AS5 or ??? Which HSF???

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KatoKal

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2004
Messages
475
With an Antec 900 case at my disposal I need to know a few things.

I realize that the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme will not fit, nor will the regular Ultra 120, and I am pretty sure that the Tuniq Tower does not fit either (not too sure, read some newegg reviews that say otherwise).

Anyway, if the Tuniq Tower fits then that is a good choice, but what other some other options that does not include water cooling, Ln2, etc.?

Also, what is a good contact solution to use if not using Arctic Silver 5? Is there a better ceramique, grease, or whatever? I want to get this rig to the lowest possible temperatures on air and good components!!!

Thanks!
 
you could try the scythe ninja or one of its relatives, not sure if those will fit or not. i use antec formula 5 and it works fairly well.
 
the ultra 120 wont fit? its not as large as the tuniq so thats probably out too. you might look at the arctic cooling freezer 7 i think that was a little smaller the those two. if you have clearance issues with the 120 the scythe ninja might be too big too
 
I would get a Zalman 9700 NT.

9700nt_c_p.jpg


ALso, AS5 is a ripoff. This stuff:
http://www.petrastechshop.com/shx2thco1gr.html

is the best, but IMO youre better off getting some Ceramique. It's cheap and it works exactly as well as AS5
 
as5 or any other aftermarket thermal grease is more than enough. certain brands claim to be the best, but i doubt the improvements exceed 1-2*. as for a heatsink, is it necessary to get a tower style cooler? there are a lot of great heatinks that aren't towers and will fit with ease such as the enzotech ultra-x.
 
theres a million benchmarks out there on the differences between pastes, and the difference between the worst stock paste up to the best paste money could buy was 5-6C. that shin etsu paste and collaboratory liquid are the top, AS5 is 1 degree behind, Ceramique one degree behind that. il save my money and take that one degree extra with AS5
 
Well, as I stated in the original post, I want the lowest temps possible with good components on air cooling. To me, that one degree difference is worth it if in the end it keeps my rig from overheating at 4.0 ghz ;)
 
the tuniq tower and the ultra 120 extreme both fit fine in an antec 900. i have both and have used both in my case.
 
shin etsu is the best? i knew it was good but didn't realize... i believe that is the factory stuff that intel uses. i've got truckloads of it at work! :eek:
 
interesting. crazy pc lists 3 different types of shin-etsu goo. if the pictures are indicative of the product (all the images are unique), G751 is the stuff we use at work (crazy pc link. being it is the cheapest part #, it's probably not the fancy stuff.
 
Shin is the best that I've encounterd, Coolermaster started selling a version of it a while back that worked really well.

On my old 6800GT under load it would get to 85/85C using the then factory applied AS5, shin immediately dropped that temp down to 80C and another 2C after it cured for a bit.

Quote from 2004 from my website, Old news link on the left,, July 16th, 2004 4:22 AM post

Something else of note, a few days back I yanked the stock cooler off and put some Coolermaster Shin Estu on the core, replacing the stock Arctic Silver 5 that BFG Tech uses. Right off the bat there was a 4C drop in temps, and a further 2C after it cooked for a few days. I will likely see a similar drop after a few days of the Shin settling in again. Great stuff that Shin Estu.
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I would only use it in critical areas like GPU CPU or a Northbridge that had the exposed cores IE Nforce 4 and above.
 
KatoKal said:
Well, as I stated in the original post, I want the lowest temps possible with good components on air cooling. To me, that one degree difference is worth it if in the end it keeps my rig from overheating at 4.0 ghz ;)
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with what processor do you expect to be able to do that?
 
KatoKal said:
I realize that the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme will not fit, nor will the regular Ultra 120, and I am pretty sure that the Tuniq Tower does not fit either (not too sure, read some newegg reviews that say otherwise).
Click to expand...

I have a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme and an Antec Nine Hundred. It fits fine in my case, on top of my DS3 mobo. Coworker has the same case with the non-extreme ultra 120 on his evga 680 mobo, and it fits.
 
duucfho said:
I have a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme and an Antec Nine Hundred. It fits fine in my case, on top of my DS3 mobo. Coworker has the same case with the non-extreme ultra 120 on his evga 680 mobo, and it fits.
Click to expand...

Is the side fan on the Antec 900 installed or not?
 
