by Sergey Lepilov
03/05/2008 | 02:47 PM
Even the leading brand names that appeared much earlier can envy extensive product range currently offered by the Taiwanese SilverStone Company founded in the not far away 2003. After a little less than 5 years, SilverStone is ready to offer end-users a wide choice of computer cases in different form-factors, the whole family of power supply units ranging from noiseless to very powerful, fans of different sizes and speeds, a variety of built-in panels and units, home theater systems, accessories and finally PC cooling solutions.
For our today’s article we picked two cooling solutions that strike us as the most interesting. They are Tundra TD01 liquid-cooling system, Nitrogon NT06-Lite air cooler and three pairs of 120mm fans that will participate in one of our next roundups. So, today we would like to compare the features and cooling efficiency of a liquid-cooling solution and an air cooler from SilverStone.
SilverStone Tundra TD01 liquid-cooling system comes in a large carton box with SilverStone’s traditional black and silver color scheme. When you open the box, the main system unit sits in a protective foam shell together with a smaller box containing all parts and accessories.
The accessories bundle includes the following items:
The bundle includes everything you might need to successfully install the system onto any contemporary platform:
Besides, the bundle also includes four pieces of sturdy transparent plastic tubing 2 x 700mm and 2 x 400mm with 8mm external and 6mm internal diameter:
The same box contains two bottles of coolant solution with anti-corrosion agent:
Each bottle holds 0.6l. The coolant inside is of vivid blue color and features very harsh unpleasant smell. Besides the above listed components, the system also comes with a CPU water block, which we are going to talk about later in our review.
The main system unit is available in two colors: black and silver. We received a black SilverStone Tundra TD01:
The “box” measures 380x132x320mm and weighs 5.8kg when it is completely assembled, filled and pumped through. The first thing that immediately catches your eye is the temperature indicator on the front panel of the unit that is designed as an arrow meter framed with a golden ring:
It combines two temperature scales: one in Celsius and in Fahrenheit degrees. This indicator allows you to monitor the coolant temperature in real time.
The main unit side panels are made of aluminum and feature 8mm deep ribbing, which indicates that they function as a heatsink of this cooling system:
On the back panel of this unit you can see an in-coming and out-going connecting pipes and a power connector:
We will wind up our exterior examination of the main unit with the bottom part: pretty solid with a row of vent holes and four sturdy feet:
However, when you open the unit, there is a lot to see in there, besides, you can’t fill the system without opening it anyway. So, we removed the top lid using the included hexagon wrench:
We discovered that there is an aluminum tank with acrylic side panels right in the middle of the unit:
There are three pipes coming out of the tank, two of which are leading directly to the unit side panels pierced with aluminum pipes:
So, as we have assumed, the side panels of the main unit function as a radiator for the entire liquid-cooling system. There are two small pumps built into acrylic side panels of the aluminum expansion tank. Unfortunately, we don’t know anything about their claimed official performance, because there is no mention of them in the technical specification sheet. There are two thick foam pads stuck to them to reduce the noise from working pumps:
Moreover, the bottom of the unit as well as the top lid are also covered with foam padding. That is pretty much it concerning the main unit. Now let’s discuss the CPU water block.
The CPU block is of oval shape. Its base of made of solid copper and the top part – of acrylic:
The block weighs 380g. There are two fittings with ~5mm internal diameter on both sides of the oval and the internal structure consists of rectangular copper pins:
The acrylic lid is tightly pressed to the base with four screws and a hermetic rubber ring:
Looks like someone tightened one of the screws too much, because we can see a crack in acrylic:
Luckily, there was no leakage in this spot and the defect didn’t affect the cooling efficiency test results in any way.
The CPU water block features a true mirror-shining base:
It is ideally even, which we have checked with the thermal compound print on the glass surface and later on the CPU heat-spreader.
To install the block on top of the CPU, you need to attach the corresponding retention bracket to it first. In our case we needed an LGA775 one:
After that you have to apply a layer of thermal compound to the processor heat-spreader surface and press the block against the CPU with plastic clips. Nor it is time to connect the pipes to the CPU block:
Free ends of these pipes attach to the fittings in the case rear panel bracket:
I installed this bracket into the top slot, so that it could be as close to the water block as possible:
Now all we need to do is connect the fittings on the other side of this bracket with the main system unit using another pair of pipes. Here it is important to remember that the out-going fitting on the main unit should be connected to the in-coming fitting on the bracket and so on and so forth along the entire contour. This pipes connecting strategy is very reliable, but not very convenient, because you will need to remove the coolant from the contour completely in case you need to reinstall the system. It is much more convenient to do it the way Zalman engineers suggested in their Reserator XT solution.
