by Sergey Lepilov
02/04/2009 | 08:53 AM
It has been a while since air-coolers were just an addition to a system CPU. Unpretentious chunks of aluminum with the simplest fans attached to them are long gone. Today a CPU cooler is not just a device that can lower processor temperature, but also a pretty attractive thing. Cooling solutions like that have become inalienable part of any modding experience, and they may often be even more expensive than the actual CPUs. However, it can hardly become a problem for real enthusiasts. Sometimes manufacturers get so carried away trying to design a unique impressive solution that they simply forget about the main purpose of this solution: efficient processor cooling. Two new coolers that we are going to talk about today - ASUS Royal Knight and Thermaltake SpinQ, boast truly unique one-of-a-kind looks. However, will they also impress us with their high cooling efficiency at a low level of generated noise? Let’s find out!
The new Royal Knight cooler from ASUSTeK Computer Inc. does in fact look very ambitious.
A not very big cube-shaped box made of thick cardboard features a small plastic carry-handle at the top. There is a cut-out window in the front of the box revealing part of the cooler. The cooler technical specifications are printed on the back of the box:
There is a clear plastic casing inside the cardboard box. It is molded exactly following the cooler shape and holds it securely. There is a small trapezoid box right next to it. The box contains all bundled accessories:
Among them are two LGA 775 brackets with plastic retentions and a set of screws, a swing-clip with a locking tab for Socket 939/AM2(+), ASUS thermal interface and installation manual in 14 different languages. The cooler is made in China.
ASUS Royal Knight cooler boasts very original looks and is definitely no clone of any model we know:
It measures 131 x 140 x 138 mm and weighs 790 g. It is designed with six copper heatpipes 6mm in diameter. The heatpipes lead in different directions from the base of the cooler: four heatpipes on the sides go one way and the two central ones - in the opposite way.
They used “hot piercing” method to set 37 copper plates onto these heatpipes. Each plate is ~0.2 mm thin and they are spaced out at ~3.0 mm from one another:
There is a plastic frame on top of the heatsink that holds a 120-mm fan on an aluminum retention stand:
You can easily remove the fan, so replacing it in case of failure or with a more powerful solution shouldn’t be a problem.
The copper base plate has special grooves for the heatpipes:
These grooves increase the contact surface area and hence improve the heat transfer. For the sake of the same improvements they also soldered the heatpipes to the base instead of using thermal glue, which many other makers use in their cooling systems.
The cooler base is finished quite nicely. Although you can clearly see the machine marks, you don’t really feel them to the touch.
The base surface is impeccably even. The thermal paste imprints on the glass surface and CPU heat-spreader turned out perfect.
Semi-transparent 7-blade fan measures 120 x 120 x 25 mm and is manufactured by EverFlow Company:
The fan model T121225SL is built with a slide bearing. The fan rotation speed is controlled with pulse-width modulation (PWM) method in the interval from ~800 to ~1,300 (±10 %) RPM creating maximum 22 dBA of noise. Unfortunately, the airflow parameter is unknown. The fan features white LED highlighting. We didn’t detect any crackle of the fan motor in the entire rotation speed range.
ASUS Royal Knight is designed for Socket 939/AM2(+) and LGA 775 processors. It comes bundled with the following two types of retention:
Socket 939/AM2(+) | LGA 775 |
As you see, everything is very simple, although not as reliable and secure, as in case the cooler is fastened through the mainboard PCB to a backplate on the reverse side. We have absolutely justified concerns about the LGA 775 retention kit. The thing is that the screws holding the retention brackets at the cooler base are not just too short, but also aren’t made of hardened metal. As a result, even without too much effort on your part, you can easily strip the thread of these screws and the retention brackets will not hold on the cooler base. I had to replace these screws with longer and more reliable ones.
