Thermalright Ultima-90: Small Wonder?
by Wesley Fink on August 20, 2007 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Conclusion
The Thermalright Ultima-90 is a surprisingly good cooler, made even more attractive by the smaller size, lighter weight, and lower price tag than most of the top air coolers tested at AnandTech. In virtually every measurement the Ultima-90 was at least the equal of all the top-tier coolers, matching or outperforming the Tuniq 120, Thermalright Ultra-120, Scythe Infinity with push-pull fans, and the Scythe Ninja Plus B/OCZ Vindicator running a high output SilenX IXTREME fan.
At this point in time, Thermalright seems to have an excellent handle on how to design heatpipe towers that perform at the top of the performance charts. Now we can also add that they apparently know what to do to make a cooler smaller and lighter without giving up too much in performance. The Ultima-90 weighs only 460g, but it uses the same heatpipe setup as the much larger Ultra-120 eXtreme. That heatpipe arrangement of six staggered full loops creating twelve risers appears to be the key to the performance of both the eXtreme and this new Ultima-90.
The Ultima-90 is ideal wherever you want to use a high-performance cooler. Its smaller size and weight make it particularly well-suited to tight cases and motherboards with limited clearance around the CPU. It is also shorter than most top coolers, with a height of just 139mm. However, this is still not small enough for thin rack cases, a very small HTPC case, or a case that places the power supply above the CPU socket. The lower cost of the Ultima-90 will also be attractive to many buyers, with a retail price of $50 compared to other top coolers in the $65 to $80 range. You will still have to add a fan, but that can be as little as $5 to as much as $20 or more depending on your choice.
Thermalright advertises the Ultima-90 as a 90mm body with 120mm cooling power. That is certainly a fair description, because the Ultima-90 is designed to mount a 120mm or 92mm fan. It certainly performs best with a 120mm fan, but if you want to keep the cooler very compact it performs nearly as well with a quiet, high-output 92mm fan like the Panaflo H1A. If you choose the 92mm you will only give up a small amount of headroom at the top, and cooling in the overlap speeds is almost identical.
The Ultima-90 is not the best air cooler we have tested. That distinction still belongs to big brother Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme. Where the Ultima-90 carries our CPU to a stable 3.90 GHz, the eXtreme pushes it to 3.94 GHz. The eXtreme also manages a few degrees better cooling than the Ultima-90 at higher overclocks. However, in all other respects the performance of both coolers is all but the same. The Ultra-120 eXtreme is bigger, heavier and costs about $65 retail, where Ultima-90 costs about $50. However, the Ultra-120 eXtreme remains the better performer. You will need to decide which attributes are most important to you. Beyond the Ultra-120 eXtreme, we do not know of an air cooler that outperforms the Ultima-90. Several other top models match its performance, but they don't outperform it.
We asked in the beginning of this review if the smaller and lighter Thermalright Ultima-90 might be too compromised compared to other top coolers from Thermalright, Tuniq, Scythe, and others. After running it though our cooling tests we can only conclude that Thermalright made the right choices in the design of the Ultima-90 to make it the smallest and lightest air cooler we have tested that is still able to deliver top-of-the-line performance. At a price of $50 or less you even get some savings compared to the very best Ultra-120 eXtreme. We are pleased to have the smaller, lighter Thermalright Ultima-90 as a new choice for air cooling. Choice is good, even at the top, and the Ultima-90 will not disappoint you with its performance.
The Thermalright Ultima-90 is a surprisingly good cooler, made even more attractive by the smaller size, lighter weight, and lower price tag than most of the top air coolers tested at AnandTech. In virtually every measurement the Ultima-90 was at least the equal of all the top-tier coolers, matching or outperforming the Tuniq 120, Thermalright Ultra-120, Scythe Infinity with push-pull fans, and the Scythe Ninja Plus B/OCZ Vindicator running a high output SilenX IXTREME fan.
