, so this procedure could be performed easily (probably with some heating of the details of the cooler).
The cooler base is covered with a sticker to protect it against scratches:
12 heads (probably with threading) are located at the top of the Ninja – they cover both ends of each of the heat pipes.
The cooler’s copper sole is polished superbly:
The heat pipes are placed in two rows, one above another. One row contacts with the copper sole and the other row contacts with the first row. The pipes are flattened out at their base to increase the contact area and improve the heat transfer efficiency. The copper sole of the cooler is fastened to the heatsink with screws. I undid the screws but could not take the sole off: Scythe must have used thermal glue or just soldered the sole to the heatsink to ensure reliable contact among the pipes and between the pipes and the sole.
The cooler’s accessories are less numerous than those included with the Shogun Heatlane, but there are still everything necessary to mount the Ninja Heatpipe on Socket 478, LGA775 and Socket 754/939/940:
The contents of the box:
A 120mm fan is not included among the accessories – the manufacturer warns you about that on the face side of the box.
As for the fastening, a pair of flexible clips are already attached to the cooler, so you only have to put the fastening frame on the mainboard:
The standard mainboard’s frame is used to mount the cooler on Socket 478: just put the processor into the socket, add some thermal paste and close the clips – the whole procedure takes less than a minute of your time!
The Socket 754/939 fastening is more or less acceptable. You install a frame like the one that stands on Socket 478 and snap the cooler up to it.
This cooler is a square – it doesn’t have a shorter and longer side. That’s why the socket orientation on the mainboard plays no role. You can attach a fan to any side of the cooler, directing the air stream anywhere you like.
The LGA775 frame is assembled exactly like for the Scythe Shogun, i.e. slowly and inconveniently.
Fortunately, I tested the Ninja right after the Shogun and didn’t have to repeat that dull procedure. By the way, be careful when you are handling this cooler – the heatsink plates are soft and bend down just too easily, and they also have sharp edges.
The assembled cooler looks even prettier than the previous model when in the system case:
The installation manual for all CPU sockets can be downloaded here (1.9MB, PDF file).
I took a 120mm 1600rpm fan from the Shogun since the fan for the Ninja is to be purchased optionally. The Idle temperature of the CPU was 46-47°C ; it grew to 59.5-60.5°C under load.
The Ninja comes without a fan, only with fan fastenings, but I also had such fastenings from the Shogun cooler. As an experiment, I put a second 120mm fan on the opposite side of the cooler coaxially with the first one to take air from the cooler. I slowed its speed down to 1600rpm and repeated the thermal chamber tests.
The temperature seems to have gone down, but the minimum and maximum points have remained the same, only the CPU temperature now less frequently exceeds 60°C. The Scythe Ninja was developed with passive operation in mind; its ribs are placed at a rather wide distance from each other and are blown out well with a single fan. There’s no sense in installing a second fan. The option of fanless (i.e. completely noiseless) cooling is very appealing, but I obviously couldn’t make use of it in my tests, with a 4GHz Prescott processor.
The Thermaltake Big Typhoon cooler has been repeatedly called the best. There’s no sense in my repeating its description since it was already given in our “Titan Vanessa S & L-Type and Thermaltake Big Typhoon vs. Zalman CNPS9500 LED” review. The cooler’s numerous advantages are, however, substantially spoiled by its awful fastening.
It’s easier to mount it on K8 processors: you just have to tighten two screws with a screwdriver, holding it with a tilt – the heatsink dimensions don’t let you hold the screwdriver straight.
The installation of the cooler on other sockets is identically troublesome. First, you fasten the back-plate with long screws that go through the mainboard. Then you put the cooler on the mainboard and press it down with a bracket. It’s all right up to this moment, but now you have to screw this bracket up evenly with tiny nuts. There’s no spanner among the accessories (but the spanner won’t be very convenient as my experience with the Scythe Shogun suggests), and you can’t tighten the nuts well with your bare hands.
