Scythe Infinity: 5 Heatpipes and Silent 120mm Fan
by Wesley Fink on February 26, 2007 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Noise
For many enthusiasts upgrading cooling the goal is maximum stable overclock, and they will live with the inconvenience of a louder system. For other users silence is the most important factor, and these users will forgo maximum overclocking if this increase system noise levels. In general the Zalman 9500 and 9700 can be considered very quiet, but performance of either cooler is not standout against the competition - at least where noise is concerned.
To test idle and load noise levels, a Zalman Fan Mate 2 fan controller was used to dial in the lowest and highest fan speeds the fan could achieve. The difference in noise levels between low and high were negligible with the Scythe 120mm fan, so only high levels, which are generally below the system noise floor are reported. Tests were also run with a push-pull dual fan setup using two Scythe 120mm silent fans. These results are reports in the noise graphs as Dual Fan.
There are virtually no power supplies that do not have a fan. While Zalman and a few others do make a few expensive fanless power supplies, we have not seen a fanless unit larger than 500W, or one 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 of the high performance power supplies. The noise level of the power supply was 38.3dB from 24" (61cm) and 47dB from 6" (152mm). The measured noise level of the test room is 36.4dB, which would be considered a relatively quiet room with a noise floor slightly below the OCZ PowerStream 520 PSU.
Measured noise levels in this chart should be considered worst case. Measurements were taken with 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 low-noise results with the Scythe Infinity are truly impressive. The stock single fan configuration scored some of the lowest noise results we have tested so far, generally remaining at or near the noise floor at both measurement distances. Even more impressive were the results with a dual-fan push-pull configuration. Noise results barely increased with two fans, again remaining at or near the system noise floor. Considering the Scythe matched our highest Tuniq overclocking results when running two fans, this is very impressive silence.
As already pointed out, any 120mm x 25mm fan should be mountable on the Infinity with a set of Scythe fan wires. The shipping fan is 1200 RPM and selected for silence. It's hard to complain about the noise measurements with this fan - single or dual. However, if you have a favorite silent fan or performance 120mm fan it should mount and work fine on the Scythe Infinity.
While the Scythe matched the Tuniq in overclocking and tied for the best OC with an air cooler, it is clearly the winner in silence at high speeds. This is true whether you run a single stock fan or dual silent fans. The Infinity is certainly bulky, as are most effective heatpipe towers, but fans of low noise cooling should definitely add the latest Infinity to their shopping list.
For many enthusiasts upgrading cooling the goal is maximum stable overclock, and they will live with the inconvenience of a louder system. For other users silence is the most important factor, and these users will forgo maximum overclocking if this increase system noise levels. In general the Zalman 9500 and 9700 can be considered very quiet, but performance of either cooler is not standout against the competition - at least where noise is concerned.
To test idle and load noise levels, a Zalman Fan Mate 2 fan controller was used to dial in the lowest and highest fan speeds the fan could achieve. The difference in noise levels between low and high were negligible with the Scythe 120mm fan, so only high levels, which are generally below the system noise floor are reported. Tests were also run with a push-pull dual fan setup using two Scythe 120mm silent fans. These results are reports in the noise graphs as Dual Fan.
There are virtually no power supplies that do not have a fan. While Zalman and a few others do make a few expensive fanless power supplies, we have not seen a fanless unit larger than 500W, or one 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 of the high performance power supplies. The noise level of the power supply was 38.3dB from 24" (61cm) and 47dB from 6" (152mm). The measured noise level of the test room is 36.4dB, which would be considered a relatively quiet room with a noise floor slightly below the OCZ PowerStream 520 PSU.
Measured noise levels in this chart should be considered worst case. Measurements were taken with 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 low-noise results with the Scythe Infinity are truly impressive. The stock single fan configuration scored some of the lowest noise results we have tested so far, generally remaining at or near the noise floor at both measurement distances. Even more impressive were the results with a dual-fan push-pull configuration. Noise results barely increased with two fans, again remaining at or near the system noise floor. Considering the Scythe matched our highest Tuniq overclocking results when running two fans, this is very impressive silence.
As already pointed out, any 120mm x 25mm fan should be mountable on the Infinity with a set of Scythe fan wires. The shipping fan is 1200 RPM and selected for silence. It's hard to complain about the noise measurements with this fan - single or dual. However, if you have a favorite silent fan or performance 120mm fan it should mount and work fine on the Scythe Infinity.