KatoKal said:
Is the side fan on the Antec 900 installed or not?
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In my case with the U120-extreme, no side fan. In my coworkers with the standard U120, yes, he has the sidefan. S-Flex F 120mm.

Oh, and I just remembered, we both have our heatsinks arranged so that the airflow goes south-north. We figured it'd be better to have the air go up into the 200mm up top, rather than back into the 120mm in the rear.

Neither of us bothered to try arranging it the "standard" way, with air flowing from front to back. Maybe doing it this way doesn't allow things to fit right, but I can't imagine so, since the height of the cooler is the same either direction.
 
duucfho said:
In my case with the U120-extreme, no side fan. In my coworkers with the standard U120, yes, he has the sidefan. S-Flex F 120mm.

Oh, and I just remembered, we both have our heatsinks arranged so that the airflow goes south-north. We figured it'd be better to have the air go up into the 200mm up top, rather than back into the 120mm in the rear.

Neither of us bothered to try arranging it the "standard" way, with air flowing from front to back. Maybe doing it this way doesn't allow things to fit right, but I can't imagine so, since the height of the cooler is the same either direction.
Click to expand...

Hmm, looks like I need to order 2 more SFF21's to see if the side-fan will fit with the extreme, and I plan on arranging it south-north just like you have it as well! Glad to see someone else has already had experience with this because I hate having to return things due to mis-information or just being ignorant due to not asking the right questions! ;)
 
KatoKal said:
E6600 Conroe! Maybe the E6650 when it comes out if I wait long enough!
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considering theres only one person i know of (and possibly one or two i dont) to hit 4ghz on air cooling (and only a handful more able to get 4ghz on water) all i can say is good luck.
 
KatoKal said:
Hmm, looks like I need to order 2 more SFF21's to see if the side-fan will fit with the extreme, and I plan on arranging it south-north just like you have it as well! Glad to see someone else has already had experience with this because I hate having to return things due to mis-information or just being ignorant due to not asking the right questions! ;)
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I'll post some pics of the the setup tonight when I get home, so you can get a better view. Don't get me wrong, it's a close fit, but the only way it would be too large for this case is if whatever mobo you had placed the cpu really high to start with.
 
duucfho said:
In my case with the U120-extreme, no side fan. In my coworkers with the standard U120, yes, he has the sidefan. S-Flex F 120mm.

Oh, and I just remembered, we both have our heatsinks arranged so that the airflow goes south-north. We figured it'd be better to have the air go up into the 200mm up top, rather than back into the 120mm in the rear.

Neither of us bothered to try arranging it the "standard" way, with air flowing from front to back. Maybe doing it this way doesn't allow things to fit right, but I can't imagine so, since the height of the cooler is the same either direction.
Click to expand...

Wow, that's sounds reasonable to me. I try to keep the temps down by not thinking too much around my rigs. On the serious side though, I am waiting for a Antec 900 (it should come tomorrow (5/17/07) I don't have a U120-extreme, but I have a TT 120 in the closet (my 2x E6600's have the Zalman 9700 on them now). Will the TT 120 fit :confused: and if it does would it be more beneficial to point the exhaust toward the 200 mm top fan :confused: What I am planning on doing is put one of my E6600's in the Antec until I can get my hands on a Q6600. Does adding a 120 mm fan to the side ehaust help :confused: Should I just stick to the Zalmans :confused: (I have a 9700 on 2x E6600's, 1x E6420, 1x E6400 ATM) Thanks for any advice from anyone :D

Edit: Oh yeah, my 2x E6600's are only OC'ed to 3.2 GHz, I wanted to keep them semi-cool for 24/7 folding :p
 
jws2346 said:
Will the TT 120 fit :confused: and if it does would it be more beneficial to point the exhaust toward the 200 mm top fan :confused:
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I believe it to be more beneficial to have the air flow from the processor pointing to the top as opposed to the back side of the case simply for the fact that hot air "rises," more like gravitates to the top of any enclosure. Having this extra push from the exhaust part of the fan on the HS makes it so that more air blows in it natural direction, therefore resulting in less hot air around the processor/ram/north-bridge etc.. Based on what was shared in previous responses to this post I would say that TT 120 will fit just fine (although I am unsure if it will be fine with a side fan installed) - Segue to...

jws2346 said:
Does adding a 120 mm fan to the side exhaust help :confused:
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It again makes sense because you're pulling in more cooler air to hit the processor/vga area of the rig. Personally I have run into this being a problem for the fact that it disrupts air flow from front to back by pushing the air towards the motherboard as opposed to keeping the flow moving as I said... front to back.
 
jws2346 said:
Will the TT 120 fit :confused: and if it does would it be more beneficial to point the exhaust toward the 200 mm top fan :confused:
Click to expand...

