Review: Thermaltake Sonic Tower - 56k warning

[SLi_dog]

Hi all,
I'm waiting for another "tower" hsf cooler but saw this today and as my stock Intel hsf is broken I thought I'd give it a go.


Unfortunately I only had two 15CFM 1000RPM 120cm Glacialtech Silent Blade fans but I'll update later when I get some real CFM power (Glacialtech Silent Blade stats - PDF)
On the plus side it did mean dead silent operation, the 40mm NB fan was louder than the two 120mm fans combined.



Here's the package.






And the contents, the black box contains mounting kits for socket 478, 775 and AMD K7, K8.






The base - I'm definately going to have to lapp this one as it's shocking.






Here are the components for mounting on a 775 socket.






Though the instructions were reasonably straight forward, mounting the HSF was rather difficult and took around 15 minutes compared to the 5 second "click, click, click, click" of the stock Intel HSF I was used to. I had to re-arrange the NB fan but I kind of expected that. I did run into some issues, the last two may only be specific to the AW9D-MAX that I'm using however other boards may experience similar problems.


Mounting issue 1 - the crossbar that is used to clamp the heatsink to the motherboard mounts is quite hard to install. It's required to be bent back on it's self quite considerably which means I had to use a lot more force than I'm comfortable with when pointing a sharp metal object at an expensive motherboard. The screws were also almost too small for the mounting hole and at one stage during the installation, the screw slipped through. Also, the metal that the screws are made from is rather soft and I think I've already shaved the screw x point out a little making tightening and un-tightening difficult.






Mounting issue 2 - not really a problem but the mounting bracket on one side only just cleared this capacitor and actually rested on top of it. I'm not sure if it actually compressed it a little when the mounting bracket to the motherboard.







Mounting issue 3 - again not really a problem but the lowest side of the heat sink actually rests on top of the AW9D-MAX's mosfet heatsink. I was still able to screw the heat sink tightly to the motherboard without any problem so I think there was room, but only just.






Here's what it looks like set up on the desk. It actually goes really well with the blue LEDs.






I am slightly cheating here because I'm using a lapped CPU.

[SLi_dog]

Here are the stock 2.93Ghz BIOS idle temps with the Sonic Tower installed.






I started on a mild, known-stable overclock that I had done previously with the stock Intel HSF for a comparison.






As it's supposed to be a passive cooler I thought I'd test the theory but was not suprised when it failed dismally. It was even hotter than the stock Intel HSF. As the CPU idle temps were only 39C at the stock speed of 2.93Ghz, I'm guessing it should work at fine at those settings. If you're looking for absolute silence and aren't looking to overclock too much then this may be the HSF for you. Great for a HTPC.

Idle




Orthos load






The 120mm fans I had were only 15CFM 1000RPM 120mm aptly named Silent Blade by Glacial Tech.




Using one 120mm 15CFM fan at 1000RPM

Idle




Orthos load






Using two 120mm 15CFM fans with one on the out side and one in the centre.




Idle




Orthos load

[SLi_dog]

Using two 120mm 15CFM fans with one on each side in a push-pull method.

Idle




Load






A comparison with the Stock Intel HSF at 3.5Ghz in 22C ambients.






I lapped the base of the heat sink and had a slight improvement.


Here's what it looked like before.




And here's what it looks like now.




There was a considerable concaveness to the original surface that required a fair amount of work to finish and as you can see the surface is still not perfectly flat or smooth but it's a vast improvement and as close as I'm going to get without using a belt sander.






And these are the resulting temps using the outside and centre fan configuration that was most effective in the first tests. Again the ambients were 26C. The warning messages are the product of an error in the uGuru software that doesn't read the upper limits of the temperature ranges and so sets them at zero obviously resulting in warnings.

Idle




Orthos load






Stay tuned for more when I get some high speed fans .

Also be on the lookout for my lapping guide. Coming soon

[quicksilverXP]

Yeah. When I lapped the Big Typhoon... the sides were barely lapped. Which is fine... as long as the middle is flat it's not a problem.

[MrDeeds]

Nice review, its a nice heatsink. I've had mine for a while now and i like it better than my big typhoon. I'd like to see you use some better fans on it though.

[biohead]

Mine will arrive today/tomorrow to go on my x1900xt

[barzi]

Is this thing with 1 fan better or worse (or even) then a freezer 7 pro?(with stock fann, and the sonice tower with a equal fan)

And how did you mount the center fan?