I WOULD LIKE TO SEE A TEST RUN ON THE "ASUS TRITON 77 CPU COOLING FAN" COMPARED TO: THE TUNIQ TOWER 120, THE ZALMAN 9500 LED, AND THE ZALMAN 9700 LED - FOR OVERCLOCKING PURPOSES.
TESTED ON AN INTEL DUAL CORE CPU's 1.86 GHZ 65nm's AND UP, FOR COOLING, EASE OF INSTALLATION, PLUS NOISE FACTOR AS WELL.
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE, FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, TIME, AND HELP.
I WOULD LIKE TO SEE A TEST RUN ON THE "ASUS TRITON 77 CPU COOLING FAN" COMPARED TO: THE TUNIQ TOWER 120, THE ZALMAN 9500 LED, AND THE ZALMAN 9700 LED - FOR OVERCLOCKING PURPOSES.
TESTED ON AN INTEL DUAL CORE CPU's 1.86 GHZ 65nm's AND UP, FOR COOLING, EASE OF INSTALLATION, PLUS NOISE FACTOR AS WELL.
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE, FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, TIME, AND HELP.
You reported the temperatures at stock (2.93GHz) and at 3.73GHz for the standard cooler and the Tuniq Tower 120, and also at 3.83 and 3.9GHz for the TT120, but was the CPU running at the same core-voltage for all these different speeds? Presumably it was running at stock voltage for the stock speed run, so was 3.73GHz and 3.9GHz the maximum it could reach at stock voltage with the two heatsinks, or was the voltage increased (and by how much) to reach those speeds?
For pure temperature comparisons between HSFs, keeping the voltage the same is obviously a must. However if the voltage was kept at stock (or at the same raised voltage) for determining the maximum overclock then you are probably missing out on a major advantage of a better cooler which is that you can crank the voltage up somewhat higher and still have a safe temperature.
Overclocking a CPU generally consists of seeing how fast it is stable at, then add a bit more voltage and see how much further it goes (while watching the temps), then a bit more voltage, and so on until the temperature reaches the highest you are happy with. The better HSF will allow a higher voltage to be used and that will usually translate to a higher overclock. Okay, so the overclocked temperature may be just as high with the better HSF when you use that approach, but it should provide a better indication of how much higher you can overclock the CPU with it.
Does anyone know about a good / slick / cheap ( any of those criteria is welcome ) CASE where to install HORIZONTALLY a regular ATX MoBo so that I don't have to worry about the weight of the cooler ?
Though it is a little redundant (given that I don't see people mounting AMD fans on Intel chips and vice-versa), I am a little curious how well the AMD Stock fan compares to the Tuniq tower, and by association, how well it compares to the Intel.
I remember that AMD's heatpipe cooler, used in the Dual-Core Opteron (and probably some other chips) have been very well regarded in various reviews. At the time, it was often thought that AMD's stock cooling solution was a good few steps ahead of Intels. Of course, it is hard to tell if part of the reason may not have been with the sheer amount of heat generated by those P4s, which is why I am curious how the two compares today.
I'd guess that that "good" dual core opteron heatpipe heatsink is a good unit. I purchased one in the FT/FS forums after I got my Opteron 148 (Single core, standard A64 heatsink), and with nothing but a little AS5, it was able to get my Opteron stable at 2.4 Ghz(over 1.8) with almost no extra voltage (I was only able to add 0.05V over the stock on my motherboard).
That all said.. good luck getting a fair comparison with the Core 2 duo heatsinks.. You can't mount them on AMD and you can't mount the AMD(Socket 939) cooler on Intel(LGA775), as far as I can recall. I seem to recall that a few years back Anandtech(I think it was AT anyways.. I could be mistaken) built a 'cpu simulator' that had little metal ingots with heaters and temperature probes embedded to do apples-to-apples heatsink testing... I wonder if that's a realistic option for this roundup?
I'd love to see a complete "cooling tower" review. There are a lot of similar products out there, such as the Sycthe Ninja/Scythe Infinity family, a couple by Noctua, the CoolerMaster Hyper 6+, Arctic's Freezer Pro line, and (sort of similar) Zalman's 9500/9700 line. A lot of us would like to know how they stack up against each other on both Intel and AMD platforms, with the following notes:
Weight of each cooler (lighter being better if it doesn't sacrifice performance)
Ease of mounting on both AMD and Intel systems (with a key to whether the heatsink can be mounted properly for fan exhaust direction, regardless of socket orientation on the mainboard)
Noise level
Cooling effectiveness
Smoothness of CPU mating surface
I've been tempted to buy a tower heatsink/fan unit, as I think it will cool better than my good, but aging Swiftech MCX64-V, since if chosen correctly, a new model should blow air straight to the 120mm exhaust fan at the back of the case. However, I haven't seen a good side-by-side comparison yet that tells me everything I'd wish to know. I hope Anandtech will look into this. Thanks!
