Scythe Andy Samurai Master vs. Thermaltake MaxOrb
by Wesley Fink on June 4, 2007 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Conclusion
As the numbers in our CPU cooler tests have risen, certain conclusions have become more obvious. After testing some 23 separate coolers and many more configurations the heatpipe tower has emerged as the best performing design among the coolers. A tall heatpipe tower with horizontal fins attached to a number of vertical heatpipes is the best air-cooling performance you can buy these days. These towers all use side-blowing fans to further dissipate the heat. Most are designed to use a single fan, but some can use two or more fans in a push-pull configuration.
Top air-cooler performance solidly belongs to the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme at 3.94GHz, with the Tuniq Tower 120, the regular Thermalright Ultra-120, the Scythe Ninja B Plus with SilenX fan, the OCZ Vindicator with SilenX, and the Scythe Infinity with dual push-pull Scythe fans all right behind and tied at 3.90GHz. This is a remarkable group of performers that definitely deliver value for your money.
We have tried to keep an open mind about the supposed advantages of down-facing fans. The arguments and logic are persuasive - a fan or fans blowing down should also cool your motherboard components better, and that should mean better performance. The argument is logical enough, but unfortunately the execution leaves a lot to be desired. So far we have tested three down-facing designs - the Cooler Master GeminII, Scythe Andy Samurai Master, and Thermaltake MaxOrb. That's quite an illustrious group, but none of these three could really compete with our top tier of coolers.
We are left to ask the question if down-facing cools better, then why can't these down-facing designs compete with the best heatpipe towers in performance? We have no auxiliary cooling in our test bed, so the down-facing designs should shine in better performance. Unfortunately they don't.
It is sad to say that we considered the Cooler Master GeminII performance disappointing in our last review, when it is definitely the best of the down-facing coolers. That is not praise for the GeminII; it is just an example of what a disappointment this design really is. The GeminII turned out to be the best of a group of underperformers.
There are definitely good things to say about the MaxOrb and Andy Samurai Master once you get past the disappointing performance. The MaxOrb is elegant and exceptionally light for a top cooler. This means it should travel well in a LAN Party PC for example. The MaxOrb also has one of the slickest and best-working installation systems we have seen. You can truly mount the MaxOrb without any thought of having to remove your motherboard. We can't say that about many of these big high-end coolers.
The Andy Samurai does not fare quite as well. It is much heavier and not a cooler you should use in a computer on the go. Replacing the medium output quiet Scythe fan does absolutely nothing to improve performance. Fans with double the airflow still leave the Andy Samurai Master at a maximum overclock of 3.81GHz. Mounting is also supposed to be a snap without removing the board, but we found the wide overhangs made it almost impossible to mount the Andy Samurai Master without removing the motherboard from the case. Fortunately Scythe has two other heatpipe tower designs that do make it to the top of our performance charts, so you can always buy one of those if you are set on the Scythe brand.
In the end the only conclusion to be reached is that the heatpipe towers with side fans are a superior design to the down-blowing coolers. They cool to lower temperatures and allow higher overclocks than the down-facing designs - even those with super high-output fans and their own heatpipes. The conventional wisdom and logic for down-facing fans just doesn't pan out in real-world performance.
The real advantage of comparative testing in a consistent test bed is you can see patterns like this emerge over time. This is easily missed with tests that use a different test bed for almost every review, or that only compare a few items on the same test bed. Large numbers consistently tested allow you to look more deeply at a group as we are doing here with CPU coolers on a Core 2 Duo test bed.
The down-facing coolers are just fine for routine cooling. Some perform very well indeed at stock speeds. Others compare well if noise is your first concern. However, in the important cooling performance and overclocking areas, the down-facing coolers are consistently outperformed by heatpipe tower designs. The best values in cooling performance and overclocking are the heatpipe towers with side fans that top our performance charts.
As the numbers in our CPU cooler tests have risen, certain conclusions have become more obvious. After testing some 23 separate coolers and many more configurations the heatpipe tower has emerged as the best performing design among the coolers. A tall heatpipe tower with horizontal fins attached to a number of vertical heatpipes is the best air-cooling performance you can buy these days. These towers all use side-blowing fans to further dissipate the heat. Most are designed to use a single fan, but some can use two or more fans in a push-pull configuration.
