by Sergey Lepilov
03/08/2007 | 11:04 AM
It is spring now in the northern hemisphere which is normally followed by summer. It’s hard to tell how hot the next summer is going to be considering the latest climatic cataclysms, but an overclocker has to be prepared to everything. If you don’t want to lose your hard-earned extra megahertz of speed due to hot weather, this article is going to help.
The Japan-headquartered Scythe continues to scythe in the harvest of coolers they have grown up in the company labs. Their new cooler has a European name with a Japanese tint. It is called Scythe Andy Samurai Master. I will examine this cooler and check out its performance.
Besides it, I’ll show you a product from a new player in the cooling systems market. It is Enzotech with its first and only CPU cooler called Ultra-X.
The cooler is shipped in a small cardboard box painted red and black against a lighter background:
The package is all covered with texts in English and Japanese that describe the cooler’s characteristics, key technologies and accessories, and carry some other, less useful, information.
Inside the package there is the cooler itself and a smaller box with the following components:
The new cooling system from Scythe is based on six nickel-plated copper heat pipes with a diameter of 6 millimeters. The pipes go out of the copper base and pass through the aluminum heatsink consisting of a large number of thin ribs:
A 120mm fan sits on top of the whole arrangement. It is secured on the heatsink by means of two wire brackets. At the cooler’s bottom there is another aluminum heatsink, 53mm tall. The Andy Samurai Master resembles the famous Thermaltake Big Typhoon, but the heat pipes in the new cooler’s heatsink are placed vertically rather than horizontally. I guess this placement facilitates the passing of air through the heatsink and should ensure higher heat dissipation efficiency overall.
See how dense the heatsink’s ribs are:
They are placed denser than in the Big Typhoon. The ribs in the Scythe cooler are grouped in threes and there is one additional rib between the groups:
This so-called Infinity Interleave Fin Structure may be familiar to you as it is employed in the Scythe Infinity cooler that has become rather popular among overclockers (for details see our article called SuperCoolers Return: Zalman CNPS9700 LED and Scythe Infinity).
All of the cooler’s aluminum plates bear the new Scythe logo:
The ends of the pipes are neatly sealed by soldering. The photograph also gives you a good view of the aluminum heatsink at the bottom of the cooler. It is meant to take some thermal load off the pipes and to serve as a support for various fastening mechanisms.
The copper plate at the cooler’s base is only 2.5mm thick. The ends of the heat pipes that contact it are flattened to about 3mm.
In the Scythe Infinity cooler the pipes in the base are not flattened as much as they are in the Scythe Andy Samurai Master (I wrote about that in my Scythe Infinity review). So, the area of contact between the heat pipes and the base as well as the sole of the smaller heatsink is considerably increased in the new cooler.
Top-Flow technology implemented in the Scythe Andy Samurai Master means that the fan mounted on the cooler’s heatsink must cool the near-socket area and elements of the mainboard.
The photograph shows that the cooler’s heatsink has smaller dimensions than the fan, so the air will pass not only through the ribs, but also on both sides of the heatsink through the large gaps. Yet I doubt the airflow will be strong enough to cool the mainboard properly considering the high ribbing density and the low fan speed.
The new cooler makes use of a fan on a slide bearing. The fan has a Scythe logotype, but its marking, DFS122512L, betrays that its actual manufacturer is Akasa:
The fan speed is constant at 1200rpm, providing 49.58CFM airflow at a noise of 20.94dBA. The cooler is exceptionally quiet at work.
The cooler’s base is protected against scratches with a piece of film:
There is indeed something that needs protection there:
The ideally flat surface of the base, as I verified by the trace of thermal grease on glass, may make a good example for all other manufacturers.
Note also that the aluminum heatsink above the cooler’s base is smaller than the analogous heatsink in Scythe’s Infinity or Mine. I guess there won’t be installation-related problems with the Andy Samurai Master like those that would occur with the two mentioned models.
When it comes to installation, the Versatile Tool-Free Multiplatform System allows to mount Scythe coolers on any supported platform without any tools. The Andy Samurai Master cannot be installed on the obsolete Socket 462 (Socket A), but all other platforms are on the list of supported ones.