More pictures would have been very helpfull. I have an e680i mobo and Lian-Li A10 case I still can't fiure out if I can put in the Tower without hitting the top-mounted 120mm case fan.
If the fan is really at the top, and not at the side of the case (in a tower design) the concerns are different. Considering dimensions toward the physical top (long dimension or height of a tower case), the Tuniq width in that direction is 110mm or 4.3". You can measure from the center of the socket 775 to see if you have 55mm (2.165") clearance to your fan from the center of the socket to the edge of the fan. Just for info the top of the Tuniq is 110mm x 128mm (4.3" x 5").
The Tuniq Tower dimentions are on page 3. A normal case is 19cm (7.5") deep in the cooler dimension, while the Tuniq is 15.5cm (6.1") tall. I can tell you for a fact the Tuniq clears all components on the 680i baord and can even be used with tall memory mounted (Corsair Diminator for example). You will need to determine if 1.4" is enough clearnace for you fan. Also since the fan would be blowing down on the solid top of the Tuniq, it likely will accomplish nothing as far as cooling is concerned and should be removed.
Additional information about the size of the Tuniq can be found at www.tuniq.com
I m pretty sure the Tuniq Tower 120 is the best air cooled heatsink.
I have a Intel Core 2 Quad QX6700. I do have a Scythe Ninja on it with a scythe 1600rpm S-fan. Running 2 instances of Orthos on all four cores gave me a full load temp of 74C and I know I have too much artic silver 5 on it. So realistically my load temps should be 73-72C.
I just purchased a Noctua NH-U12F which I believe to be really close to the performance of the Tuniq Tower 120.
I think we definately need the Noctua NH-U12F in the best cooler roundup.
The ninja need to be there for reference. And the Scythe Infinity would be a good idea too.
Another item of note is that these larger heavier CPU's show a different delta when loaded up with super hot CPUs.
My quad core running at 3.2 produces mega heat that few heatsinks can deal with.
The reason I switched to the NH-U12F was that it dropped my temp by 8C at stock speeds. 2 C of that I blame on properly application of artic silver.
Either way, this heatsink was well worth the money to me.
I changed over to the Noctura this past weekend. Just clearing up my previous post.
The Ninja is an excellent heatsink, but I think that there is a limit as to how much heat a heatsink can deal with. I have noticed more recently with the current round of newer solutions that the coolers with more mass tend to deal with larger heat loads better. This is not an exact trend, I m just saying that I haven t found any 300g heatsinks that can perform as well as the better 700g heatsinks under heavy heat loads.
Does anyone know how the thermal grease that comes with the Tuniq compares to Arctic Silver 5? Also I would love to see an Andantech article about lapping. I have seen some articles that say that lapping doesn't really improve your temps that much.
Lapping was much more important on Pentium 3s and Athlons that had an exposed CPU Die, and no heat spreader.
On modern Intel and AMD CPUs with a heat spreader, the thermal transfer point that needs the highest efficiency is between the heat spreader and the die - you can't do anything about that. The heat spreader gives you much more surface area to transfer the heat with, so the small increase from lapping isn't nearly as important as it used to be.
Perhaps if you're using a Tuniq Tower w/ a super high speed fan and an AC unit blowing at your case inputs and you're trying to break 4Ghz.. it might help. But for us real people, I'd say you're better off spending the time/money on a case with better airflow dynamics or just tying your cables out of the way to maximise airflow.
I have lapped a couple heatsinks, one I did a real half-assed job on, and temps were disappointing(lower than OEM heatsink, but higher than I would have liked).. my last one was used to overclock an AthlonXP mobile from 1.8 to 2.4, and I daresay it helped, but as I mentioned, those AthlonXPs had exposed CPU dies, so you had to transfer the full 60W or whatever using .5 square centimeters of surface area, so improving the transfer rate in any way possible helped.
I was a little surprised not tp see comparison benchmarks to a TUNIQ + E4300. I would love to see how much higher can the little buddy be pushed to a overclock with a TUNIQ.
Also, how comes lower clocked CPUs are those that can get higher ? ( sorry, I'm a newbie to PC modding )
Do not use the word "silent"; use "quiet". Also, you'd do better if you at least gave some impressions of the quality of noise, as that is just as, if not more, important.