At this point in time, Thermalright seems to have an excellent handle on how to design heatpipe towers that perform at the top of the performance charts. Now we can also add that they apparently know what to do to make a cooler smaller and lighter without giving up too much in performance. The Ultima-90 weighs only 460g, but it uses the same heatpipe setup as the much larger Ultra-120 eXtreme. That heatpipe arrangement of six staggered full loops creating twelve risers appears to be the key to the performance of both the eXtreme and this new Ultima-90.
The Ultima-90 is ideal wherever you want to use a high-performance cooler. Its smaller size and weight make it particularly well-suited to tight cases and motherboards with limited clearance around the CPU. It is also shorter than most top coolers, with a height of just 139mm. However, this is still not small enough for thin rack cases, a very small HTPC case, or a case that places the power supply above the CPU socket. The lower cost of the Ultima-90 will also be attractive to many buyers, with a retail price of $50 compared to other top coolers in the $65 to $80 range. You will still have to add a fan, but that can be as little as $5 to as much as $20 or more depending on your choice.
Thermalright advertises the Ultima-90 as a 90mm body with 120mm cooling power. That is certainly a fair description, because the Ultima-90 is designed to mount a 120mm or 92mm fan. It certainly performs best with a 120mm fan, but if you want to keep the cooler very compact it performs nearly as well with a quiet, high-output 92mm fan like the Panaflo H1A. If you choose the 92mm you will only give up a small amount of headroom at the top, and cooling in the overlap speeds is almost identical.
The Ultima-90 is not the best air cooler we have tested. That distinction still belongs to big brother Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme. Where the Ultima-90 carries our CPU to a stable 3.90 GHz, the eXtreme pushes it to 3.94 GHz. The eXtreme also manages a few degrees better cooling than the Ultima-90 at higher overclocks. However, in all other respects the performance of both coolers is all but the same. The Ultra-120 eXtreme is bigger, heavier and costs about $65 retail, where Ultima-90 costs about $50. However, the Ultra-120 eXtreme remains the better performer. You will need to decide which attributes are most important to you. Beyond the Ultra-120 eXtreme, we do not know of an air cooler that outperforms the Ultima-90. Several other top models match its performance, but they don't outperform it.
We asked in the beginning of this review if the smaller and lighter Thermalright Ultima-90 might be too compromised compared to other top coolers from Thermalright, Tuniq, Scythe, and others. After running it though our cooling tests we can only conclude that Thermalright made the right choices in the design of the Ultima-90 to make it the smallest and lightest air cooler we have tested that is still able to deliver top-of-the-line performance. At a price of $50 or less you even get some savings compared to the very best Ultra-120 eXtreme. We are pleased to have the smaller, lighter Thermalright Ultima-90 as a new choice for air cooling. Choice is good, even at the top, and the Ultima-90 will not disappoint you with its performance.
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Rick1 - Sunday, August 26, 2007 - link
In a couple of post above the questions are asked Why run one of these coolersMy answer is simple
Quiet and cool running system
The only fan I hear is the One installed in the hard drive compartment of this P182B case
( cooling 4 drives. 2x raptors and 2x Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s 500-GB )
With 2 fans S-Flex blowing in and the stock two exhaust fans
This Q6600 runs at 32Cto35C and has never gone over 48C under a full load
I was never able to get the stock H/S below 50C on warm days
jnk - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link
question for the reviewer:when you reviewed the ultima-90, when mounted were you able to twist it? I recently bought one and i can twist it even while its locked and the screws are tight. I emailed thermalright about it and they that its normal.
Patvs - Saturday, August 25, 2007 - link
This is the best CPU cooler review on the net! I have one question though.In the Noise Level test, some coolers are tested with low and high RPM settings.
For example the Tuniq Tower 120 @1000 RPM and @2100 RPM. However the Thermaltake Big Typhoon VX is only tested @2000 RPM.
Is the HIGH RPM setting always used for the Temperature Tests (IDLE and LOAD)?? Or do you use the LOW RPM setting as default for the temperature tests? *confused* If HIGH: it shows the Tuniq is really quiet at LOW RPM, but you show its cooler potential in temperature in HIGH RPM? How does it cool at LOW RPM? (or if LOW: how much does the temperature decrease if the cooler is at HIGH RPM) Also I would love to see a test with TWO fans hooked up to some of these coolers in the future.