As for installation on DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard we used, I would like to point out two peculiarities. First, it is extremely inconvenient to push in the plastic clips of the LGA 775 retention brackets into the special holes in the mainboard PCB. But it is even harder to take them out. And second, is cooler’s limited compatibility with existing mainboards. Look how close the heatpipes and heatsink plates are to the heatsinks on the mainboard voltage regulator and chipset components and the connecting heatpipes:
As you probably understand, it is a particular compatibility case valid for this specific mainboard model and ASUS Royal Knight cooler. However, I have never come across partially compatible LGA 775 cooling solutions before. As a result, there are only two installation options possible, and I am going to talk about them later in our review.
The installation manual (PDF file, 1.71 MB) says that ASUS Royal Knight shouldn’t be installed with the ends of four heatpipes looking down. ASUS believes that the preferred position for this cooler is with the heatpipes lying horizontally (hereinafter we are talking about tower cases):
In this case the cooler fit perfectly fine onto my mainboard:
However, despite ASUS” recommendations, the second available cooler positioning on my mainboard, namely with the heatpipe ends facing up, allowed it to cool the processor 5°C better!
My suspicions that the contact between the cooler base and the processor heat-spreader wasn’t perfect enough vanished when I checked the thermal paste imprint on the cooler base in both cases. I also have to add that there was no efficiency difference between these two installation positions in an open testbed.
The white LED highlighting on the fan looks very pretty and unobtrusive:
The recommended retail price for ASUS Royal Knight is set at around $60.
The second cooler comes from Thermaltake Technology Company. As you remember, they have recently attacked the cooling solutions market with their BigTyp 14Pro and V14Pro coolers. SpinQ cooler should continue this maneuver and we were very lucky to get our hands on one. "Spin your world, Quet down your PC" – is the slogan behind the SpinQ concept. Well, we don’t really feel like spinning the world, but wouldn’t mind to get efficient and quiet cooling in one. So, let’s check it out now.
Thermaltake SpinQ comes in a large vertical box with windows cut out on two adjacent sides:
Besides a few cooler photographs and description of its key features, there is also detailed specification and a list of compatible processors on one side of the package. Additional plastic casing protecting the device against transportation damages is also present. At the bottom of it there is a small box with accessories:
Everything here is quite typical of Thermaltake. Again we see a pack of low-quality SilMORE thermal interface, although I was pretty pleased to see it missing among the Thermaltake V14Pro accessories. Our SpinQ unit was made in China.
Well, here it is – and extremely unusually designed cooling solution:
It is built on six nickel-plated copper heatpipes 6mm in diameter that come out of the copper base and pierce aluminum heatsink plates. The cooler heatsink is cylinder-shaped, hollow inside:
Inside the heatsink there is a turbine that I am going to dwell on later in this review. Thermaltake SpinQ measures 121.6 x 90 x 151.9 mm and weighs 667 g.
The entire heatsink, heatpipes and copper base are nickel-plated.
The heatsink array consists of 50 plates. Each of them is ~0.3 mm thin and the gap between two adjacent plates measures ~1.7 mm.
The key peculiarity of SpinQ cooler is the way the heatsink plates sit on the heatpipes, namely, the way they are shifted:
Thermaltake engineers believe that this “spiral” organization of the heatsink array ensures more efficient use of the turbine airflow at low resistance and low noise. Moreover, the airflow created by the turbine should also cools down the components around the CPU socket. This is what it looks like schematically:
Very interesting solution. However, we have already seen similar approach to cooler heatsink design in Gigabyte solutions and they didn’t impress us with their efficiency at that time. Tests will show what we can expect from our today’s hero, and now let’s continue discussing its features and design.
Just like the ASUS solution we have just introduced to you, Thermaltake SpinQ has special grooves in the base plate cut out for the heatpipes:
However, we didn’t notice any traces of soldering or thermal glue. I dare suppose that they used thermal glue to ensure proper contact between the heatpipes and the cooler base, just like they did with V14Pro. I didn’t risk taking apart the only SpinQ sample I had.