I recently purchased a Scythe Ninja to cool a QX6700. I was considering purchasing the Tuniq Tower, or the Ninja, and was told the ninja had slightly better cooling. After installing it (properly), I found that the Ninja ran nearly 30 degrees F hotter than the stock cooling. I was under the impression that the Ninja and the Tuniq Tower had about the same performance, but based on this review, if my data is right, then the Tuniq would be much better. I'm wondering what the weak link is with the ninja. Is it really possible that the stock cooling is substantially better? Do you all suspect I had an improper installation (I am convinced I did everything properly), is the Tuniq better than the Ninja, are my results at all normal? Thanks.
The first time installing, I did put on WAY too much thermal grease, but I soon realized this was bad, and reinstalled it with a very thin layer of Arctic Silver 5 grease. I don't think the probes are bad either because the temperature readings I'm getting are within 1-2 degrees of Anandtech's stock cooler temperatures (131F under load).
Those stock temps are quite high if I compare them to my 939 AMD 4400+ X2 setup. At 2.8GHz I run 35'C idle and 50'C load.
Which is the maximum or limit temp that a Core Duo 2 can stand in such way that it will work flawlessly? I mean, in which point you need to worry about temperature?
Great review, Wesley. I'm so happy that Anandtech is finally testing cooling solutions again. It would be nice if you could comment on the weight of the heavier coolers in the next article, since that is a common complaint about heatsinks like the tuniq tower or infinity. Look forward to the rest of the series.
Otherwise pretty good review, but to compare aplle with aplle then you should test at least Thermalright Ultra 120 and Scythe Ninja (not to mention similar solutions from zalman, thermaltake and the others).
We are very aware of some of the excellent "noise level" testing done by Silent PC. The information is very useful for those who are looking for the lowest possible noise.
However, all our benchmarking tries to factor in the "real world" where users are operating their computers. The real world in this case is a "subjectively" very quiet 520W OCZ Power Supply at a noise floor of 38.3db and our test room at 36.3 db with all computers and fans turned off. To mainteain noise in the mid-30's we have to leave off all other computers, ac, and heat in the lab during our sound measurements. At those db levels, performance at 24db is interesting, but it doesn't tell us much about the noise of a cooler in a working computer in our test room.
The Tuniq Tower 120 weighs 798grams WITHOUT the fan. Both AMD and intel spec ~ 450g maximum and the first-class coolers in this class, the radial design such as the Zalman 9500 and the very similar new Asus radial design endeavor to minimize the weight while maximizing the cooling. The 9500 is ~ 475 grams and the Asus is ~ 610 grams ( both including the fan). Also, the center of gravity of this cooler is much higher off the motherboard than either of the coolers mentioned, especially when the fan is installed. The only way such a cooler can be used safely if the PC is to be transported anywhere after installation... eg to a LAN party or even moving between rooms... is to extend the mounting points of the cooler directly to the PC case, so that the case becomes the prime resistance against any physical strains on the cooler. Otherwise, torsion on the motherboard in the event of any shock to the cooler parallel to the plane of the motherboard is likely to compromise the integrity of the motherboard any one of a number of really nasty ways .... rupture ball-grid array solder joints, rupture circuit-board vias due to layer separation, pop the solder connections of surface mount components, cause hair-line cracks in rigid components such as surface-mount resistors and capacitors. Such failures almost invariably show up as functional intermittents and impossible to track down. I have personally witnessed similar failures caused by poor mechanical designs involving large unsupported components on professional electronic gear when subjected to standard shock tests.
The temperature graphs are a bit funny. You give STOCK, 14 x 266 and then 14 x 1095 and 1114 (which I'm guessing are quad-pumped figures instead). Also maybe it was me but I couldn't figure out if your temperature figures were with the Tuniq running at full or minimum speed, I presume the former.
It's a great bit of cooling but given I'm working in a mATX case, I'll never have the fun of trying this kit out.
quote: The quest for better cooling has been very creative, with solutions as simple as added fans, progressing to larger fans and heatsinks, water cooling, and finally the king of cooling - phase change.
Did you forget to add Peltier to the list of cooling options?
Peltier, or thermoelectric cooling and heating, operates on the same principal as phase change, but the way cooling is actually accomplished is somewhat different. We added Peltier to our list of the various cooling solutions.
I purchased the new Thermaltake Typhoon VX for my Core 2 rig and love it. I have it turned on to the lowest setting and you can't even hear it. Only thing I don't like is the knob to adjust the fan speed is on the HSF so you have to open up your case to adjust it, they should have provided a PCI slot like the Tuniq to adjust fan speed.
I read in some review the Typhoon VX is the best, I have the linked saved on my laptop but it comapared the VX to a whole bunch of the air cooling solutions and it performed at the very top. I don't think the review included the Tuniq Tower 120 yet.
Zalman 9700 vs Thermaltake Typhoon VX vs Tuniq Tower 120 for the next review!!! We would truly know what's best!