I don't know anyone with a TT120, but another coworker has the Antec 900 and a Scythe Infinity. He arranged his fan so it blows front to back, and he says the rear 120 on the case is close enough to the heatsink that it acts quite well as a push/pull setup. He got a few degrees cooler moving from a Tsunami to the Antec 900. But I don't have any hard evidence as to which method is better: vertically to the 200mm, or horizontally to the 120mm. I personally went with the 200mm, since it can move more air at lower & quieter speeds.
 
duucfho said:
But I don't have any hard evidence as to which method is better: vertically to the 200mm, or horizontally to the 120mm. I personally went with the 200mm, since it can move more air at lower & quieter speeds.
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/agree
 
yes but in a fight between a P4 520 vs a core2 duo 6600 both at the same speed, the core2 will win hands down each time, but the core2 is alot harder to get up that high. i had my P4 3.2 northwood at 3.9ghz for a long time but my 6600 at 3.5ghz kicks its ass by a very large margin.
 
Its not just what thermal paste you buy, but more importantly how you apply it.

My x1950pro ultimate comes with a zalman vf900cu cooler stock, and load temps would get up to 66c, which in reality isn't bad considering the chip, but it wasn't the best. I decided to reapply the thermal paste, the pre-applied zalman paste (which on its own is supposed to be 1-2c better than AS5(c) ) was so over applied I almost had an aneurysm, took me about 12 cue tips both sides + 91% rubbing alcohol to get it all off. I mean this was enough for 10 full sized IHS'd cpu's let alone 1 gpu with no heat spreader. I apply some arctic silver ceramique (better for GPU's because of the exposed diodes on chip), all of a sudden my temps go from 66c full load to 48c, and I wasn't using the best paste or the thinnest amounts.


I use even less on my opteron, Since my heatsink has been lapped, it stands to reason that the one surface is flatter, which also stands to reason it would benefit from less paste. I take the standard half grain of cooked rice of AS5, let the force of the heatsink apply it, run it for about a day, then take off the heatsink and completely wipe off the paste from the underside of it, while leaving the stuff settled into the cpu on. Drops my temps another 2-3c, There is such thing as too little however.
 
Simpson5774 said:
Since my heatsink has been lapped, it stands to reason that the one surface is flatter, which also stands to reason it would benefit from less paste.
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Do you have or know where there is a step-by-step guide to lapping your HSF and/or processor?
 
KatoKal said:
What are the temps that you are getting with that setup?
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Idle/load is 37/63 using Orthos and CoreTemp 0.95 / TAT. Using CoreTemp 0.94 / Speedfan reports 24/47. There's been discussion as to which programs are correct for my Allendale (L2 revision) e6400.

e6400 @ 3200 ghz @1.5v. Plus my ambient is a little high, as is my voltage.
 
A Tuniq tower will fit in an Antec 900, although without a 120mm fan on the side. HOWEVER, if you shave down one of the corner that'd hit the Tuniq Tower, it'll fit perfectly (and still keep the screw hole).
 
buffbiff21 said:
I would get a Zalman 9700 NT.

9700nt_c_p.jpg


ALso, AS5 is a ripoff. This stuff:
http://www.petrastechshop.com/shx2thco1gr.html

is the best, but IMO youre better off getting some Ceramique. It's cheap and it works exactly as well as AS5
Click to expand...


This member "do" tell the truth, I have this cooler + Shin-Etsu X23-7783D Thermal Compound on 3x C2D's folding 24/7. (2x E6600's (1x E6600 is in an Antec 900 case, all fans on low) and a E6420. With an ambient temp about 21c, the E6600's are OC'ed 3.0 GHz and the E6420 is OC'ed 2.8 GHz, none of these machines folding 24/7 even breaks 35c (either core) according to Core Temp, Intel's TAT. With Speedfan the temp never goes beyond 35c.
 
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