The manufacturer doesn’t mention anywhere in the manual what would be the best placement for the main system unit relative to the system case to ensure maximum cooling efficiency. In fact, it is tricky to find a suitable spot for a unit like that (looking like a small desktop system case). I decided to put it on the computer desk about 10-12cm above the system case:
The pipes went behind the back side of the desk and the whole thing ended up looking very neat and nice. The last thing to do is to fill the system with the provided coolant up to the maximum mark on the expansion tank.
Don’t be puzzled why the system wouldn’t start when you power on your PC. You need to plug in the power cable from the main unit to the rear panel bracket, and then connect the latter to one of the available Molex connectors of your system PSU. And that’s all. Turn everything on and see the coolant going through the pipes:
You may notice that once the system is up and running the processor water block is only 2/3 full. There is no cause for concern, just wait for 10-15 minutes and the system will fill the block completely.
In conclusion I have to add that SilverStone Tundra TD01 costs $349. It is in fact expensive, no doubt, and our tests will show if this high price is justified or not. But before we move on to the practical experiments let’s talk about the second participant of our today’s test session – an air cooler from SilverStone.
The second cooling solution we are going to discuss today is an air cooler from SilverStone called Nitrogon NT06-Lite. It comes in a transparent plastic package:
The carton insert in the plastic box reports the technical specifications of the cooler alongside with the detailed description of its key features.
Beneath the cooler there is a pack with bundled accessories. It contains the following items:
The heatsink of SilverStone Nitrogon NT06-Lite cooler is not new to us, we have seen similar design by Enzotech Ultra-X or Thermalright SI-128. Look for yourselves:
It is based on three copper nickel-plated heatpipes 8mm in diameter that come out of the copper base. The heatpipes hold an array of thin aluminum plates covered with a metal casing on the sides. The casing is decorated with the cooler name and the manufacturer logo.
There is a small aluminum heatsink in the lower part of the cooler right above the heatpipes. The heatpipes do not go through the heatsink plate array linearly:
It may have been done not only to ensure more even distribution of the heat flow, but also to reduce the resistance to the airflow generated by the cooler fan. The latter is not included with the cooler (that is why there is this “Lite” word in the model name). However, the casing covering the cooler sides has four retention holes that will fit perfectly for any 120x25mm fan:
In fact, you can even install a 120x32mm fan on top of it, or even a 38mm tall fan, but in this case you will need to find long screws, because the ones included with the cooler will only fit for the 25mm fan.
The black anodized aluminum heatsink in the lower part of the cooler is shaped very unusually:
It may be intended to press the heatpipes at the top rather than add to the overall cooling efficiency of the system. The heatpipes are flattened out a little bit in the cooler base thus increasing the heat dissipating surface area.
The copper plate at the bottom of the cooler is 5mm thick and has fair finish quality:
By the way, you can see the LGA775 retention brackets already screwed on to the cooler base on the photo above. If you need to install the cooler onto an AMD K8 mainboard, you need to attach different retention plates also included with the cooler accessories.
To install the cooler on the mainboard PCB, you need to insert the spindled through the mainboard retention holes and the backplate and fasten them with threaded bushes and ring-pads:
The first revision of a well-known Thermaltake Big Typhoon cooler has very similar installation procedure. It is not the most convenient way to install a cooler and takes quite a bit of time.
If the Crazy Cool system has been removed from Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 mainboard, nothing will prevent you from putting the cooler backplate in place:
Once the spindles are in, set the cooler with the attached retention plates on top of them, press it against the processor heat-spreader and tighten up. In our case the cooler could only be installed facing one of the two ways: with heatpipes facing the bottom or the left-hand side of the system, like on the photo below:
We couldn’t place it with heatpipes facing upwards, because of the not very convenient socket positioning on the Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 mainboard: it was too close to the PCB edge. So, when we tried installing the cooler with its heatpipes facing up, it would hit against the power supply unit and wouldn’t let us set the mainboard into the right place. We couldn’t also have the cooler installed with heatpipes to the right, because of the tall memory module heatsinks. Of course, we are talking about one particular case in a specific system, but I assume you may also encounter similar problems when trying to install SilverStone Nitrogon NT06-Lite, so keep our experience in mind.
If you are not going to have this cooler running in passive mode, then the next thing to do is to install a fan on top of it:
The last thing I would like to add here is the recommended retail price for SilverStone Nitrogon NT06-Lite, which is set at $42 (without the fan).
We tested the cooling efficiency of SilverStone Tundra TD01 liquid-cooling system only in a closed testbed for logical reasons. The air cooler, just like the competitor we picked for it in our today’s test session was tested in two modes: in an open testbed when the mainboard is horizontal and the coolers are in vertical position, and in a closed system case with the mainboard positioned vertically.