I was wondering if you monitored the PWMIC and chipset temperatures too. I had a Sonic Tower (another 'vertical fan' HSF) which cooled my processor very well, but my PWMIC and chipset temperatures were quiet high. I switched to a Big Typhoon where the fan blows down on the motherboard. I had pretty much the same CPU temperatures (actually better) but my PWMIC and chipset temperatures dropped 15-20 degrees C. I was able to remove the chipset HSF and replace it with a passive heatsink and still had lower temperatures on the chipset (minus the high pitched fan noise!).
Keep up the good work. I check your site at least once a day (yes, weekends too!).
We did not monitor chipset temperatures, but you make a very good point. Our EVGA 680i board uses active cooling on the northbridge. Frankly that 680i fan is so loud we needed to turn it off for all noise measurements. It is only needeed for overclocking, fortunately. The 680i is fine with passive cooling at stock speeds.
I just put that artic cooler freezer Pro 7 (thats a mouthfull) on to replace my stock HSF, that itself made a HUGE difference. I got it for $25 at newegg.
Before, I was running top speed 1.86ghz @ 2.8ghz with stock HSF. When i put on Freezer pro I hit 3.2ghz without any voltage change, but now its 48c at 3.2ghz vs 62c at 2.8ghz! Pretty impressive no matter how you dice it.
I'm guessing its just all heatpipe heatsinks that help a ton with cooling over stock HSF.
Not all 'heatpipe heatsinks', you can still design a heatsink badly with heatpipes. But most of the highest performance heatsinks use heatpipes to increase their efficiency, or to allow amazing masses of metal that would not fit around the CPU socket directly. My current heatsink looks a bit like an old style heatsink, but with 4 heatpipes coming out of the thick base and extending through the fins an inch higher and off to the sides.. it cools VERY well.
I've also seen similar looking heatsinks w/ heatpipes that cool worse than stock AMD and Intel heatsinks.
It is indeed a fair way to compare this with the stock heat sink. It would be more insightful to compare the results with other available products such as Zalman. Good review anyway!
Other cooling reviews are in the works. Eventually we will have a cooling database that will compare all the top cooling solutions.
We have found the Intel Retail HSF to be a decent cooler - particularly on a C2D. We needed to test the Retail Intel as a base line for future cooling tests.
yea i just wanna echo the above sentiment that we all know its better than stock, but how about comparing it to the top 5 coolers on the market to get an idea of how good it is? nonetheless, nice to finally see a heatsink review on anandtech.:)
I would like to request reviews of HSFs in the lower price bracket as well as this one. ($30 us approx.) eg. are you getting the extra $20 worth if you go for the tuniq
also the tuniq isnt readily available in some parts of the world :( so reviews of more easily obtained products would be good.
A low cost cooler roundup is in the works. Roundups always require lots of bench time so it will be several weeks before you will see the roundup at AT.
oh also
another good idea may be to also bench all new coolers against paradigm coolers of the past the people may be privvy to keeping/using such as the zalman 7000 / thermalright xp-90/120 and seeing how they compare to newer HSF units or even if they beat stock coolers anymore?
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EWAXMAN - Sunday, January 6, 2008 - link
TO WHOM THIS MAY CONCERN,
I WOULD LIKE TO SEE A TEST RUN ON THE "ASUS TRITON 77 CPU COOLING FAN" COMPARED TO: THE TUNIQ TOWER 120, THE ZALMAN 9500 LED, AND THE ZALMAN 9700 LED - FOR OVERCLOCKING PURPOSES.
TESTED ON AN INTEL DUAL CORE CPU's 1.86 GHZ 65nm's AND UP, FOR COOLING, EASE OF INSTALLATION, PLUS NOISE FACTOR AS WELL.
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE, FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, TIME, AND HELP.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EWAXMAN
EWAXMAN - Sunday, January 6, 2008 - link
I WOULD LIKE TO SEE A TEST RUN ON THE "ASUS TRITON 77 CPU COOLING FAN" COMPARED TO: THE TUNIQ TOWER 120, THE ZALMAN 9500 LED, AND THE ZALMAN 9700 LED - FOR OVERCLOCKING PURPOSES.TESTED ON AN INTEL DUAL CORE CPU's 1.86 GHZ 65nm's AND UP, FOR COOLING, EASE OF INSTALLATION, PLUS NOISE FACTOR AS WELL.
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE, FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, TIME, AND HELP.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EWAXMAN
LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, January 17, 2007 - link
Maybe I missed it...were the temperature results for the Tuniq tower obtained with the fan on minimum or maximum RPM?orion23 - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link
So Anandtech, I mean, Anandtech reviews this great cooler and the test that was run compares it to Intel's stock cooler?And the load temperatures are taken from a game and not Orthos, or the well know Prime95?