Top air-cooler performance solidly belongs to the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme at 3.94GHz, with the Tuniq Tower 120, the regular Thermalright Ultra-120, the Scythe Ninja B Plus with SilenX fan, the OCZ Vindicator with SilenX, and the Scythe Infinity with dual push-pull Scythe fans all right behind and tied at 3.90GHz. This is a remarkable group of performers that definitely deliver value for your money.
We have tried to keep an open mind about the supposed advantages of down-facing fans. The arguments and logic are persuasive - a fan or fans blowing down should also cool your motherboard components better, and that should mean better performance. The argument is logical enough, but unfortunately the execution leaves a lot to be desired. So far we have tested three down-facing designs - the Cooler Master GeminII, Scythe Andy Samurai Master, and Thermaltake MaxOrb. That's quite an illustrious group, but none of these three could really compete with our top tier of coolers.
We are left to ask the question if down-facing cools better, then why can't these down-facing designs compete with the best heatpipe towers in performance? We have no auxiliary cooling in our test bed, so the down-facing designs should shine in better performance. Unfortunately they don't.
It is sad to say that we considered the Cooler Master GeminII performance disappointing in our last review, when it is definitely the best of the down-facing coolers. That is not praise for the GeminII; it is just an example of what a disappointment this design really is. The GeminII turned out to be the best of a group of underperformers.
There are definitely good things to say about the MaxOrb and Andy Samurai Master once you get past the disappointing performance. The MaxOrb is elegant and exceptionally light for a top cooler. This means it should travel well in a LAN Party PC for example. The MaxOrb also has one of the slickest and best-working installation systems we have seen. You can truly mount the MaxOrb without any thought of having to remove your motherboard. We can't say that about many of these big high-end coolers.
The Andy Samurai does not fare quite as well. It is much heavier and not a cooler you should use in a computer on the go. Replacing the medium output quiet Scythe fan does absolutely nothing to improve performance. Fans with double the airflow still leave the Andy Samurai Master at a maximum overclock of 3.81GHz. Mounting is also supposed to be a snap without removing the board, but we found the wide overhangs made it almost impossible to mount the Andy Samurai Master without removing the motherboard from the case. Fortunately Scythe has two other heatpipe tower designs that do make it to the top of our performance charts, so you can always buy one of those if you are set on the Scythe brand.
In the end the only conclusion to be reached is that the heatpipe towers with side fans are a superior design to the down-blowing coolers. They cool to lower temperatures and allow higher overclocks than the down-facing designs - even those with super high-output fans and their own heatpipes. The conventional wisdom and logic for down-facing fans just doesn't pan out in real-world performance.
The real advantage of comparative testing in a consistent test bed is you can see patterns like this emerge over time. This is easily missed with tests that use a different test bed for almost every review, or that only compare a few items on the same test bed. Large numbers consistently tested allow you to look more deeply at a group as we are doing here with CPU coolers on a Core 2 Duo test bed.
The down-facing coolers are just fine for routine cooling. Some perform very well indeed at stock speeds. Others compare well if noise is your first concern. However, in the important cooling performance and overclocking areas, the down-facing coolers are consistently outperformed by heatpipe tower designs. The best values in cooling performance and overclocking are the heatpipe towers with side fans that top our performance charts.
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Wesley Fink - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link
We now use a standard quality silver-colored paste in all our reviews. But in our experience and testing the thermal paste makes absolutely no difference in performance. The paste fills gaps and needs to remain fluid and not dry out.A famous review from several years ago showed toothpaste and Kraft Vegimite equal or superior to AS3 - at least until they dried out. The point was use a decent paste but don't obsess on it - as it really makes no difference. This is particularly true now that all the current CPUs use heatspreader covers and you no longer are mounting on a tiny die as you were on AMD Socket A.
rjm55 - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link
The review Wesley is talking about was at the Australian site Dan's Data at http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm">http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htmChunga29 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link
Whoa! Two articles today? Heh. I was just finishing the 2900 fiasco article and suddenly this shows up. [Big grin!]Only problem with the Hexus article is that overclocking isn't even a factor. I'm a bit confused as to their results, as they have the Zalman 9700 performing in the top of the tested HSFs, trailing the Tuniq by 1C. The AT results show Tuniq leading by 2C at load, but even more interesting is that the AT results are about 10C cooler on every HSF (at least where they overlap).
