by Sergey Lepilov
10/20/2006 | 12:20 PM
ASUS is turning out so many products in so many market sectors that it would be odd if we didn’t find a CPU cooler among them. However, earlier coolers from ASUS were not very efficient and the company now tries to correct this by introducing two new models on heat pipes. They are called Silent Square Pro and Silent Square.
<%BANNER[article]%>The senior, Pro, model differs from the junior one in having a differently shaped casing and a higher fan speed. It also comes with a speed controller that also supports speed monitoring.
But in this review I’ll be talking about the simpler and cheaper ASUS Silent Square.
The second word in the cooler name turned to be an abbreviation that spells out like this:
The Silent Square comes in an original package with a plastic carry handle:
Painted a dark shimmering blue, the box has a transparent window you can have a look at the cooler through. The text on the box touts the Silent Square’s ability to cope with processors that have a typical heat dissipation of 130W (and a peak dissipation of 160W). The paper insert lists the cooler specs (a noise level of 18dBA, etc).
On the back side of the box you can see a picture of airflows the Silent Square creates when installed on a mainboard.
On the sides of the package there is exhaustive information about how to install the cooler and what technical characteristics it has.
These are the accessories you’ll get with your Silent Square:
The top and side plates of the Silent Square may be blue or black. Otherwise, there is no difference between the two versions of the product. I was testing a sample with a black plate.
The Silent Square is a rather simple tower-like cooler whose aluminum heatsink is fastened on five heat pipes about 6mm in diameter:
There are 2 x 37 thin aluminum plates in this heatsink. ASUS engineers think the step-like shape of the ribs not only increases the dissipation area but also directs the airflow from the cooler’s heatsink to the mainboard components and power circuits that need cooling, too.
Besides that, there is a metal bar in between the heatsink ribs. It is tilted downwards and serves the same purpose:
The heatsink is covered with a metal casing on the top and sides. Moreover, the sides of the aluminum ribs are curved in so that the air couldn’t leave the heatsink there.
This helps fully utilize the airflow created by the fan.
There’s a holographic ASUS logotype on the top of the casing. Coupled with the highlighting of the fan, this looks quite beautiful. The slits in the cap seem to have been cut only to make the highlighting look more effective.
A 92x92x25mm fan is placed between the two halves of the heatsink.
The default speed of the fan is 1800rpm and it produces 18dBA of noise. I checked the cooler out on an open testbed without system fans and at a minimum speed of the two blowers of the graphics card and found that the fan of the Silent Square was not very quiet. At least its 1800rpm sound louder than the 1320rpm of the Big Typhoon’s 120mm fan. The difference won’t be felt much in a closed system case, but anyway.
The cooler’s base is made of two nickel-plated copper halves, about 5mm thick each, that have grooves for heat pipes:
This enlarges the contact area and ensures better heat transfer than, for example, in the well-known Scythe Ninja cooler. I can’t tell you how the plates are fastened (soldering or thermal glue) since there are no traces of anything. Everything is made very tidily in this product.
The cooler’s base isn’t finished well, though:
But the surface is surprisingly smooth and flat. The cooler leaves an almost ideal print in the thermal grease.
It’s easy to install the Silent Square on any of the platforms supported. It can be installed not only on the modern Socket AM2, LGA775 and Socket 754/939/940 platforms, but also on the outdated Socket 478. In every case you have to take the mainboard out of the system case to attach the universal mounting frame to it:
Depending on the platform type, you use two or four screws with plastic spacers and a back-plate. The fastening is very secure and reliable. The screws have such a length that they do not stick out beyond the back-plate on the reverse side of the mainboard.
When the mounting frame is attached, you put the cooler in place and secure it with a universal clip that is hitched on the internal juts of the frame.
The standard frame of Socket 754/939/940 or Socket AM2 cannot be used with this cooler. You need to use the original mounting frame included with the Silent Square.
Then you fix the cooler with a fastening lock:
The lock creates enough pressure to ensure proper contact between the cooler’s base and the CPU heat-spreader. The design of the lock prevents it from opening accidentally.
The orientation of the cooler inside the system case on AMD K8 and Socket 478 platforms depends on the position of the near-socket mounting holes on the mainboard. The best orientation – when the air stream from the cooler’s fan is directed at the rear panel of the case – can be achieved when the axis of the mounting holes on the mainboard is parallel to the system case’s rear panel, like on the ABIT AN8 SLI mainboard:
As for the cooler’s compatibility with mainboards, there shouldn’t be any problems considering the high altitude of the bottommost rib of the heatsink, fastening frame, and the compactness of the heat pipes. However, the official ASUS website lists mainboards, but only from ASUS itself, that are officially compatible with the Silent Square.
If you are into modding or just like colorful illumination, the cooler will please you with a directed blue light:
Looks pretty, indeed.
The following table lists the official specs of the Silent Square cooler:
I compared the Silent Square from ASUS with a Thermaltake Big Typhoon cooler that was equipped with a 120mm fan rotating at ~1320rpm.