And what happened, You guys couldn't get a Zalman or Thermalright Cooler to test the tuniq against?
What is wrong with Anandtech?
Jodiuh - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link
Most folks use Core Temp to monitor temps since it works the same across all boards. As it stands, only 680i users can compare.And why not use Orthos, the OCer's fav testing tool? It gets temps up pretty high and lets us know how stable a system is.
PrinceGaz - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - link
You reported the temperatures at stock (2.93GHz) and at 3.73GHz for the standard cooler and the Tuniq Tower 120, and also at 3.83 and 3.9GHz for the TT120, but was the CPU running at the same core-voltage for all these different speeds? Presumably it was running at stock voltage for the stock speed run, so was 3.73GHz and 3.9GHz the maximum it could reach at stock voltage with the two heatsinks, or was the voltage increased (and by how much) to reach those speeds?For pure temperature comparisons between HSFs, keeping the voltage the same is obviously a must. However if the voltage was kept at stock (or at the same raised voltage) for determining the maximum overclock then you are probably missing out on a major advantage of a better cooler which is that you can crank the voltage up somewhat higher and still have a safe temperature.
Overclocking a CPU generally consists of seeing how fast it is stable at, then add a bit more voltage and see how much further it goes (while watching the temps), then a bit more voltage, and so on until the temperature reaches the highest you are happy with. The better HSF will allow a higher voltage to be used and that will usually translate to a higher overclock. Okay, so the overclocked temperature may be just as high with the better HSF when you use that approach, but it should provide a better indication of how much higher you can overclock the CPU with it.
Jiggz - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
With it's monstrous size and weight, you would think they will design something for a vertically oriented mobo; which by the way most of us have.monsoon - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Does anyone know about a good / slick / cheap ( any of those criteria is welcome ) CASE where to install HORIZONTALLY a regular ATX MoBo so that I don't have to worry about the weight of the cooler ?THANKS !=)
Axbattler - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Though it is a little redundant (given that I don't see people mounting AMD fans on Intel chips and vice-versa), I am a little curious how well the AMD Stock fan compares to the Tuniq tower, and by association, how well it compares to the Intel.I remember that AMD's heatpipe cooler, used in the Dual-Core Opteron (and probably some other chips) have been very well regarded in various reviews. At the time, it was often thought that AMD's stock cooling solution was a good few steps ahead of Intels. Of course, it is hard to tell if part of the reason may not have been with the sheer amount of heat generated by those P4s, which is why I am curious how the two compares today.
Araemo - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
I'd guess that that "good" dual core opteron heatpipe heatsink is a good unit. I purchased one in the FT/FS forums after I got my Opteron 148 (Single core, standard A64 heatsink), and with nothing but a little AS5, it was able to get my Opteron stable at 2.4 Ghz(over 1.8) with almost no extra voltage (I was only able to add 0.05V over the stock on my motherboard).That all said.. good luck getting a fair comparison with the Core 2 duo heatsinks.. You can't mount them on AMD and you can't mount the AMD(Socket 939) cooler on Intel(LGA775), as far as I can recall. I seem to recall that a few years back Anandtech(I think it was AT anyways.. I could be mistaken) built a 'cpu simulator' that had little metal ingots with heaters and temperature probes embedded to do apples-to-apples heatsink testing... I wonder if that's a realistic option for this roundup?
LoneWolf15 - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Thanks Wesley, for the review.I'd love to see a complete "cooling tower" review. There are a lot of similar products out there, such as the Sycthe Ninja/Scythe Infinity family, a couple by Noctua, the CoolerMaster Hyper 6+, Arctic's Freezer Pro line, and (sort of similar) Zalman's 9500/9700 line. A lot of us would like to know how they stack up against each other on both Intel and AMD platforms, with the following notes:
Weight of each cooler (lighter being better if it doesn't sacrifice performance)
Ease of mounting on both AMD and Intel systems (with a key to whether the heatsink can be mounted properly for fan exhaust direction, regardless of socket orientation on the mainboard)
Noise level
Cooling effectiveness
Smoothness of CPU mating surface
I've been tempted to buy a tower heatsink/fan unit, as I think it will cool better than my good, but aging Swiftech MCX64-V, since if chosen correctly, a new model should blow air straight to the 120mm exhaust fan at the back of the case. However, I haven't seen a good side-by-side comparison yet that tells me everything I'd wish to know. I hope Anandtech will look into this. Thanks!
