CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part I - Loosing Your Cool?

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I may have missed it, so forgive me..... BUT........

This info is useless to me without a baseline comparison to a STOCK fan.

My stock e6600 fan is quiet, gets 40c - ~55c in my environment.
How will the 9700 compare? Who knows.

* ya I know they didn't test that one yet.
 



Damn, that thing's bigger than Hillary's va-jay-jay!
 
I'm always amused at how people kinda freak out after only the first part of a multi-part article =P Keep your freaking outage ( i know its not a word) for the end, it builds up and looks sometimes less stupid in the light of further information ^^ Remember it's a random number generator that chooses the coolers, and there's more liquid cooler to come. Overall, i was also concerned about the motherboard experimental set-up, but then again, if they keep the room temp stable, it shouldnt affect the testing. But then again, I rarely overclock my stuff, so just knowing what not to buy is good enough so far for me ^^
 


How about the fact that I run my Q6600 OC'ed to 3GHz and runs 32c idle and barely 50c when I ran Prime95 for 10 hours straight? And yes I use the CPNS9700 from Zalman. I usually run it on the high fan setting which sounds like a normal computer sound(air being moved) but when put on low its barely noticeable over the 80mm side/front/top fans in my PC.

But I keep it on high to help keep the temperatures dwon as I am not one to get very angry about fan noise. Now if it was a screeching noise yes but normal fan noise no.

The CPNS9700 is one of the top air cooling HSF's out there and I will recommend it to everyone.

And do you mean that wird golf ball shaped one Lurkerz89? When I saw that I was woundering what the guy who designed it was high on. That was ugly and performed below average for my taste.
 
I use the Noctura NH-12 with a scythe SFF21F fan at 1600RPM and I get slightly better temps with my overclocked QX6800.

The Noctura NH-12 does perform a bit better with a higher CFM rated fan.

As opposed to the Ninja which tops out pretty quicky.

You can tell because the Noctura's heat curve does not flatten out very quickly.

This is something they may want to go back and recheck along with any other heatsink that seems to behave the same.
 
What gets me is when you guys list the price to these coolers, on some, you lise a euro price only. The Watercool Hydrogen you said to expect to pay €300.... What gives?

Also, install these coolers in a case. If you going to simulate installation, might as well make it more real.
 


I do like the format that Anandtech uses for their cooler tests. They recently changed their testbed somewhat, but that should not affect the over-all performance numbers of the various coolers too much, and they at least took the time to explain the how's and why's of their testbed change.

And, yes, they do compare all coolers based on the results of the stock HSF. Most recent one that I'm aware of...

http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3210
 
Thanks for the link, but I would REALLLLLY like to see Tomshardware take a hint and test a STOCK cooler in the same environment for a baseline result.

Hay Guys.... wink wink.... YA you guys writing articles....
 
Don't the forum mods get to make comments to Tom's hardware editors?

I'd REALLLLY like to see the quality improve to what this site was under Dr. Tom.
 
English lesson for the day:

Say "2".
Now repeat it.
Now say "twain".

Now put it all together. Good.

Tomorrow I'll teach you how to say "locomotive".

Next day we'll work on how to be quite quiet.
 

Agreed. Almost 114W!?!?
 


I think its due to the fact that it came from the Munich, Germany Toms Labs. Thats for the Euros.

As for the way they tested it, if they did keep the ambient temp in the room the same it makes no difference. Besides you have to remember that some have a good high air flow case and some a poor low quality air flow case. I think in a case might be better but the results might not be the same across the bioard.



Maybe we should write Dr. Tom and have him come back and take over. I think it might be better. But still I just go here to talk to the peeps here on the forums as it seems to be the best place for info even compared to other sites.
 
They seem to favor the push pin mount it seems, installation wise. [:mousemonkey:4]
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You noticed that too, huh. I never understood people's complaints about having to take the motherboard out to replace a heatsink. I would think the majority of heatsink installs will be when someone is building a new computer (or installing a new motherboard).