To install the cooler you only have to pick up the appropriate pair of fasteners, insert them into the slits in the cooler’s base, and then secure the cooler on the CPU. In any case, installing the new cooler from Scythe doesn’t require you to take your mainboard out of the system case. The user manual shows most effective, in the manufacturer’s opinion, variants of installation:
The double ring marks the most optimal orientation in terms of maximum heat dissipation efficiency. The ends of the heat pipes point upwards in that case. The single ring marks one more possible installation variant that should be used if the first variant is not possible for some reason. The third variant, with the ends of the heat pipes directed downward, is not recommended by the manufacturer.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t orient the cooler in the best possible way on any of platforms I had. I took an ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP mainboard as an Intel platform. I had replaced the mainboard’s default chipset heatsink with a Cooler Master Blue Ice Pro cooler and the side heat pipe of the new Scythe cooler would press against the chipset fan making it impossible to lock the fastening mechanism.
It is not because the chipset cooler is too tall. The mainboard’s default chipset heatsink is 30mm tall whereas the chipset cooler is only 29mm tall (I measured that myself). So, the new Scythe has limited compatibility with this very popular mainboard as it can only be installed on it in the second-best position:
There are some limitations, too, when it comes to platforms with Socket AM2 (which I used) and with Socket 754, 939 and 940. Besides the possibility of some tall heatsink getting in the way of the heat pipes, the cooler orientation depends on the position of the plastic frame around the CPU socket. To orient the cooler as to achieve maximum cooling performance, the plastic frame must be perpendicular to the rear panel of the system case (or parallel to the mainboard’s top edge). I was unlucky in this respect with my DFI LanParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G:
Thus, despite the simplicity and reliability of the fastening mechanism, the Andy Samurai Master cooler cannot always be oriented in the best possible way on the mainboard.
The recommended price of the new cooler from Scythe is $54.
This product is manufactured by Enzotech and is in fact the first CPU cooler from this brand. Here it is, the Enzotech Ultra-X model:
The cooler comes in a small cardboard box designed like a black-and-silver cube with a plastic handle.
There is a round window in one side of the box through which you can see some of the cooler and its heat pipes. A description of the key features of the cooler, a list of supported CPUs and platforms, and a detailed specification are all printed on the box.
At the top of the box there is a small cardboard box with the following accessories:
The cooler lies in a plastic tray that protects it from damage during transportation.
So, here it is, the first CPU cooler from Enzotech:
At first sight it’s hard to see the fundamental difference of this cooler from the Thermaltake Big Typhoon or the above-described Scythe Andy Samurai Master. A 120mm fan on a heatsink consisting of aluminum ribs. Four heat pipes that go out of a copper base. But take a look at those pipes:
They are as many as 8 millimeters in diameter! Not 5 or 6 millimeters as is often the case, but 8! This 2mm difference seems negligible, but let us recall some geometry and calculate the area of the side surface of cylinders with a length of 120mm and diameters of 6 and 8mm. I have 4522 sq. mm for the 6mm cylinder and 6029 sq. mm for the 8mm cylinder. It means that, the length being the same, the area of one 8mm pipe of the Enzotech Ultra-X is 33.3% larger than that of a 6mm pipe of the Thermaltake Big Typhoon. On the other hand, the new cooler has 4 pipes as opposed to the Big Typhoon’s 6. If multiplied by the number of pipes, the Bug Typhoon proves to have a larger total area of contact between the pipes and the heatsink, but we’ll see how it works in practice soon. Let’s get back to the new cooler for now.
The ends of the heat pipes are sealed and finished. The pipes are placed in two pairs in the heatsink: the two middle pipes are shifted towards the top of the heatsink while the two side ones are closer to the heatsink’s bottom.
Consisting of a large number of thin aluminum ribs, the heatsink of the Ultra-X cooler is covered with a metal casing from three sides. The cooler’s name is engraved on that casing. If the protecting grid with the fan is removed, you can see that the area of contact between the pipes and the heatsink is enlarged by means of bottlenecks that seem to have been created when the plates were being pulled on the pipes.
At the bottom part of the cooler, right above the pipes, there is a small needle-type aluminum heatsink:
The heatsink turned to have no contact with the pipes at all. It only serves as a support for the cooler fastening clip on platforms with K8 processors – there is a special groove in its center for that.
The pipes lie in grooves made in the base and are soldered to the cooler’s sole – the traces of soldering are barely visible.
The Enzotech Ultra-X is equipped with a 120mm seven-blade fan:
This fan was manufactured in China by Delta Electronics:
The included speed controller allows adjusting the fan speed from 1200 to 2500rpm creating airflow from 35.8 to 82.7CFM at a noise level of 24.5 to 38.5dBA. The fan becomes audible at a speed of 1550-1600rpm.