While the Scythe matched the Tuniq in overclocking and tied for the best OC with an air cooler, it is clearly the winner in silence at high speeds. This is true whether you run a single stock fan or dual silent fans. The Infinity is certainly bulky, as are most effective heatpipe towers, but fans of low noise cooling should definitely add the latest Infinity to their shopping list.
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Zoomer - Thursday, March 1, 2007 - link
Could you try adding more than two fans, or perhaps blocking the sides of the heatsink so that air can't escape and see if it helps?I'm very interested. It appears that this unit requires a high(er) static pressure to work well.
yyrkoon - Monday, February 26, 2007 - link
These coolers, are all fine and dandy, but what about low profile coolers, that dont weight as much as the Golden Gate bridge ?Me, my personal case, is an Lian Li PC-G50 (silver, if you must know . . .), and the PSU sits right_above about half of the CPU. Silent is great, higher overclocking potential, is better still, but the bigger question is, why arent these companies working on anything that doesnt require special cases, or at the very least, cases that are so huge, you can not put them any place without having large amounts of room.
My case: 15" tall, looks great, is very functional, its just a terrible shame, that no one seems to be making low profile coolers, that would help me eek out a 310mhz + CPU on my ABIT NF-M2 nView + AM2 Opteron 1210 (which I have actually achieved, just wouldnt do much other than BSoD within windows).
Lem - Wednesday, February 28, 2007 - link
Have you checked the Thermalright "SI-type" coolers? I have been happy with a Thermalright SI-120 + 120mm 1200rpm fan (PAPST 4412F/2GLL). I am not much into overclocking though. I only raised the frequency of my X2 3800+ to 2.4GHz because it was a nice round number that my RAM could handle.The newer SI-128 seems to support AM2-socket as well. I prefer that design over these for obvious reasons.
My Lian Li PC-61 is somewhat bigger than your case but I do not think that there would be any problems with PC-G50 either.
BigLan - Tuesday, February 27, 2007 - link
"why arent these companies working on anything that doesnt require special cases"Erm, your case is the special one. These coolers generally fit in standard atx cases, with the regular atx-approved layout (height might be an issue in mid-atx cases.) I think that having the psu above the cpu is ok for micro-atx, but that is still pretty specialized - you might want to look into server coolers (specifically 1-u coolers.) m-atx-style normally requires smaller fans, which have to spin much faster to move the same amount of air, and are very, very noisy (does anyone remember the old 60mm delta screamers?) You're also limited to fin area, which also hurts performance. There are some reasonably good btx coolers which overcome these problems though, but they're often proprietary (built into dell cases etc.)
cujo - Tuesday, February 27, 2007 - link
i love big cases. lots more room to work inside and lots more room for quiet 120mm fans.yyrkoon - Tuesday, February 27, 2007 - link
Good for you. My case also has silent 120mm fans, the system is so quiet in fact, I have to turn something else on, so I can sleep ( I require white noise to sleep ).arswihart - Monday, February 26, 2007 - link
I disagree with using overclocking as a measure of a heatsink's performance. You should focus on noise and temps, it's that simple. I don't know why anyone would even pay attention to that data you are presenting.Wesley Fink - Monday, February 26, 2007 - link
Temperatures at stock speeds are reported on p. 4. However, contrary to your assumption, coolers that perform best at cooling at a stock 2.93GHz are not always the same coolers that enable the highest overclock. Temperature rises as a CPU is overclocked, and coolers that perform well at stock speeds do not always remove heat as well at higher temperatures.Since the OC that can be achieved does not matter to you, the data on p.4 - temperature at stock speed - should give you what you are looking for.
arswihart - Monday, February 26, 2007 - link
Idle and Load temps for stock / OC. No need to look at 50Mhz differences to rank the heatsinks is my point.arswihart - Tuesday, February 27, 2007 - link
To further make my point, you see a 7 C difference between the single and dual fan configs on the Infinity, and only a 70Mhz difference in OC. To me, the 70Mhz difference is negligible, while the 7 C difference is quite striking.Relatively speaking, the difference in temps is much more drastic (12%), and much mnore relevant, than the difference you are seeing in OC (2%).
Do you still want to argue about it?
Sure it makes for interesting reading, so I guess I can't blame you too much, and the audience at Anandtech surely eats it up. I would just tell you I'd rather not have reviews cluttered up with this rather petty data.