How far behind would a TRUE copper be in the current era?

zip ties is honestly better than a lot of rattly old fan mounts on some heatsinks
The fan clips on my Thermalright Silver Arrow suck, but it's a great heatsink. The RAM side fan is especially difficult to mount because the fan has to basically sit on top of the RAM and the fan clip is barely big enough to mount into the heatsink without popping out.
 
zip ties is honestly better than a lot of rattly old fan mounts on some heatsinks
Plus if they come off they won't kill a mobo or GPU!
I've been using this technique for years...using black wire ties I push one through the gap in the fins and into the fan. If the fit in the fan is tight the friction is enough to hold it on, the head of the wire tie tight against the heatsink is sufficient. With push pull it works too. If you want it to stay just use two per hole and head of the second one locks into the first. Trim to fit. Need dikes to remove 'em but the fans aren't going anywhere using that method.
 
the OCD in me would have put the ends of the zipties on the inside towards the heatsink. that should work nicely though, the older thermalrights are still very good, most hat a dissipation rating of at least 135w, the coppers were well north of that.
 
Well I have finally gotten around to starting the build and yes I do realize it is a bad idea to build when the new stuff is right around the corner buuuuuuuuuuuut I don't care. Couldn't find any mounts for fans for this thing anymore but that's nothing a few zip ties can't fix!
View attachment 459406
Good looking Ultra 120 Extreme. Great old cooler!
 
The best...
Never had Ultra Copper but have aluminum finned ones, one of original and new Ultra 120EX Rev. 4 black. Both same size but rev. 4 has finpack offset back 8mm for more RAM clearance and comes with 2x TL-B12 Extrem 2150rpm ball bearing fans. Not sure why it comes with 2 fans because they are rated 2.87mm H2O, so 1x fan on it performs very well.
 
Nothing wrong with zip ties, I usually run them between the fins fan-to-fan, clip a head off a second tie, and slide it on. Clip any tails flush, toe nail trimmers work great if you're desperate.

A little tougher to service unless you use re-usable zip ties, then it's great
 
Had to trim the thermalright backplate so I could use it with a ROG X570i without taking off the back VRM heatspreader. It will all be done tomorrow and should have pictures up in SFF then. Might post pictures here too if yall want.


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Always! I'm sure it will be fine, a lot of what dictates a coolers capabilities were wattage, CPUs haven't gone up much at stock/boost overall, unless overclocking with alder lake hitting 300W or amd ryzen etc.

The TRUE was an excellent heat sink, and there are some small mods that can boost it a little, better fans, fan spacers, making sure air isn't escaping some gaps, etc. I've used tape before as well as neoprene for air gap sealing, plus the neoprene can work as an air gap for the fans too. The fan hub blocks a portion of the center fins...

I'm still rocking a water block on one of my builds that was originally for socket A lol. It was designed for a peltiers heat dump plus the CPUs, If it's designed well it can keep up. Switech mcw5002. I recently had to make thread adapter for it because I was tired of the ugly plastic barbs, and it was an odd size that you could only get ugly plumbing bits for like 3/8 npt. Anyway I just got brass plugs in 3/8, drove them in, drilled them out and tapped for g1/4. Presto change-o i increased flow rates and modernized it.
 
And here is the finished product:


AMD 5950x, Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme Copper /w 2x TL-B12W, Asus ROG Strix x570i Gaming, EVGA 3080ti FTW3 Ultra(deshrouded), G.Skill Neo DDR4 4000mhz 18-22-22-42, Crucial P5 Plus 2tb, 2x 5tb spinning disk, Coolermaster V850 SFX, 4x140mm Thermaltake Quad Ring
 
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Well I have finally gotten around to starting the build and yes I do realize it is a bad idea to build when the new stuff is right around the corner buuuuuuuuuuuut I don't care. Couldn't find any mounts for fans for this thing anymore but that's nothing a few zip ties can't fix!
View attachment 459406
It's... It's so beautiful... (sheds a tear) :).
 
Nice job! I'm not into all the lighting but like how you did it. Too bad PSU cables are so long making it hard to do clean cable management in small case. Would have to make custom cables to have lengths needed.
 
I haven't seen a TRUE Copper in a long time, and never in person.. you sir, have a Unicorn :)

Nice build, turned out pretty well!
 
PSU cables looking like a bunch of white snakes marching around look much worse than zip-ties on fans. :D Problem is only solution is neither cheap or quick because making custom ones takes time and expense.

I think it looks just fine as is!
 
Looks beautiful! Hows the initial temps?