So, the users have to invent their own ways. I even heard a recommendation that the back-plate should be fastened with the tiny nuts, and the top bracket with the brass poles from the long screws. This is a solution, but I wonder if people at Thermaltake don’t know about this problem. If they just replaced the tiny nuts with large, ribbed ones, everything would be much easier! It would look like that:
Alas, people at Thermaltake don’t seem to care about that a bit.
The indisputable advantage of the Thermaltake Big Typhoon cooler is its quiet, almost silent fan that rotates at 1300rpm. The idle and load CPU temperatures in the thermal chamber were 46-47°C and 62-63°C respectively (don’t get worried about the short period of the idle mode – the cooler worked for long in the idle mode, but I forgot to turn on the logging at the beginning of the test).
We have already paid some attention to Thermaltake Sonic Tower in our article called Four CPU Coolers from Thermaltake Tested. Today we are going to take an even closer look at it.
This plastic box is a typical package of Thermaltake coolers; the face and rear sides of the box show you the features and characteristics of the Sonic Tower.
The cooler consists of a copper foundation and two small towers made of plates and crossed with three heat pipes.
The base is not polished well – a characteristic trait of Thermaltake coolers.
I liked that the fasteners for different CPU sockets were sorted out in separate, labeled packs.
I thought both coolers from Thermaltake had identical fastenings, but it is not so, despite the similarity in the design of their soles.
The most inconvenient is the Socket A fastening, I guess. And the mainboard must have mounting holes around the socket for the cooler to be mounted.
A clamp and two spring-loaded screws are used to mount the cooler on K8 processors.
The standard frame is used to secure the cooler on Socket 478, similar to the installation of the Scythe Shogun. The only thing I don’t quite understand is why they employ hex-headed screws rather than ordinary ones which you could turn with a screwdriver.
The downside of the fastening mechanisms is that you are not free to turn the cooler about – its position depends on the position of the socket on the mainboard.
To put the cooler on Socket LGA775, you first fasten two brackets on the mainboard, then attach the cooler to them and press it down with a flexible clamp.
The clamp is stiff but is expected to be secured with two tiny screws. I think the threading on the screws will get damaged soon if you reinstall the cooler often. The snapshot shows you the screw in comparison with a standard computer screw.
The cooler can be used in passive mode, if you’ve got an exhaust fan on the rear panel of your system case, but the Sonic Tower kit also includes two brackets for putting an additional fan on. I decided to carry out the same two-fan experiment as with the Scythe Ninja, fastening the fans on the cooler’s top.
The Scythe Ninja doesn’t need a second fan, as you have seen above, but the Thermaltake Sonic Tower might make good use of it – its ribs are more densely placed and there’s big enough distance between the two towers of plates. As a result, the remote tower is not properly cooled by a single fan. In a system case the system fan on the rear panel will help the cooler, but for my tests I wanted to hang two fans on the cooler’s two sides.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t realize the idea. The cooler is so large than I had to move the memory modules into the two neighboring slots to make room for the fan. And I couldn’t put a fan on the other side of the cooler because of the rear panel connectors.
So I tested the cooler with one fan only. Like with the Scythe Ninja, I took the rather quiet fan from the Shogun (1600rpm). The Idle and Load temperatures of the CPU were 46-48°C and 64-65°C , respectively.
I could have stopped at that, but like with the Scythe Shogun I was harassed by the thought that I hadn’t made full use of the capabilities of the Thermaltake Sonic Tower – I hadn’t tested it with two fans. Since such a test was only possible in a system case, I decided to do some more research work.
I took a rather good ASUS Ascot 6AR system case, manufactured by HEC Group. This case is equipped with two quiet 120mm 1400rpm fans (intake and exhaust). To test under real-life conditions I replaced the Matrox Millennium with a hot NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT graphics card. The rest of the testbed was left unchanged. I set the temperature of the thermal chamber at 24°C . The temperature of the CPU cooled by the Sonic Tower and loaded by S&M grew up to 71°C and the system rebooted automatically.
I also wanted to test the Scythe Ninja in the passive mode –with the two system fans only – but the attempt failed completely. The CPU temperature grew up to 72°C , even when the Ninja had a fan on, and then a BSOD appeared (the Ninja kept the system running for somewhat longer than the Sonic Tower, however).