Here’s a bottom view of the cooler:
The cooler’s base is perfectly finished and absolutely flat, just like that of the Scythe Andy Samurai Master:
You don’t need to peruse the detailed guide included with the Enzotech Ultra-X to install it on any of the supported platforms. The installation procedure is simple and intuitive. If you’ve got a K8 processor, you use a pressure clip that is hitched to the standard plastic frame of the CPU socket. The included back-plate and frame will only be necessary if you’ve lost the mainboard’s ones. If you’ve got an LGA775 platform, you should use the cross-shaped back-plate with studs and plastic spacers, and spring-loaded screws:
The pressure is high when the cooler is installed on platforms with Intel’s CPUs, which is important as I’ll show you in the Tests section. When installed on Socket AM2, the cooler doesn’t hold firm and may even turn around a little on the CPU heat-spreader. I’d suggest the manufacturer make the groove for the pressure clip square rather than cylindrical. This would prevent the cooler from turning around. On the other hand, being able to turn the cooler around a little may help avoid incompatibility.
So, while it is all clear about the way the cooler is mounted on the CPU, its compatibility with mainboards is not such a simple matter. The heat pipes that go out of the cooler’s base may press against heatsinks on the power elements or against the chipset’s heatsink/cooler, or even against the memory modules. As a result, the cooler can be installed on such mainboards as DFI LanParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G and ASUS P5B Deluxe in one position only which is shown in the photographs:
Socket AM2 | LGA 775 |
Besides that, I tried to install the new cooler on an ASUS P5N32-E SLI mainboard and only one out of four orientation variants proved possible. The manufacturer doesn’t show how exactly the cooler should be oriented. I guess it means that if you’ve managed to secure it on your mainboard and nothing gets in the way of the heat pipes, then you’ve got it right already :).
It’s up to you to decide if this limited compatibility is worth the recommended $65, but take a look at the test results before you make up your mind. The detailed specs of the tested coolers are listed in the next section
The table shows the specifications of the coolers:
The coolers are tested on an open testbed as well as in a system case with the following configuration:
The Noctua NH-U12F and Scythe Infinity were tested in their out-of-the-box state with one 120mm fan and also with one additional fan for exhaust (I used two fans from Scythe for that purpose). The Thermaltake Big Typhoon was tested in its default state with a native 120mm fan at 1350rpm and with a more powerful 2000rpm fan from Thermaltake. The latter fan was also installed on the Scythe Andy Samurai Master. To cool the power circuit heatsink on the DFI LanParty UT NF590 mainboard I installed an 80mm fan at 1800rpm. On the ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP I replaced the standard passive heatsink with a Blue Ice Pro chipset cooler from Cooler Master.
All tests were performed in Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 2. SpeedFan 4.32 beta 17 was used to monitor the temperature of the CPUs, reading it from the CPU sensor.
The AMD CPU was heated by S&M version 1.8.2b for 15 minutes at 100% load.
The Intel CPU was heated up by means of Intel Thermal Analysis Tool for 18 minutes (according to the method we described in earlier reviews).
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 2.2 (our processor would begin to skip clock cycles on reaching a temperature of 81.5°C).
I performed at least two cycles of tests in each mode (TAT and S&M). I waited for 25-30 minutes for the temperature to stabilize during each test cycle. The maximum temperature in the two test cycles was considered as the final result (if the difference was not bigger than 1°C – otherwise the test was performed once again). Despite the stabilization period, the result of the second cycle was usually 0.5-1°C higher.
The ambient temperature was monitored by means of an electric thermometer and remained at 24.5-25°C during the tests.
The AMD Athlon X2 3800+ processor was overclocked from its default 2000MHz to 2792MHz frequency (a frequency gain of 39.6%) with a core voltage increase to 1.55V.
A further frequency growth was limited by the efficiency of the weakest cooler in this test. In the diagrams below the cooling systems are additionally grouped by their noise level (i.e. in the quiet mode and at the max fan speed) besides the open/closed testbed grouping.
Here are the results:
The numbers for the closed system case and in the quiet mode are the most interesting. The tower-like coolers – Noctua NH-U12F and Scythe Infinity – in their out-of-the-box state with one 120mm fan look humble against their opponents. It is because of the position of the CPU socket on the DFI mainboard that is not optimal for the fan airflow. The Scythe Andy Samurai Master and the Zalman CNPS9700 LED are somewhat better than these two. The Thermaltake Big Typhoon is even more efficient, but I have to acknowledge that the differences between the coolers are very small. With an additional exhaust fan the towers from Noctua and Scythe perform better, but not enough to catch up with the leader of the test, the Enzotech Ultra-X.