That's a reason why the Ninja has the mouting setup it does now. Scythe wanted to have a more "user friendly" installation. The Ninja is a good heatsink, unfortunately (at least for LGA775) there is a flaw in their push-pin design. A lot of people are using the universal retention kit (bolt-through) from Thermalright with the Ninja now. So I don't think the low score of the Ninja overall was unwarranted, but it was for the wrong reasons.

Also the IFX-14 used a scythe fan... but scored better in the noise rating? wtf is this?
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Don't you know, it's because of those damn aluminum fins rattling around on the Ninja. :sarcastic:

The backplate, which is mounted in the back of the motherboard, is covered with a transparent adhesive foil. When removing the protective sticker from the backplate, it is far too easy to accidentally pull off this adhesive film too.
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How about not removing the "protective sticker" in the first place. The backplate isn't going to fail if you don't stick it to the motherboard, sheesh. Tell me how sticking something, that you will possibly want to remove one day, to the backside of a circuit board makes sense.

And for the noise recording; they mentioned the distance they recorded at, but they didn't mention ambient noise did they? Or ambient temp for that matter.
 
yuur fuunny

I just thought it was amusing that while you were bytching about the editing you didn't make sure your post was edited. :lol:
 
I gotta say this has been the lowest quality of Toms reviews that I've read to date....

As far as mounting goes, they need to rate ease of installation on both AMD and Intel systems. And as far as metal shavings go as mention in certain coolers, thats why I always test fit the cooler before mounting to get rid of such issues. Not to mention, orientation of the cooler does have an effect when installed in a case. A lot of the coolers I've seen can be pretty much mounted facing any direction. But it most mid towers optimum direction would be blowing towards the back of the case, so the rear fan can pull air directly out, with a little assistance from any PSU fan pulling from the top.

There is no mention of what paste or grease was used. What was ambient temp at? Not to mention there are CPU's out right now that have higher TDP and heat dissipation than what the qx6850 has. Temps seem rather high, even compared to what i've seen on some processors. And when you consider the fact I got an old athlon XP Palomino to run at less than 55c under load with an old copper evercool hsf that says a lot.

A case with a board mounting plate that had a hole cut out beneath the socket for mounting hsf hardware would be awesome.

As far as cases with removable tray's thats a good point, even the tray on my raidmax smilodon is removable for mounting. So I think a baseline case situation should be taken into account.

I notice they failed the Nirvana yet it has some of the best cooling performance in the bunch. As far as mounting on that one, I'd give it about a 7 or 8 for AMD, could be difficult depending on case and mobo combo, plus the amount of weight on the retaining ring. As far as mounting on Intel rig goes, I'd say a 5 or 6, since the screws could be difficult to get to for tightening, and as far as possible metal flakes, thats what compressed air is for. And as far as noise in a closed case goes, I can't really hear it over the other 2 120mm case fans, and it's not loud enough to me to be distracting, and since I'm nit picky about such things I can back that up.
 
As far as cases with removable tray's thats a good point, even the tray on my raidmax smilodon is removable for mounting. So I think a baseline case situation should be taken into account.
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its a little unfortunate that the tray on that case will not slide out with the heat sink on....Or does it swing out on the back side? I have a case that does that(had a P133 and now has a AthlonXP system in it...)....
 


It swings out, and if you do it right, you swing it out just enough to get ahold of it, then lift it slightly to detach it from the case completely, both side panels work that way on this case. If I had a camera, I'd take it apart and snaps some shots of it. Still not useful for putting mounting hardware on the back on an intel based board though, I'd have to mod the plate for that.
 
I think the review should have limited installation and noise scores to cooling scores. In other words, if a cooler scores a 1 in cooling, it's max score should be 3. It seems odd to me that a cooler that doesn't cool could score the same as a cooler than is difficult to install yet cools amazingly. If it doesn't keep the CPU cool, then who cares how easy it is to install and how quiet the fan is?
 
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