Slashdot Mirror
Roundup of Eight Horizontal CPU Coolers
ThinSkin writes "ExtremeTech has done a roundup of eight sideways-gusting CPU coolers under fifty bucks to see if they can keep an overclocked Athlon FX-60 from welding itself to the motherboard. In addition to temperature testing, much emphasis was placed on noise reduction, which with some coolers can be improved by adjusting fan speed or even removing the fan from the cooler."
.. I have a problem with my 700 mhz webserver that lives under my bed. How do I shut that up? It's driving me nuts. I'm not trying to be funny here, I'm really starting to loose it over this thing.
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
I really like the look of the Thermaltake Sonic Tower.
I downgraded my CPU fan a while ago, it was just to noisy to (now) have in my bedroom.
Plus, if my old XP2800+ kicks the bucket then it's the perfect excuse to upgrade.
I used to have an Athlon 800 mhz. Between the cpu, case, and graphics card fans there were 7 fans keeping that sucker cool. My roommate would say that it sounded like a Jet starting up when I turned it on.
The testers decided to set every fan to maximum. Unsurprisingly then, the biggest, gruntiest fan had the best cooling while being 'too loud'. The winning fans were basically the ones with a lower maximum.
I have a suggestion for the testers: Next time you're trying to compromise between noise and temperature, don't turn every fan on to maximum. Instead, decide a set temperature and measure noise levels when the CPU reaches that temperature.
The main thing to worry about with these "extended" coolers is the strain that it puts on the motherboard.
I switched from the my AMD supplied Sempron 2800+ (socket 754) cooler to the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro reviewed in the article. I found that Arctic cooler made an over 10 Celsius cooling difference compared to the stock AMD cooler. I guess AMD includes much beefier coolers with their higher end CPUs?
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
I know they talk about the weight of some of these behemoths, and they touch on how they are backed well (backing plates) but these things are huge, and put alot of stress on the Mainboard.
I have the Hyper 6, if I were to ever travel with my box I would take it off. Right now it is sitting comfortabley but driving, moving this thing might crack the mainboard around the CPU.
They should institute a "wiggle test" to see how much wiggling it takes to break the mainboard when one of these monsters is connected.
I do have a few Xeon-based workstations that are "side cooling" or whatever, their ages are something like 4-5 years now, the systems were designed to work with chips running up to 2.8GHz. It's ducted too, so the air goes straight out the case, and the entire system is surprisingly quiet. It doesn't have fancy liquid cooling, heat pipes or anything special other than an ordinary aluminum heat sink and a fan.
Come to think of it, I have an old Alpha that uses side cooling, draws in fresh air from the front, that was made in 1997. I guess the "enthusiast" market is just behind the times.
Looking at the temperature graphs, I think the bigger message from the testing is that it isn't necessary to spend the extra cash on buying non-stock cooling. You can even get away with non-stock cooling if you're overclocking.
/noise in the computer is the video card, not the processor. Currently my AMD 3500+ (overclocked from 2.2->2.6ghz on stock cooling) is running at 37C while my gpu at non 3d is running at 57C and will approach 87C when using graphically intensive applications. Typically gpu coolers are built thinly...so in order to make up for the smaller room to work with cooling wise, the fans are run at very high rpm. This also makes the video card the noisiest thing in the machine.
Rather than spending cash on changing the stock cooling, consumers would be better off spending that $50 on getting better ventilation for their case since recently, the biggest producer of heat
By the way, if you're looking for a good place for help on building a computer, I find that the steam hardware forums are the best place to get help.
Steam Hardware Forums
In TFA they say: the Sonic Tower shouldn't block access to anything on your motherboard. It's not always true, on a Tyan Tomcat mobo it will push against the VGA card, I had to bend it a bit so that it does not touch any contacts.
There's no room to have a vertical cooling system in a 1U case. The cooling always has horizontal airflow, whether its from a fan mounted on the side of the heatsink, or external fans and ducting.
Whether or not this is better depends on the specifics of the airflow in your case.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
With an aging breadboard, it appears to gain tensile stress and flexibility; take to note a 10-year-old Deskstation Alpha motherboard that can easily bend an half an inch of gain between both ends. The larger than heatsink or cooling system on the CPU socket, the more leverage possible to snap somthing clear-off with the least amount of force.
I await the day when a modern centralized CPU architecture is fabricated and passively cooled, perhaps by air/atmosphere and without a heatsink as was 486 DX/2 and previous. Ever since Intel fabricated those evil Pentium 60MHz CPUs, the Heatsink needed a fan.
without prejudice
How about the fans on video cards? I'd rather replace them -- they're a lot louder than most cpu fans are. (the high end ones at least, mine's a 6800 gt) And with the card being right next to my cpu heatsink (I have a huge HSF.. the Thermaltake Big Typhoon), I'm gonna probably need a pretty good video card HSF replacement.. can anyone suggest one?
...you can't both inspect the ping packet and the time value simultaneously.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
For example I noticed they didn't like the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro. That supprised me, since I have the Pentium D version of the same thing and I think it's great. Why didn't they like it? Well it didn't cool as well as others... Right, see it's designed to be silent, but cool well enough. On my board, the BIOS decided that 50 degrees is the temperature at which the processor ought to operate (can alter that but I haven't). If the processor gets hotter than that, it speeds up the fan, if it drops much below that, it slows it down.
Well the net effect is I can't hear my CPU fan. When my cores are mostly idle like web surfing, it runs at like 800RPM and is totally inaudible over other noise. During intense work it spins up to like 1500RPM and you can hear it, but just barely. When told to run to maximum (something like 300RPM, don't remember) it gets to be moderatly noisy, though not annoying.
The point is that no, it doens't keep my processor ultra cool, but I've seen no reason as to why I should care. CPUs can run quite hot with no problems. What it does do is maintian my processor at a safe temperature with a minimum amount of noise. To me, that is golden.
Also something to note is that often the biggest, baddest heatsinks aren't safe. They are too heavy and can crack the motherboard. Won't happen right away, but there's maximum stresses you are supposed to put on them. It's like 500g in Intel's case. So if you buy some massive copper job that weighs a kilogram, don't be supprised if your board cracks a few months down the road.
From the article:
;)
The metal brackets don't have much flex, so locking down the thumb latches requires some effort and finger strength. But once they're in place, the cooler is very secure. You can do it all with your bare hands, but having a set of pliers handy will keep your fingers pristine for more important things like typing and clicking.
Typing and clicking? As I was reading that last sentence expecting something like, "inner thighs," or, "breasts."
Remember, chicks dig guys with soft hands.
This sig rocks the casbah.
How can they have real review of CPU coolers without a Zalman?
1 93&code=
http://www.zalman.co.kr/usa/product/view.asp?idx=
I haven't used this exact model, but I put their "CNPS7000" CPU cooler and their "VF700" Gfx card cooler in my PC. Combined with an Antec Phantom power supply and AcoustiPack case dampening material, acoustically it went from "this is really annoying" to "is this thing turned on?" (and is running a lot cooler, too)
I'm a little curious why they limited the roundup to horizontals under $50, while using the FX chip as a testbed. Being a FX-60 owner, I couldn't possibly justify purchasing a cooler because it is "under xxx price". Why cheap out on the cooling once you've spent a small fortune on the processor?
I was looking for a good heatsink/fan for my dad's Intel P4 560 (he does some gaming) and I settled on the Scythe Ninja and a Nexus 120mm fan. The fan itself is extremely quiet (you can hardly hear it at all) and it keeps the CPU very cool; if I remember correctly, it was hovering around 50C during the stress tests.
A great site to check out, which I based my purchase on the reviews from, is SilentPC Review. It has a lot of in depth reviews and what not on cooling devices.
I know that some GeForce cards have hidden driver settings that let you adjust the speed of the fan if your hardware supports it. RivaTuner is such a tool that, among other things, will let you set the speed of your card's fan when apps are using 3D features and not. My "fancy" eVGA GeForce 6600GT can't set its own fan speed apparently, which is disappointing since it's the noisiest thing in my case.
I agree here. I've got a Freezer 4 (the older-ish version for s478 CPU's). It's sitting on my 3GHz P4 OC'ed to 3.4GHz. Idle is ~28c, load isn't any more than 48c.
- cooling-freezer-64-pro.html and http://www.pcpro.co.uk/custompc/labs/84132/arctic- cooling-freezer-7-pro.html to see a decent test.
I've got friends who have the 64 Pro, and they also agree, load/idle temps are *far* lower than anything they've tried. Only water cooling gets lower.
Better than that, Custom PC, a UK mag for 'peformance hardware & customisation' agrees, rating both the Arctic Cooling 64 Pro & the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro in their CPC Elite. Have a read of http://www.pcpro.co.uk/custompc/labs/84129/arctic
NeoThermic
Use my link above, or to view my server, NeoThermic.com
Roundup of Eight Horizontal CPU Coolers
/. posting?!"
I read this and thought "You round up eight, you still get eight. What, are we working in a math system where eight is considered a fraction? How does this earn an
I'm a regular visitor to Silent PC Review (SPCR) where they talk about CPU heatsinks at great length. Only one of the ones in this article (Thermaltake Sonic Tower) do I ever recall seeing mention of at SPCR. The noise levels they're talking about (~45 dBA) are just way over the top from my point of view - I'd be reluctant to consider anything over about 25 dBA, which is about 50-100 times quieter.
If you're a mad overclocker who plays FPS games with sound through your stereo system with volume on 11, this is a useful review. If you want quiet, go to SPCR.
I use a Scythe Ninja passive (fanless) heatsink. Until about 10 days ago, I had a nearly inaudible, single fan system. (I upgraded my video card to be able to play Oblivion, and I'm waiting a few months for it to fail before I void warantee by replacing the active heatsink it came with.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Are you kidding, From the server side, they're all zero!!!
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
I just built myself a new computer yesterday and I want this baby to run nice and cool (I don't plan on overclocking, it's fast enough as it is, I just want to make sure the CPU isn't running too hot).
Here's my new setup:
Antec Sonata II (1x120mm fan, thinking about adding a second 120mm for good measure)
MSI K8N Neo4F Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
2gig Kingston
250gig Western Digital SATA-II
Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO2 (so far I love! this card, haven't tried to unlock the extra 4 pipelines to make it 16 pipelines yet though)
I live on the 3rd floor, my room is a huge loft, but around this time of year and all through summer my room is literally a sauna. Since it's 3 floors up the central A/C doesn't pump out very much cold air through the ducts this far away from the basement. My room feels over 45 celcius in the summer, and like 100% humidity. I don't want to run my nice new box in my room at that insane ambient temperature so I've decided to move my computer down to an empty room on my 2nd floor (feels 10 degrees cooler then my loft).
In my loft the temperature of my CPU at idle was around 38 degrees celcius, after playing a game for 30min it was over 46 degrees.
Now that I've moved my box downstairs a level my cpu idle temperature is now around 30 degrees instead of 38 degrees (it still gets upto around 46 degrees under load.)
Currently my cpu temperature is 33C and my motherboard temperature is 35C at 1% load.
I'm not familiar with AMD, this is my first AMD system, I've owned 5 Intel systems in the past. I'm wondering if anyone knows what temperature range is "safe" for my Athlon64 X2 3800+?
I ran two copies of Prime95 on each of my 2 cores for about 5minutes before I cancelled it because the CPU temperature went from 38 to 44 in 5 minutes, I didn't want the temperature to keep raising that quickly so I cancelled both Prime95 tests and the CPU temperature quickly dropped back down. I'm just wondering if this is normal for an AMD dual core to heat up and cool down that quickly? I'm seriously trying to decide whether I need a better HSF or maybe I just worry too much? I never worried about my old Pentium 4 space heater, dunno why I'm so worried about my new system... Anyone experienced with Athlon 64 X2's wanna give me some advice? =)
You want the heatsink to heat up and cool down quickly.
If the CPU is getting hot, you want as much of that heat transferred to the heatink as soon as possible (or it will melt the CPU).
Heating up quickly is good.
If the Heatsink is hot and the CPU stops generating heat, you want it to cool down quick. The HSF is designed to dump heat as fast as possible.