AlabamaMan - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
More pictures would have been very helpfull. I have an e680i mobo and Lian-Li A10 case I still can't fiure out if I can put in the Tower without hitting the top-mounted 120mm case fan.Wesley Fink - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
If the fan is really at the top, and not at the side of the case (in a tower design) the concerns are different. Considering dimensions toward the physical top (long dimension or height of a tower case), the Tuniq width in that direction is 110mm or 4.3". You can measure from the center of the socket 775 to see if you have 55mm (2.165") clearance to your fan from the center of the socket to the edge of the fan. Just for info the top of the Tuniq is 110mm x 128mm (4.3" x 5").Wesley Fink - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
The Tuniq Tower dimentions are on page 3. A normal case is 19cm (7.5") deep in the cooler dimension, while the Tuniq is 15.5cm (6.1") tall. I can tell you for a fact the Tuniq clears all components on the 680i baord and can even be used with tall memory mounted (Corsair Diminator for example). You will need to determine if 1.4" is enough clearnace for you fan. Also since the fan would be blowing down on the solid top of the Tuniq, it likely will accomplish nothing as far as cooling is concerned and should be removed.Additional information about the size of the Tuniq can be found at www.tuniq.com
mackintire - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
I m pretty sure the Tuniq Tower 120 is the best air cooled heatsink.I have a Intel Core 2 Quad QX6700. I do have a Scythe Ninja on it with a scythe 1600rpm S-fan. Running 2 instances of Orthos on all four cores gave me a full load temp of 74C and I know I have too much artic silver 5 on it. So realistically my load temps should be 73-72C.
I just purchased a Noctua NH-U12F which I believe to be really close to the performance of the Tuniq Tower 120.
I think we definately need the Noctua NH-U12F in the best cooler roundup.
The ninja need to be there for reference. And the Scythe Infinity would be a good idea too.
Another item of note is that these larger heavier CPU's show a different delta when loaded up with super hot CPUs.
My quad core running at 3.2 produces mega heat that few heatsinks can deal with.
The reason I switched to the NH-U12F was that it dropped my temp by 8C at stock speeds. 2 C of that I blame on properly application of artic silver.
Either way, this heatsink was well worth the money to me.
mackintire - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
I changed over to the Noctura this past weekend. Just clearing up my previous post.The Ninja is an excellent heatsink, but I think that there is a limit as to how much heat a heatsink can deal with. I have noticed more recently with the current round of newer solutions that the coolers with more mass tend to deal with larger heat loads better. This is not an exact trend, I m just saying that I haven t found any 300g heatsinks that can perform as well as the better 700g heatsinks under heavy heat loads.
baronzemo78 - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Does anyone know how the thermal grease that comes with the Tuniq compares to Arctic Silver 5? Also I would love to see an Andantech article about lapping. I have seen some articles that say that lapping doesn't really improve your temps that much.http://www.overclockers.com/tips458/">http://www.overclockers.com/tips458/
Araemo - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Lapping was much more important on Pentium 3s and Athlons that had an exposed CPU Die, and no heat spreader.On modern Intel and AMD CPUs with a heat spreader, the thermal transfer point that needs the highest efficiency is between the heat spreader and the die - you can't do anything about that. The heat spreader gives you much more surface area to transfer the heat with, so the small increase from lapping isn't nearly as important as it used to be.
Perhaps if you're using a Tuniq Tower w/ a super high speed fan and an AC unit blowing at your case inputs and you're trying to break 4Ghz.. it might help. But for us real people, I'd say you're better off spending the time/money on a case with better airflow dynamics or just tying your cables out of the way to maximise airflow.
I have lapped a couple heatsinks, one I did a real half-assed job on, and temps were disappointing(lower than OEM heatsink, but higher than I would have liked).. my last one was used to overclock an AthlonXP mobile from 1.8 to 2.4, and I daresay it helped, but as I mentioned, those AthlonXPs had exposed CPU dies, so you had to transfer the full 60W or whatever using .5 square centimeters of surface area, so improving the transfer rate in any way possible helped.
mino - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Please consider doing the tests on Quad CPU(Kentsfield) as well as on a Duo CPU.Many coolers while beeing great for C2D perform poorly on Quad and vice versa.
Avalon - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
I'd like to see the Coolermaster Hyper TX included if possible!Good review!
monsoon - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Hello,I was a little surprised not tp see comparison benchmarks to a TUNIQ + E4300. I would love to see how much higher can the little buddy be pushed to a overclock with a TUNIQ.
Also, how comes lower clocked CPUs are those that can get higher ? ( sorry, I'm a newbie to PC modding )
THANKS
Great Googly Moogly - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Do not use the word "silent"; use "quiet". Also, you'd do better if you at least gave some impressions of the quality of noise, as that is just as, if not more, important.The rest is good.