We put together the following testbed for our experiments:
Using the weakest cooling system of our today’s testing participants we managed to overclock our quad-core processor only to 3.8GHz with the Vcore increased to 1.5V. The monitoring utility reported the core voltage setting a little bit lower than what was set in the mainboard BIOS: around 1.45~1.475V.
All tests were performed under Windows XP Professional Edition SP2. SpeedFan 4.34 Beta 38 was used to monitor the temperature of the CPU, reading it directly from the CPU core sensor:
Its readings matched those of the Core Temp 0.96.1 utility. The mainboard’s automatic fan speed management system was disabled for the time of the tests in the mainboard BIOS. The CPU thermal throttling was controlled with Intel Thermal Analysis Tool (TAT), because RightMark CPU Clock Utility of the latest version available at the time of tests didn’t support Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 processor:
The CPU was heated up with OCCT (OverClock Checking Tool) version 1.1.1b in a 23-minute test with maximum CPU utilization, during which the system remained idle in the first and last 4 minutes of the test:
I performed at least two cycles of tests and waited for approximately 20 minutes for the temperature inside the system case to stabilize during each test cycle. The stabilization period in an open testbed with the mainboard in horizontal and coolers in a vertical position took about half the time. The maximum temperature of the hottest CPU core of the four in the two test cycles was considered the final result (if the difference was no bigger than 1°C – otherwise the test was performed at least once again). Despite the stabilization period, the result of the second test cycle was usually 0.5-1°C higher.
The noise level of each cooler was measured according to our traditional method described in the previous articles with the help of an electronic noise meter – CENTER-321. We have reduced the subjectively comfortable noise level from the previously used 36dBA to 34.5dBA and is marked with a dotted line in the diagram. The ambient noise from the system case without the CPU cooler didn’t exceed 33.2dBA when measured at 1m distance.
The ambient temperature was checked with an electronic thermometer that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperatures stabilized at around 25°C. It is used as a staring point on the 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.
We decided to have Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme compete with our today’s testing participants in the efficiency and noise level tests. It was equipped with a 120mm Scythe Minebea fan with the official rotation speed of ~1900RPM:
SilverStone Nitrogon NT06-Lite was tested with the same fan, though not only at its maximum rotation speed, but also at the speed of ~1200RPM with moderate acoustic outcome.
The results are given on the diagram below:
You can see clearly that the mass production SilverStone Tundra TD01 liquid-cooling system appeared not efficient enough even despite the fact that we tested it on an overclocked quad-core processor. It lost almost 20ºC to the air cooler from the same manufacturer, which is hard to accept, especially since SilverStone Nitrogon NT06-Lite costs more than 8 times less. As for the latter cooler, even though it yielded quite a bit to one of the most efficient air coolers out there, but even in quiet mode it could provide acceptable thermal mode for the overclocked quad-core processor.
The side panels of the SilverStone Tundra TD01 liquid-cooling system heat up quite tangibly during the tests, however the maximum coolant temperature reading from the indicator was 43ºC. I believe we could install a pair of 120mm fans on both sides of the main unit and this way improve the cooling efficiency. In this case, however, the system will be deprived of its main advantage: extremely quiet operation, which will be the topic of our next review section.
We measured the level of noise generated by our today’s testing participants from a 3cm, 1m and 3m distance. The results are given on the diagram below. The coolers are ranked in the same order as on the previous diagram for your convenience:
Here are the obtained results:
Well, SilverStone Tundra TD01 liquid-cooling system generates the least noise of all systems tested today, which is quite logical since it is a passive cooling system without a single fan. You can barely notice slight rattle from the two pumps if you get really close to the main unit. The air coolers performed almost equally from the acoustic standpoint, because we used the same fan for both of them in our tests.
The results of our today’s test session demonstrated that SilverStone is offering the consumers a very decent Nitrogon NT06-Lite air cooler and a Tundra TD01 liquid-cooling system that can hardly be of interest to overclocking fans and besides kills you with its extremely high price. However, if you have extra $349, do not intend to overclock your processors beyond average levels, live in a pretty cold climate zone and value quiet operation of your computer system, then Tundra TD01 may be a good choice. In order to improve the cooling system efficiency I would recommend the manufacturer to increase the depth of the side panel ribbing (including the internal contour) on the main unit, which will increase the heat dissipating surface size and equip Tundra TD01 with a more powerful water block, because as we have seen from the comparison performed on Zalman water blocks, it does have a serious effect on cooling efficiency improvement.
As for SilverStone Nitrogon NT06-Lite, it is a pretty good cooler, but it didn’t demonstrate anything extraordinary either. In fact, it is pretty hard to expect this solution to impress us after the tests of more technologically advanced Enzotech Ultra-X or Thermalright SI-128, for instance. Yes, the cooler features universal design, but unfortunately, it cannot boast attractive price point or simple installation, because there are a lot of competitors in the $40-price range these days.