The following components were used in the testbeds:
The tests were performed in Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 2. I installed Nvidia nForce version 6.82 and Intel Chipset Drivers version 8.1.1.1001 for the ABIT and ASUS mainboards, respectively. I also installed DirectX 9.0c and ForceWare 91.47.
Although the GeForce 7950 GX2 generates quite an amount of heat, and the air from the coolers of this graphics card remains inside the system case (it is not exhausted as with the Radeon X1900/X1950 XTX), I decided to aggravate the conditions of the test by overclocking the card from its default 500/1200MHz frequencies to 550/1500MHz. The card produced more heat as a consequence. There was no sense in this on the open testbed, so the card was running at its default frequencies then.
SpeedFan version 4.29 was used to monitor the temperatures and fan speeds on the AMD platform. The temperature of the Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 was monitored with S&M version 1.8.1 which was also used to heat both the CPUs up by running the FPU test at 100% load for 15 minutes. In the Game test mode the computer was running 3DMark06’s Firefly Forest test for 19 times with 16x anisotropic filtering and without full-screen antialiasing.
The temperature was read from the sensor integrated into the CPU. The mainboards’ automatic fan speed management was disabled for the time of the tests. The thermal throttling of the Intel Core 2 Duo processor was controlled with RightMark CPU Clock Utility version 2.15. I additionally controlled the temperature of the Intel Core 2 Duo with Core Temp Beta 0.9.0.91 which would report a 1.5°C higher temperature of both cores than S&M did.
The coolers were tested on an open testbed and in a closed system case that was equipped with two 120mm system fans for intake and exhaust and one 120mm fan on the side panel. Two test cycles were performed for each cooler. I waited for 25-30 minutes for the temperature inside the system case to stabilize during each test cycle. The highest results from the two test cycles are shown in the diagrams (if the difference was not bigger than 1°C). Despite the stabilization period, the results of the second cycle would usually be 0.5-1°C higher.
The ambient temperature was monitored by means of an electric thermometer near the system case and remained within 18.7-19°C.
I overclocked the Athlon 64 3000+ processor from its default 1800MHz to 2800MHz with a voltage increase to 1.65V.
CPU-Z reports the core voltage incorrectly. I didn’t remove the CPU heat-spreader. Here are the results:
The Silent Square boasts high cooling efficiency, being a mere 2°C inferior to the super-cooler Big Typhoon in a closed system case. The difference is even smaller than that on the open testbed and downright negligible under peak load. Note that the difference in the CPU temperature is bigger between the two coolers in Game mode than under S&M.
I’d also like to show you the S&M monitoring graphs as the CPU was being heated up by the FPU test at 100% load in the closed system case. The Silent Square comes first:
And here are the monitoring graphs for the Thermaltake Big Typhoon:
The delta of the temperatures is almost the same, but the Thermaltake Big Typhoon starts out at a 2°C lower temperature and finishes with the same lead. Take a look at the mainboard sensor graph (it is colored pink). It shows that the Silent Square is on the losing side when it comes to cooling the mainboard around the socket – the difference is 11°C under peak load. Note also how the temperature is going down when the load is removed. This process goes at a faster rate with the Thermaltake Big Typhoon.
Now let’s check out how the Silent Square is going to cope with an overclocked Intel Core 2 Duo.
The Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor (stepping B2) was overclocked from its default 1866MHz frequency to 3450MHz with a voltage increase to 1.5V. This is a frequency gain of 84.9%, by the way:
CPU-Z reports the core voltage incorrectly in this case, too. It was set at 1.5V in the BIOS, and other utilities (e.g. Everest) reported a voltage of 1.445V. Note that the CPU was overclocked to the maximum frequency with the tested air coolers, and there are only four air coolers I know of as yet that can cope with it at such a clock rate (two of them are compared in this review).
Here are the results:
The difference between the two coolers is bigger on the dual-core CPU. The Thermaltake Big Typhoon outperforms the Silent Square by almost 6°C in a closed system case and by 3.5°C on an open testbed. The S&M monitoring graphs aren’t informative here (it only shows a CPU temperature graph and a barely changing chipset temperature graph), so there’s no sense in publishing them.
The new cooler from ASUS has proved to be capable of cooling overclocked CPUs. It is very efficient on the AMD Athlon 64 platform, a mere couple of degrees worse than the Thermaltake Big Typhoon. The difference between the two coolers on the Intel Core 2 Duo platform is bigger, and the Silent Square is a little behind again, yet its performance was quite successful considering the overclocking results I achieved with it. For example, the well-known Scythe Ninja couldn’t cope with the overclocked Intel Core 2 Duo under the same conditions and I had to lower the frequency by 1MHz FSB. The Silent Square also features a simple and reliable fastening system and a cute-looking highlighting of the fan.
So, it seems a good enough buy, but there’s one problem when it comes to actual buying. Products with the ASUS brand have always been expensive. The Silent Square is not an exception, having an average retail price of about $55. This is lower than the price of the Zalman CNPS9500 LED, but $10-15 higher than the price of the more efficient Thermaltake Big Typhoon. So, the Silent Square is not without competitors. Moreover, it is not ultra quiet as is promised by the manufacturer. It is not loud, but not exactly quiet, either.
Highs:
Lows: