Tuniq Tower 120: Air Cooling to the Max
by Wesley Fink on January 15, 2007 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Final Words
Effective CPU cooling means lowering the processor temperature compared to the Intel retail HSF which comes with most Intel processors. If an after market cooling solution does not perform better than the kit heatsink, there is no real reason to buy it. A cooler CPU could result in a longer CPU life, but most users upgrade cooling to overclock even further than is possible with a stock HSF. The second characteristic of effective cooling, then, is that it allows a better overclock than the stock HSF.The Intel Core 2 Duo is unarguably the most overclockable CPU in the current market. It is therefore the logical processor for evaluating the effectiveness of cooling solutions. There is a problem, however, in that the stock Intel retail HSF is really very good at cooling and very quiet. Intel seems to have learned a lot about cooling in working with the incredibly hot Pentium 4 NetBurst processors and they have applied what they learned to cooling the Core 2 Duo, which is not nearly as demanding. This is just to put in perspective the fact that the average heatsink/fan is likely to have a difficult time outperforming the Intel retail HSF. It is a very good kit HSF.
Having said that, it is clear the Tuniq Tower 120 is definitely up to the task. At the highest stressed speeds we could reach with the Tuniq, it still performed better, under demanding gaming conditions, than the Intel HSF at idle. That is certainly not faint praise.
In the second part of our definition, the Tuniq Tower 120 allowed a 200MHz greater overclock than the Intel HSF with the top-line Core 2 Duo X6800. The final overclock with the X6800/Tuniq Tower 120 was a stable 3.90GHz - a 1000MHz boost over the 2.93GHz stock speed. This is with the fastest Core 2 Duo, and we know from other testing that you can get overclocks much higher than 1000MHz with lower C2D processors because your starting point is a lower CPU speed.
For those who also consider lack of noise at least as important as performance we can only say you will also find the Tuniq Tower 120 satisfying. At the lowest 1000RPM measured noise remained below the system floor all the way to the highest overclock of 3.9Ghz. In fact, measured noise generally remained below the system noise floor as long as the fan speed was kept below 1600 RPM. You can squeeze out a few more degrees of cooling at the highest and noisier 2100 RPM, and with some CPUs that will also translate into a higher overclock. Silence is in your control with the Tuniq, since the fan is only manually adjustable, and the kit comes with a slot mounted fan speed rheostat.
From both our criteria for effective cooling the Tuniq Tower 120 is an outstanding CPU cooler. It does what a cooler should do with exceptional performance at all tested levels. Our noise measurements also confirmed Sunbeam's claim that the Tuniq Tower 120 is an "Ultra Silent CPU cooler" - at least at the lower fan speeds.
The performance of this air cooler is beyond reproach, but we did find installation was often not much fun. You have to use a bottom plate for attaching the Tuniq through the Socket 775 mounting holes. This means the motherboard must be removed from the case to install the Tuniq. We wish Sunbeam could find a better way to mount, but we do prefer secure mounting of this large and heavy cooler to an easier solution that might be less secure.
The other issue is the top mounting plate, which must be mated to a pin on the back of the copper CPU mount. It requires a lot of maneuvering to line up those parts and the sharp cooling fins are ready to cut or slice your hand if you're not careful. We suggest you take your time and stop a while if you find you are getting frustrated. Once properly mounted you will be rewarded with some of the best air cooling performance you can find.
Last, many enthusiasts will tell you the smoother the contact surface the better the cooling. Frankly they will not be happy with the relatively rough copper bottom of the Tuniq. If that matters to you, then you will probably want to do a little surface polishing before mounting the Tuniq. An even better solution would be for Sunbeam to provide a more polished mounting surface on future Tuniq Tower 120s.
We have seen comments that claim the Tuniq is the best air cooler you can buy. Others have said the cooling is as effective as many water cooling solutions. We have more testing to do before we can support either of these claims. However, we can say with certainly that the Tuniq Tower 120 is one of the best cooling solutions we have ever tested. When you consider the cost is about $50 the Tuniq also has to be considered an incredible value. We can't think of many other products that cost $50 that will do as much for system performance as the Tuniq Tower 120.
We extend our sincere thanks to Frozen CPU for providing the Tuniq Tower 120 for review. Sunbeam has delivered a deceptively simple product that does what it is designed to do - provide exceptional cooling performance for a wide range of current processors and motherboards.
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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?