The cooler base is finished impeccably, which has become typical of Thermaltake solutions lately:
The true mirror shine is almost there, however, in reality, you don’t need it. The most important thing is that the base is even, which has also been remarkably implemented in Thermaltake SpinQ:
There is a 80 x 85 mm turbine inside the cooler heatsink. It has slightly curved semi-transparent blades:
It sucks air in from its shorter sides and directs it to the heatsink plates from inside the cooler. Like the ASUS fan, this turbine was made by EverFlow using a slide bearing with the MTBF of 50.000 hours or more than 5.5 years of non-stop operation.
You can adjust the turbine rotation speed with the help of a small regulator branched from the main cable:
According to the specifications, the turbine rotation speed may vary from ~1000 to ~1600 RPM generating between ~19 and ~28 dBA of noise. The airflow spec is unknown. The turbine consumes maximum 5.4 W.
Thermaltake SpinQ is installed the same way as ASUS Royal Knight:
Socket 939/AM2(+) | LGA 775 |
Even though the area around the CPU socket is loaded with heatsinks on our mainboard, nothing interferes with the heatpipes coming out of the cooler base.
Since Thermaltake SpinQ heatsink is relatively compact, we can install and remove this cooler without taking the mainboard out of the system case first. In other words, its installation is much easier and faster than that of another today’s testing participant.
The manufacturer doesn’t mention which position is preferable for SpinQ cooler that is why I decided to install it with the heatpipe ends facing up:
The turbine is equipped with blue LEDs that is why you will easily spot the cooler in a running system even in total darkness:
The recommended retail price of the new Thermaltake SpinQ cooler is set at $55.
We summed up all the technical specifications and recommended retail price for the new ASUS and Thermaltake coolers in the following table:
We tested both new coolers and their competitor in two modes: in an open testbed when the mainboard sits horizontally on the desk and the coolers are installed vertically, and in a closed system case with the mainboard in vertical position.
Our testbed was identical for all coolers and featured the following configuration:
All tests were performed under Windows Vista Ultimate Edition x86 SP1. SpeedFan 4.37 was used to monitor the temperature of the CPU and mainboard chipset, reading it directly from the CPU core sensor and to monitor the rotation speed of the cooler fans:
The mainboard’s automatic fan speed management feature as well as CPU power-saving technologies were disabled for the time of the tests in the mainboard BIOS. The CPU thermal throttling was controlled with the RightMark CPU Clock Utility version 2.35.0:
The CPU was heated up using Linpack 32-bit with LinX shell version 0.5.3. The RAM capacity was set at 1536MB and the test cycle included 15 runs:
Since we ran the test twice with 20/10-minute idle period between the runs for the system to cool down and temperatures to set in, the relatively short actual testing period was quite enough for the maximum processor temperature to become stable.
For the second type of load we used OCCT (OverClock Checking Tool) v2.0.1:
I performed at least two cycles of tests in both test modes and waited for approximately 20 minutes for the temperature to stabilize during each test cycle. In an open testbed the stabilization period took half the time. Despite the stabilization period, the result of the second test cycle was usually 0.5-1°C higher in a closed system case, while in an open testbed there was barely any difference detected. We took the maximum temperature of the hottest processor core after two test cycles for the results charts. We will also provide a table with detailed results for each processor core.
The ambient temperature was checked next to the system case with an electronic thermometer that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperature stayed at 24°C. It is used as a starting point on the temperature diagrams. Note that the fan rotation speeds as shown in the diagrams are the average readings reported by SpeedFan, and not the official claimed fan specifications.