Those zipties are killing me on the True though, but maybe you have to have the fans riding high? You could carefully feed the zips through the fins to hide them, or get a piece of allthread in 4-40 or similar: https://www.amazon.com/Threaded-Rods-Studs-6-32-Fasteners/s?k=Threaded+Rods
I am not going to be able to hide the zipties that well on the TRUE Copper. To mount it the fans have to be off and once it is mounted there is BARELY enough room left in the case for me to feed one ziptie to the other side on the bottom, the ziptie you see on the left I simply could not fit my hand into the space to feed the line through on the bottom again.
The initial temps were bad but I BARELY had enough paste to maybe cover half of the heatspreader. I thought I had more but I ordered plenty this time and it gets here on Monday, will report next weekend. I turned it on just to make sure everything worked and installed windows 10.
 
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If the true has exposed heat pipes on the base the best method for application is a line of paste perpendicular to the pipes usually. Not pea, and its easier and faster and just about as good as manually spreaded, unless you want to do the work.

Looks great! Best of luck
 
If the true has exposed heat pipes on the base the best method for application is a line of paste perpendicular to the pipes usually. Not pea, and its easier and faster and just about as good as manually spreaded, unless you want to do the work.

Looks great! Best of luck
Yep, but the TRUE is a flat base, no exposed heatpipes :).
 
How did you manage to fit the 3.5" drives behind the front panel btw? Ordinary there's only space for 2.5" drives afaict.
They are 2.5"
If the true has exposed heat pipes on the base the best method for application is a line of paste perpendicular to the pipes usually. Not pea, and its easier and faster and just about as good as manually spreaded, unless you want to do the work.

Looks great! Best of luck
I was doing the penta dot method but only managed to do 3 dots lol
 
Man, I'd love to see an all copper NH-D15. I wonder how much that would weigh...
 
I've tested several all copper against their aluminum fin counterparts and found there wasn't much if any improvement in cooling. Cooling difference definitely not worth the difference is price, but they do look very nice. Here in UK with kinda high humidity it's a challenge to keep their bright copper color from tarnishing. .
 
I got home this weekend to a package of Shin-Etsu X23+7783 waiting for me so I got the thermal paste applied properly this time. Idles as low as 34c and as high as 37 for certain cores. Overclocked to a 4.6ghz all core and 5.175 single and am very happy with the temp and undervolt!

Edit: Finished the led strips!
 

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Nice and looks sweet!

I haven't used shin etsu in years, where did you find it now? Used to be my go to but now I've got so many pastes I don't have to order any for a while lol
 
Rather unexpectedly I contacted Thermalright directly about the possibility of getting a fan mount for this cooler still and they going to send me some old stock they had in Taiwan :O
Sounds like customer support we had from Thermalright many years ago. They used to have good customer support, but it dropped off to almost no support. Hopefully we will seetheir customer support being much better now.
 
That is great. Wonder if Thermalright has any SLK-900 heat sink old stock lying around. Good soild copper. Always wanted one for my socket A boards.
 
All TRUE coolers are Ultra Extreme, hence the name.

I'm still using a TRUE120 with 2 silent fans on a 6700K at stock clocks, works great.
The stock Intel piece of crap "works great" at stock clocks as well.
 
All TRUE coolers are Ultra Extreme, hence the name.

I'm still using a TRUE120 with 2 silent fans on a 6700K at stock clocks, works great.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding but not all Thermalright coolers with TRUE name are the same. They range from small TRUE Spirit Direct 90 up to biggest TRUE Spirit 140 Power with Ultra Extreme being mid-sized. Original Ultra Extreme was released many, many years ago in 2007. First Ultra was 4x 6mm heatpipe and released released in 2006. If I'm remembering correctly 2006 was year HR-01-775 (4x 6mm heatpipe tower) was first tower cooler released. First heatpipe cooler was SP04 in 2003. Their bigger flat XP-120 (5x 6mm) came out in 2004 and I think Ultra 120 (4x 6mm heatpipe) came out in 2005. Pretty sure 6x 6mm heatpipe HR-01 X and Ultra 120 Extreme (6x6mm heatpipes) came out in 2007. At this time Thermalright was also working on IFX-14 which evolved into Silver Arrow. Thermalright had another company named Cogage and released Cogage Arrow which was same design as IFX-14 and Silver Arrow.
Sorry, got carried away.
 
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Bit old thread, but considering it still powers my bench and all i had to do was buy the new mounting, i'd say it works pretty damn good.

A bit of trivia as well, Dr. Ian Cutress, ex-CPU Editor for Anandtech, made most, if not all, his CPU tests using this beast (not mine exactly), but he has confirmed on Twitter he has a couple of TRUE Coppers he used for CPU benchmarks. So, if you've seen CPU reviews for 11th gen or older CPUs, they were more than likely cooled by a TRUE Copper.

My rig is a bit unique, not only it has a TRUE Copper, which was limited edition, but also my RAM is limited edition too. So yeah, quite a rare rig all things considered.
 

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