RobbieMc - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
I recently purchased a Scythe Ninja to cool a QX6700. I was considering purchasing the Tuniq Tower, or the Ninja, and was told the ninja had slightly better cooling. After installing it (properly), I found that the Ninja ran nearly 30 degrees F hotter than the stock cooling. I was under the impression that the Ninja and the Tuniq Tower had about the same performance, but based on this review, if my data is right, then the Tuniq would be much better. I'm wondering what the weak link is with the ninja. Is it really possible that the stock cooling is substantially better? Do you all suspect I had an improper installation (I am convinced I did everything properly), is the Tuniq better than the Ninja, are my results at all normal? Thanks.xsilver - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&nu...">http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getart...ber=2&am...a non obvious installation problem is too much thermal grease
either that or malfunctioning probes?
RobbieMc - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
The first time installing, I did put on WAY too much thermal grease, but I soon realized this was bad, and reinstalled it with a very thin layer of Arctic Silver 5 grease. I don't think the probes are bad either because the temperature readings I'm getting are within 1-2 degrees of Anandtech's stock cooler temperatures (131F under load).Shark Tek - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Those stock temps are quite high if I compare them to my 939 AMD 4400+ X2 setup. At 2.8GHz I run 35'C idle and 50'C load.Which is the maximum or limit temp that a Core Duo 2 can stand in such way that it will work flawlessly? I mean, in which point you need to worry about temperature?
Wesley Fink - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
How are you measuring temperatures? Most motherboards are notoriously inaccurate in CPU temp measurements.Zaitsev - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Great review, Wesley. I'm so happy that Anandtech is finally testing cooling solutions again. It would be nice if you could comment on the weight of the heavier coolers in the next article, since that is a common complaint about heatsinks like the tuniq tower or infinity. Look forward to the rest of the series.mobutu - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
I suggest that Anandtech take a look at http://www.silentpcreview.com/">http://www.silentpcreview.com/ and learn how to do a "noise" test. If 34db is quiet then how about 22-25db? Definitevly 34db is LOUD.Otherwise pretty good review, but to compare aplle with aplle then you should test at least Thermalright Ultra 120 and Scythe Ninja (not to mention similar solutions from zalman, thermaltake and the others).
Cheers!
Wesley Fink - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
We are very aware of some of the excellent "noise level" testing done by Silent PC. The information is very useful for those who are looking for the lowest possible noise.However, all our benchmarking tries to factor in the "real world" where users are operating their computers. The real world in this case is a "subjectively" very quiet 520W OCZ Power Supply at a noise floor of 38.3db and our test room at 36.3 db with all computers and fans turned off. To mainteain noise in the mid-30's we have to leave off all other computers, ac, and heat in the lab during our sound measurements. At those db levels, performance at 24db is interesting, but it doesn't tell us much about the noise of a cooler in a working computer in our test room.
kilkennycat - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
The Tuniq Tower 120 weighs 798grams WITHOUT the fan. Both AMD and intel spec ~ 450g maximum and the first-class coolers in this class, the radial design such as the Zalman 9500 and the very similar new Asus radial design endeavor to minimize the weight while maximizing the cooling. The 9500 is ~ 475 grams and the Asus is ~ 610 grams ( both including the fan). Also, the center of gravity of this cooler is much higher off the motherboard than either of the coolers mentioned, especially when the fan is installed. The only way such a cooler can be used safely if the PC is to be transported anywhere after installation... eg to a LAN party or even moving between rooms... is to extend the mounting points of the cooler directly to the PC case, so that the case becomes the prime resistance against any physical strains on the cooler. Otherwise, torsion on the motherboard in the event of any shock to the cooler parallel to the plane of the motherboard is likely to compromise the integrity of the motherboard any one of a number of really nasty ways .... rupture ball-grid array solder joints, rupture circuit-board vias due to layer separation, pop the solder connections of surface mount components, cause hair-line cracks in rigid components such as surface-mount resistors and capacitors. Such failures almost invariably show up as functional intermittents and impossible to track down. I have personally witnessed similar failures caused by poor mechanical designs involving large unsupported components on professional electronic gear when subjected to standard shock tests.Jedi2155 - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
I've had this installed in my system and i've already moved it about 3-5 times (Lan parties). I've had no issues so far. It seems stable enough.btwango - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
798grams? without fan!! i don't think i want that much mass hanging off my mobo.plewis00 - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
The temperature graphs are a bit funny. You give STOCK, 14 x 266 and then 14 x 1095 and 1114 (which I'm guessing are quad-pumped figures instead). Also maybe it was me but I couldn't figure out if your temperature figures were with the Tuniq running at full or minimum speed, I presume the former.It's a great bit of cooling but given I'm working in a mATX case, I'll never have the fun of trying this kit out.
