Tuniq Tower 120: Air Cooling to the Max
by Wesley Fink on January 15, 2007 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Noise
Improved cooling and higher overclocks often come with additional noise. For some users the goal is maximum stable overclock, and they will live with the inconvenience of a louder system. For others silence is the most important factor, and these users will forgo overclocking if this increases system noise levels.Fortunately, both the stock Intel retail HSF and the Tuniq Tower 120 pay serious attention to the noise factor. Intel uses a low speed 80mm fan that runs at about 1100 RPM under normal operating conditions. The Tuniq Tower 120 uses a massive 120mm 9-blade fan that moves a lot of air and that can be manually adjusted between 1000 and 2100 RPM.
It should be pointed out that the fan speeds reported by NVIDIA Monitor are double the actual fan speeds. Fan speeds were measured and confirmed with the well-known SpeedFan, which is a free download. SpeedFan confirmed the adjustment range of the Tuniq Tower 120 to be 1000 RPM to 2100 RPM, which is just a bit better than the specified 1000 to 2000 RPM.
In looking at noise measurements, the test environment was first considered. The noise floor in the test room, with all computers and fans off, is 36.4dB. There are also virtually no power supplies that do not have a fan. While Zalman and perhaps others make expensive fanless PSUs, we are not aware of one that is larger than 500W, or that would be used for seriously overclocking a system. With that in mind the noise level of the system with all fans turned off except the power supply was measured. The power supply used for the cooling test bed was the OCZ PowerStream 520, which is one of the quieter high performance power supplies. The noise level of the power supply was 38.3dB from 24" (61cm) and 47dB from 6" (152mm).
Measured noise levels in this chart should be considered worst case. Measurements were taken from an open side of a mid tower case 6" from the open HSF and 24" from the open HSF. Real world would be a completely closed case with a further reduction in noise.
The Intel retail HSF and the Tuniq Tower 120 at the 1000RPM setting were below the system noise floor at all tested speeds. That means they produced noise levels that were below the noise already produced by the quiet OCZ 520w power supply.
As already pointed out the Tuniq Tower 120 comes with a rheostat for adjusting fan speed from 1000 to 2100 RPM. At 1000 RPM the Tuniq can be considered as good as silent, but noise does go up as fan speed is manually increased. At the highest speed from 24" away the Tuniq measured 48dB compared to the system "floor" of 38.3dB. At a 6" distance the difference was 54dB to 47dB. Keep in mind that the dB scale is logarithmic and not linear, so a 3dB increase represents a doubling of sound power. Some studies suggest that while the human ear can discern small differences in sound level, the human ear perceives a doubling of loudness at a 10dB increase. Others quote double the sound level as 6db. In either case the increased noise of the Tuniq at 2100 RPM will definitely be noticeable to almost any user.
In most cases the 1000 RPM setting of the Tuniq Tower 120 will cool very adequately and sat very low noise levels. We found no difference in cooling with 1000 or 2100 RPM up to 3.73GHz. Above this point the higher 2100 speed cooled about 2C to 5C cooler than the 1000 low-speed setting. The system still topped out at 3.9GHz on low speed, but at a bit higher temperatures. This, of course, is with the Core 2 Duo processor, which runs rather cool. Your results with other CPUs will vary from this.
In the end whether you choose silence or maximum cooling with a bit more noise is up to you. With the adjustable fan speed you can dial in what is tolerable to you - from silence to some noise but a bit better cooling. It is worth mentioning that noise remained below the system noise floor until a speed of about 1600 RPM was reached. Above that speed noise increased rapidly.
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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!