The tower-like coolers feel more confident on the open testbed, but the out-of-the-box Scythe Infinity is unsatisfactory. The speed of 1200rpm doesn’t seem enough to cool the ribs and the natural convection in the room improves its performance but little over the results in the well-ventilated system case. When I added a second fan to them, these coolers became leaders, but not absolute leaders. The out-of-the-box Enzotech Ultra-X at 1350rpm equals the Scythe Infinity and is a mere 1°C worse than the Noctua NH-U12F.
In the noisy mode (at the max fan speed) the Enzotech Ultra-X is the best cooler, too. The Scythe Andy Samurai Master is a little better than the Thermaltake Big Typhoon. The Zalman CNPS9700 LED is good, too, on the open testbed. Well, I guess this mode is only appropriate for short-term benchmarking and for setting new overclocking records because it is indeed too loud.
And now let’s get over to the Intel Core 2 Duo platform.
The Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 stepping B2 processor was overclocked from its default 2133MHz to 3500MHz (a 64.1% frequency growth) with a core voltage increase to 1.45V.
The CPU-Z program reports the core voltage wrong, but this won’t prevent us from analyzing the results of the tests.
The Enzotech Ultra-X confirms its superiority on the Intel Core 2 Duo platform, too. I should confess I had been rather skeptical about the thick pipes, but the tests changed my opinion. This product is an indisputable leader among air coolers in terms of performance, particularly quiet-mode performance! And if you don’t care about noise, the Enzotech Ultra-X is beyond competition, too. At its maximum speed of 2500rpm, this cooler allows squeezing an extra 100-200MHz from an overclocked processor.
I’d like to show you one more interesting thing. Remember I told you about how tight the Ultra-X’s base was pressed to the CPU heat-spreader on the LGA775 platform? Take a look at the graphs that show the temperature of the cores of the Intel Core 2 Duo processor when cooled by the Scythe Infinity with two 1200rpm fans (the core temperatures are shown in the cells below). But instead of looking at the max temperature of the hottest core (the red graph), take a look at the difference between the core temperatures (the red and yellow graphs):
And here’s the same for the Enzotech Ultra-X in the quiet mode:
To remind you, the Scythe Infinity is installed by simply pushing the locks through the holes in the mainboard, without a back-plate, just like the boxed cooler from Intel. But the Enzotech Ultra-X is fastened to the CPU with a back-plate and screws, very tight but without bending the mainboard. As a result, the difference between the temperatures of the cores is only 1 or 1.5°C. With the Scythe Infinity this difference amounts to 4-5°C!
Of course, this difference between the core temperatures, and the difference in performance of the coolers too, could not but affect the CPU’s overclocking potential as was proved by a small test. The Enzotech Ultra-X allowed to overclock the CPU by 110MHz more above the frequency the tests were performed at whereas the Scythe Infinity could lift the frequency bar by 30MHz only. I didn’t check the maximum CPU frequency with the other coolers, except for the Zalman CNPS9700 at 1750rpm for which 3.5GHz was the limit.
From now on, two more air cooling systems can be deservedly counted among super-coolers.
The Scythe Andy Samurai Master is a very quiet, effective and easy-to-install cooler (and also the lightest one in this review). And although the numerous owners of Thermaltake’s Big Typhoon can be proud again because their cooler is no worse than the new Scythe in performance or price, I guess the new cooler from Scythe is going to find its customer, too. It’s sad it has limited compatibility with mainboards and may not be oriented properly in some system cases, but I just can’t seriously criticize the Andy Samurai Master, except for its somewhat steep price.
The main drawback of the absolute leader of today’s test, Enzotech Ultra-X, may be its unavailability. A company representative told me they were looking for distribution channels in Europe right now. Another drawback is the cooler’s limited compatibility with mainboards, and I suspect it cannot be installed on some mainboard models at all. Its fastening mechanism for the K8 platforms is wobbly, too, but this is all made up for by its unprecedented performance.
It’s now hard to imagine where the cooler manufacturers can progress further, but I hope there will be new ideas in the cooling systems field yet. Let’s just wait and see. And I personally have no fear of the next summer anymore!