The test results of the five coolers are all presented in a single diagram for comparison.
The first three positions are very close to each other, but two leaders are obvious: Zalman CNPS9500 LED and Scythe Ninja . The position of the CNPS9500 LED is rather ambiguous – if you increase its fan speed to the maximum of 2600rpm, this cooler will probably become an absolute leader, but there’ll be too much noise for home use. And if you drop its speed to the level of the quietest of the coolers (Thermaltake Big Typhoon), the Zalman may turn to be worse than it. It is rather strange to see (or hear) a Zalman cooler to be the loudest of the tested models. The Zalman 7000 model was followed by the Zalman 7700, so probably we should wait for a Zalman CNPS9700 with a quiet 120mm fan? On the other hand, the Zalman CNPS9500 LED easily mounts on any CPU socket and its efficiency is high. Its noise is not unbearably loud after all, so this cooler will probably become the default cooler in our test labs.
I would want to see a pretty-looking Scythe Ninja in my own home computer. Yes, its LGA775 fastening is very awkward, but it’s worth the trouble to go through the ordeal just one time and install the fastening frame. Moreover, I personally do not plan to buy an LGA775 processor in near future and this cooler will surely cope with a K8 processor either in fully passive mode or with a low-speed and quiet fan.
As a kind of recommendation for the manufacturer: I would want to have a one-piece fastening frame for LGA775, the same as employed for mounting the cooler on K8 processors, rather than consisting of two parts. The installation is just easier when you have four support points rather than are balancing on two. It would also be more convenient if the frame was screwed up from the face rather than reverse side of the mainboard.
I have heard rumors that the company is planning to release an all-copper Ninja model. I would certainly be interested to test that one!
Thermaltake coolers have their own advantages, too. They are cheaper and widely available in shops. Moreover, they can be mounted on Socket A (but there’s a risk of your chipping the CPU with their not very handy fasteners).
The Thermaltake Big Typhoon is the quietest, yet efficient cooler. Note that the Idle temperature of the CPU with this cooler is just a little, but better than with the other coolers. Its blowing at the mainboard may have helped a little here. And I think there’s no need to hurry the transition to coolers with a vertically positioned fan without first providing proper cooling of the CPU power circuit elements which become very hot at work.
Unfortunately, the Thermaltake Big Typhoon can only be installed normally on K8 processors. The fastening of the cooler on other sockets is below any criticism, but the installation could be simplified greatly if they replaced the tiny nuts with larger ones. It would take more effort to polish the cooler’s base better, but it would win a few degrees more in CPU temperature. If these measures are taken, the Thermaltake Big Typhoon may become one of the best coolers available. In its current state, however, it only takes the third place.
The Thermaltake Sonic Tower doesn’t leave the best possible impression. Its dimensions are too large and hinder its installation. And why did they set the heatsinks so wide apart? To get closer to the exhaust fan on the rear panel of the system case? It would be better to make the heatsink smaller and put two fans on the cooler since its ribs are placed very densely. Another possible measure is to put a fan in between the heatsinks – both heatsinks would be better cooled then. A not very obvious advantage of the Thermaltake Sonic Tower is that it doesn’t have sharp edges. Its plates are rounded, without angles, unlike the plates of the Scythe Ninja.
Even though the heat lane technology looks highly promising and the Scythe Shogun cooler may really be a good product, it can’t show its best due to the poor fastening system.
Speaking at large, the Scythe Ninja, Zalman CNPS9500 LED and Thermaltake Big Typhoon are about on the same level of efficiency, so your choice of the cooler should depend on other factors like price, availability, ease of installation and fastening on a particular CPU socket. Some users may also be guided by their personal sympathy or dislike to a particular brand, for example. But whatever cooler of these three you may choose, you won’t be disappointed. As for the Thermaltake Sonic Tower and Scythe Shogun, I wouldn’t recommend them for purchase because there are better, more efficient, quieter, simpler-to-install and cheaper models in the market.