Cooling down quickly is good.
Remember - the idea is to transfer heat away from teh CPU as fast as possible to avoid it frying and dying.
...for the day when the CPU has about 1000 processor cores on it that each run at a few megahertz, at extremely low voltage, and with so much time between cycles that they run cool naturally... but with a performance gain over the fastest processors available today. And then we can say goodbye to this cooling nonsense.
Silence is my #1 requirement, followed by ridiculously high clock speeds and large storage/ram. I've been making my life simple for the past 7 years by going with Antec every time.
The cheap solution is the Sonata case with its modified SmartPower 450w supply, a bit labor-intensive to assemble but very quiet and just the power supply alone is worth the price of the whole kit. The downside is that apparently, some poor schmucks don't like the shiny black finish. It's around 130-140$ here in Canada, so probably less than 100 in the states.
The less cheap solution is the P180 case, no power supply included this time. Costs about 20% more than the Sonata, but it has a novel design with the power supply on the bottom, and separate chambers for the PS, board and graphics cards so heat gets ducted out very efficiently. It's got fans up the wazoo.. three 120mm fans, with three speed settings, and mounting spots for even more fans. I've found that even with the craziest Athlon FX rig with twin 7800GTX's, the system was rock stable at the slow fan setting for whisper quiet gaming. Now I don't have 1500$ of graphics, but I do love the sexy brushed aluminum appearance and comfort of having my most abused compoenent - the mainboard - right on top where I can tweak it.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It is the simplest way to get a PC to queit down. Put it 2 doors away (old fashioned thick doors not the modern crap) and enjoy the total silence. Oh and the healthy walks to change the cd.
Cooling a PC requires a couple of things. Getting cool air in and getting the hot air out while keeping dust down. The easiest way of doing this is to just turn your PC into a windtunnel. That is never going to happen with a nice looking tiny case. My solution? Rip of the sidewalls and replace them with a frame carrying LARGE and THICK fans (powered by a seperate powersupply) wich suck the air away from the mother board forcing fresh air in from the sides and back.
So the place where some case modders put a transparant window to show off the insides is for me a wall of fans.
Now that keeps everything cool. The noise? Well because of the huge amount of air being moved all over the place the fans themselves don't need to turn all that fast and I can use proper large fans wich are always more silent.
It still makes noise but once I close the door to the closet and then the door to the hallway the noise level is completly down. In the hallway itself you hear a slight hum but still less then from the central heating system.
If you absolutly need your PC in the room with you then you might want to look at some real water cooling. Not the sissy stuff with the radiator on top of your PC. Get that sucker out of the window just like in a proper airco setup.
Just remember that just because the critical components are water cooled doesn't mean you can turn off al the case fans. If you do that you will soon learn all the parts of your computer are prone to overheating.
The best way to reduce noise is distance. With digital connections you can either put distance between you and your noisy computer or use water cooling to at least get distance between you and the cooling setup.
The difference is truly amazing. Silent computing can't be underestimated.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
ASUS and Gigabyte both make video cards with big heatsinks/heatpipes instead of fansinks. The fastest such card I'm aware of is the ASUS 7800GT TOP Silent
What is it with this obsession with overclocking? Almost every article that tests a cooler use it for overclocking. I believe that the major part of the market are not iterested in overclocking.
In fact, I'd be happy to _underclock_ my system if it meant that it would be quieter.
pressure/vacuum and the liquid inside heatpipe is tuned to certain temperature and heatpipe heatsink is very good at keeping that temperature, even uder load.
http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/product/cooler/retai l/cl-p0114/cl-p0114.asp
I've got friends who have the 64 Pro, and they also agree, load/idle temps are *far* lower than anything they've tried. Only water cooling gets lower.
At what voltage? My Freezer 64 Pro cools the system very well at 12 V, but gets a little noisy. When I set the RPM to a half of the maximum value (so I suppose the voltage is about 6 V), it cools a little worse and is a lot quieter. It pays to have a fan regulator.
Freezer is a great cooler for the money, but I don't think that "only water cooling gets lower". And its performance depends a lot on the air flow in your case. Freezer works best with a rear exhaust case fan.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)