The noise level of each cooler was measured after 1:00AM in a closed room about 20sq.m big using CENTER-321 electronic noise meter. The measurements were taken at 3cm, 1m and 3m distance from the noise source. During the acoustics tests all three 120-mm case fans were slowed down to ~700 RPM. In this mode the background noise from the system case measured at 1m distance didn’t exceed ~32.7 dBA, and the loudest fan was the 140-mm fan of the system power supply. When the system was completely powered off, our noise meter detected 30.8 dBA (the lowest on the charts is 30 dBA). The subjectively comfortable noise level is around 34~34.5 dBA.
We are going to compare our today’s testing participants against Thermalright SI-128 SE cooler ($40) equipped with the most suitable fan – Scythe Ultra Kaze ($13.60). This fan measures 120 x 120 x 38 mm (DFS123812L-2000 model):
High cooling efficiency and relatively low price make this Thermalright product a performance etalon among contemporary cooling solutions with top-orientation (i.e. directing the airflow towards the mainboard PCB). We set the fan rotation speed at ~1260 RPM thoughout the entire test session.
During Linpack tests inside a closed system case using the “weakest” cooling system of the today’s testing participants we managed to overclock our 45 nm quad-core processor to 3.68 GHz (+22.7%). The nominal processor Vcore was increased to ~1.475 V in the mainboard BIOS (+28.3%):
During the OCCT tests in the same conditions the CPU remained stable up to 3.83 GHz (+27.7%) at 1.525V (+32.6%) Vcore.
The cooling efficiency readings are shown in the table and on the diagram below (the coolers are grouped according to the testing conditions – case or open testbed):
Click to enlarge
The results of our today’s test session show that Thermaltake SpinQ cooler is the least efficient of all three. Of course, it does ensure stable operation of a quad-core processor moderately overclocked to 3.68 GHz in Linpack and more aggressively overclocked to 3.83 GHz in OCCT. However, it is defeated by the other two testing participants. As its turbine speeds up, the cooler efficiency improves by 5°C in Linpack and 2~4°C in OCCT. I can’t say that Thermaltake SpinQ efficiency depends greatly on the type of testbed (open or closed case), because the results obtained on both testbeds are just a little different.
The second hero of our today’s test session, ASUS Royal Knight, turned out a better balanced and more efficient product. The CPU temperature in Linpack as well as OCCT drops 7~8°C lower with this cooler than with SpinQ. At the same time, Thermalright SI-128 SE equipped with a wider 38 mm fan outperforms ASUS cooler by 3-7°C. Even though the Thermalright cooler can’t boast the same unique looks like ASUS Royal Knight, it still cools processors much better.
Now let’s check out the acoustic performance of our today’s testing participants:
As you can see, almost all coolers generate very moderate noise that doesn’t go past the subjective acoustics comfort zone. The only exception is Thermaltake SpinQ at the maximum turbine rotation speed. It starts producing very loud rumbling sounds starting at ~1200 RPM. You can clearly hear this noise against the background of a quiet system case. Overall, ASUS Royal Knight turned out a quieter cooler, however, things were not so rosy with it, too. I am talking about heatsink plates tinkling against the heatpipes and one another at maximum fan rotation speed. It could be the issue of this particular sample, so I do not dare decrown the entire ASUS Royal Knight family at this point. Nevertheless, I couldn’t really disregard these unpleasant metallic sounds.
Both cooling solutions discussed today boast unique looks and fan highlighting. One of them, Thermaltake SpinQ ($55), is more of a modding cooler than a high-performance cooler for overclocking experiments. Moreover, acoustically uncomfortable noise generated by its turbine at 1200 RPM rotation speed seems to be its major drawback.
The second cooler, ASUS Royal Knight, boasts higher cooling efficiency at lower noise level than SpinQ. As for the tinkling of the heatsink plates, I agree to consider it the issue of our specific sample. However, this cooler is very hard to install, requires removing the mainboard from the system case to complete installation and is incompatible with some of the existing mainboard models. Moreover, ASUS Royal Knight is quite expensive ($60), which makes it hard to compete in this market, because there are quite a few more efficient and quieter coolers out there today.