Oh... WAIT! The Hexus reviews are using a Pentium D Extrene 840!? What in the hell is up with that? Why don't we do some testing with the original Athlon FX-51 while we're at it? While most people won't purchase a $1000 CPU like the X6800, at least Core 2 Duo is very popular and many are OC'ing E6600 chips to similar levels (and beyond). Perhaps the VX is the best HSF when it comes to cooling Pentium D setups... but that's about as far as I'd take the Hexus roundup.
Honestly, I'd like only a few things from AnandTech cooling reviews:
1) Testing on AM2 as well as 775.
2) Temps of various components.
3) More HSFs! Heh. A roundup would be great.
Two HSFs in one ariticle is a start, but how about four or five similar HSFs at a time? Half the material is just filler (copy paste from previous articles), so other than the spec sheets, intro, conclusion, and charts there's not much going on here. Am I the only one that skims (at best) the middle pages?
DrMrLordX - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link
Hexus used a Pentium 840D because it's a stupidly hot processor that's cheap. Pentium Ds can easily put out as much heat as Kentsfields.Chunga29 - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link
I understand that. The problem is that performance with a Pentium Extreme 840 doesn't really tell you anything about how the cooler will perform with other processors. For what it's worth, a heavily overclocked Core 2 Duo X6800 (or better yet a QX6700) is also a stupidly hot processor. I'd wager that the output of QX6700 easily exceeds the 840EE.Testing with outdated equipment is meaningless, regardless of how hot the old parts get. That's why it would be ideal to see current AM2 performance as well. I remember a LOT of reviews hailing the Zalman 9500 as the greatest cooler ever, and while it appears to do great on AM2 it's pretty average on an overclocked C2D. I hope you can see that the same could easily be true of comparing performance with 840EE to current C2D and AM2 chips.
DrMrLordX - Wednesday, June 6, 2007 - link
Actually, uh, your point isn't really valid. A heavily OCed Smithfield can easily pump out heat like a heavily OCed Kentsfield. Heat is heat as long as its distributed properly by the IHS and properly-applied TIM.The age of the equipment in question is irrelevant unless a particular HSF has a mounting mechanism that is somehow better-suited to one socket or another, not that that's an issue when dealing with Smithfields and Kentsfields (both s775 processors).
Using a Smithfield to test the limit of modern HSFs is entirely appropriate, given its massive heat output that can still rival that of Kentsfields and its socket which is identical to the socket-type used with Conroe and Kentsfield processors.
Stele - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link
I second that, though especially no.(2). That would help decide between a traditional downdraught HSF blowing air onto the motherboard vs. the tower ones.
It might be useful to have a proper cross flow of air through the case too, e.g. one 120mm fan each for intake and exhaust. This would not only be more reflective of regular casing setups but would also ensure a level playing field - otherwise the tower ones may potentially have a greater advantage over the downdraught ones (since they can exhaust hot air out of the case through the case rear) than real-life setups may show.
How about including the Enzotech Ultra-X in a future review? Seems to be quite a good performer by all accounts! :P
Wesley Fink - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link
The MaxOrb is reputed to be at least the equal of the Big Typhoon VX in performance and it is a more recent design.We have an Enzotech Ultra-X in for testing. You will see it in a future review.
We had planned a big spread on board component temperatures, but when the down-facing fans didn't even come close to the heatpipe towers in cooling efficiency or overclcoking it became a moot point. IF the down fans really cooled better they would cool more efficiently and/or allow a higher overclock. Neither is the case in our tests. We run our top OC speed with a pretty hefty chipset voltage increase, and if the dowh-facers cooled components better we would get a better overclock, or at least an equal OC. Instead OC is average at best with all 3 expensive down-face designs.
DrMrLordX - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link
Reputed by who? Would it really kill you guys to review the Big Typhoon VX, or an older Big Typhoon with an FM-121?The Big Typhoon has had at least one other good showing here:
http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?t=103462">http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?t=103462
It beat the Tuniq Tower 120 pretty solidly there as well once it had a decent fan in it. Note that at least one of the fans that allowed the Big Typhoon to defeat the Tuniq Tower 120 has approxmiately the same cfm rating as the fan included with the Big Typhoon VX.
Chunga29 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link
Addendum: it might be interesting (although it's too late now) to test with an E6600 instead of the X6800... maybe switch to a Q6600 in the future? When AM2 gets quad core (if it gets quad core?), I'd like to see head-to-head comparisons of HSfs on both platforms. Maybe retest the current leaders for reference (Ultra-120/eXtreme, Tuniq, Hyper6+, and a couple others?)