Googer - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Did you forget to add Peltier to the list of cooling options?
Wesley Fink - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Peltier, or thermoelectric cooling and heating, operates on the same principal as phase change, but the way cooling is actually accomplished is somewhat different. We added Peltier to our list of the various cooling solutions.DigitalFreak - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
I want to see the temps with just someone blowing on the heat spreader!Gigahertz19 - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
I purchased the new Thermaltake Typhoon VX for my Core 2 rig and love it. I have it turned on to the lowest setting and you can't even hear it. Only thing I don't like is the knob to adjust the fan speed is on the HSF so you have to open up your case to adjust it, they should have provided a PCI slot like the Tuniq to adjust fan speed.I read in some review the Typhoon VX is the best, I have the linked saved on my laptop but it comapared the VX to a whole bunch of the air cooling solutions and it performed at the very top. I don't think the review included the Tuniq Tower 120 yet.
Zalman 9700 vs Thermaltake Typhoon VX vs Tuniq Tower 120 for the next review!!! We would truly know what's best!
sadsteve - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Hi, very nice review.I was wondering if you monitored the PWMIC and chipset temperatures too. I had a Sonic Tower (another 'vertical fan' HSF) which cooled my processor very well, but my PWMIC and chipset temperatures were quiet high. I switched to a Big Typhoon where the fan blows down on the motherboard. I had pretty much the same CPU temperatures (actually better) but my PWMIC and chipset temperatures dropped 15-20 degrees C. I was able to remove the chipset HSF and replace it with a passive heatsink and still had lower temperatures on the chipset (minus the high pitched fan noise!).
Keep up the good work. I check your site at least once a day (yes, weekends too!).
Thank you.
Wesley Fink - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
We did not monitor chipset temperatures, but you make a very good point. Our EVGA 680i board uses active cooling on the northbridge. Frankly that 680i fan is so loud we needed to turn it off for all noise measurements. It is only needeed for overclocking, fortunately. The 680i is fine with passive cooling at stock speeds.imaheadcase - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
I just put that artic cooler freezer Pro 7 (thats a mouthfull) on to replace my stock HSF, that itself made a HUGE difference. I got it for $25 at newegg.Before, I was running top speed 1.86ghz @ 2.8ghz with stock HSF. When i put on Freezer pro I hit 3.2ghz without any voltage change, but now its 48c at 3.2ghz vs 62c at 2.8ghz! Pretty impressive no matter how you dice it.
I'm guessing its just all heatpipe heatsinks that help a ton with cooling over stock HSF.
Araemo - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Not all 'heatpipe heatsinks', you can still design a heatsink badly with heatpipes. But most of the highest performance heatsinks use heatpipes to increase their efficiency, or to allow amazing masses of metal that would not fit around the CPU socket directly. My current heatsink looks a bit like an old style heatsink, but with 4 heatpipes coming out of the thick base and extending through the fins an inch higher and off to the sides.. it cools VERY well.I've also seen similar looking heatsinks w/ heatpipes that cool worse than stock AMD and Intel heatsinks.
slayerized - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
It is indeed a fair way to compare this with the stock heat sink. It would be more insightful to compare the results with other available products such as Zalman. Good review anyway!Wesley Fink - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Other cooling reviews are in the works. Eventually we will have a cooling database that will compare all the top cooling solutions.We have found the Intel Retail HSF to be a decent cooler - particularly on a C2D. We needed to test the Retail Intel as a base line for future cooling tests.
mostlyprudent - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Very nice article. I would love to see a review of the Thermalright HR-01-775. I have heard reports that it is capable of passively cooling an E6400.poohbear - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
yea i just wanna echo the above sentiment that we all know its better than stock, but how about comparing it to the top 5 coolers on the market to get an idea of how good it is? nonetheless, nice to finally see a heatsink review on anandtech.:)shank2001 - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
Don't forget to test the Scythe Infinity when you do your comparisons. I think it may just beat the Tuniq! Amazing heatsink!xsilver - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
I would like to request reviews of HSFs in the lower price bracket as well as this one. ($30 us approx.) eg. are you getting the extra $20 worth if you go for the tuniqalso the tuniq isnt readily available in some parts of the world :( so reviews of more easily obtained products would be good.
Wesley Fink - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
A low cost cooler roundup is in the works. Roundups always require lots of bench time so it will be several weeks before you will see the roundup at AT.xsilver - Monday, January 15, 2007 - link
oh alsoanother good idea may be to also bench all new coolers against paradigm coolers of the past the people may be privvy to keeping/using such as the zalman 7000 / thermalright xp-90/120 and seeing how they compare to newer HSF units or even if they beat stock coolers anymore?