Patvs - Saturday, August 25, 2007 - link
Edit: You state you use stock speed RPM settings for the temperature tests.So why use 2000 RPM for the Big Typhoon VX? Isn't its stock speed 1300 RPM. (it is for the Big Typhoon non-VX version without the fan controller)
muddocktor - Wednesday, August 22, 2007 - link
As always, a good heatsink review by you, Wesley. But I have a question about the Thermalright samples that you all get for review. Do you receive these directly from Thermalright or are they procured from an authorized reseller such as Sidewinder Computers or Newegg from actual shipping production? The reason I ask is that while I find the engineering and design of Thermalright's heatsinks to be top-notch, I have personally found that their base finish to be spotty. I own or have owned 2 XP90's, an XP90-C, SI 120, Ultra 120, and an Ultra 120 eXtreme (all bought at retail except the SI 120, which was bought used) and of those the only ones that had a half decent base finish that was usable as-is were the XP90-C and SI 120. The others either had a fairly poor base finish with visible machining marks left in them and in the case of the U-120, an absolutely horrible base finish with a ridge left on one side of the base. The XP-90's also had very concave bases too. All saw improved to much improved performance after giving the base a lap job. If you are getting your review samples directly from Thermalright instead of from a vendor that handles their heatsinks, I am sure that the samples you receive are thoroughly checked for finish before sending them out to you and aren't truly representative of what is actually going out for sale through normal channels. It would be interesting to see if you could get some samples from someone online that didn't know they were going to Anandtech (to minimize the chance of cherry picking the heatsinks) and do a consistency review showing differences (or lack of) in performance of production line Thermalright heatsinks.Also, I have heard the thing Thermalright has put out about the concaveness of their bases being engineered into their design and don't buy that a bit. I think that is just something the salesmen have thought up to cover inconsistencies in the base finish from their manufacturer and my experience (so far) has proved out for me at least that a lapped, flat base works better on both LGA775 and socket 939 systems. Other than the base finish though, I find that Thermalright makes the best overall line of premium aircooling equipment on the market.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, August 22, 2007 - link
We first tested the Ultima-90 with a pre-production cooler. Results were then verified with a Retail cooler from a stocking retailer. Where there have been questions about items being "hand-picked" we often verify results with a retail sample.In the case of the Ultima-90 the performance of the Thermalright-supplied Ultima-90 and the one off the Retail shelf were exactly the same.
muddocktor - Sunday, September 2, 2007 - link
Thank you for the answer answer on your samples you test, Wesley. I guess I just have bad luck in the base finishes I get on the Thermalright heatsinks I buy then. But since I know how to lap the base anyways it's no big problem for me. Thermalright does make some truly excellent products for cooling highly overclocked cpus.Wesley Fink - Monday, September 3, 2007 - link
Thermalright is not alone in advocating convex bases. Swiftech has moved from promoting flat, mirror-finish bases to convex bases with a finish not as good. They call them their bow base and claim 2 to 4C better performance with the "bow".Engineers have found that the convex base (fat center) mates tighter in the area of the CPU under the cap. Also Intel manufactures caps that are not flat by design - conncave, convex, and wave designs are all used in certain processors. Research shows the convex cooler base mates best with any of these 3 Intel cap types.
The point is this is not a marketing story, as you will see as we go into water-cooling in more detail. Lapping a convex base Thermalright can DROP performance by 2 to 4C.
customcoms - Friday, August 24, 2007 - link
Any chance you guys will be reviewing an Ultra-90? The reason I ask is because silicon valley computers often has these heatsinks in stock and on sale for $15...that seems like a great bargain to me especially when the bigger brothers, the Ultra-120 and 120 eXtreme, retail for upwards of $50. I would really like to know if spending the extra money for an Ultima-90 or Ultra-120 is even worth the performance increase...dm0r - Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - link
Great review Wesley, as aways.