Thermalright Archon CPU Air Cooler Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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Thermalright Archon CPU Air Cooler Review - Thermalright is touting its new Archon CPU cooler. With its full nickel plating and included ultra-low noise 140mm fan, will it lord over the others in its field? At 155mm wide, you will want to make sure you have room for an Archon in your case though.
 
Maybe I'm reading this wrong:

was there a test with dual 140mm fans? When you said "same fans used across all models" at the apples-apples comparison, it seemed like you meant 120mm fans (so all HSF had the same setup?)?


Or am I way off? :(
 
Yeah I would be interested to see how it performs in a dual 140mm fan push/pull configuration.
 
Nice cooler. Too bad about the price.

Those ZEROtherm jobbies are looking pretty impressive...
 
I picked up the A70 on amazon real cheap. Those fans are ridiculously loud. I had a pair of silent fans sitting around to replace them. Keeps my i7 920 just a couple of degrees warmer than the stocks ones, and the price was right! I have the P6T, and the A70 does not obstruct the DIMM slots even with my Dominator RAM.
 
I've no idea how to do this, but I think the sound levels need to be factored into the picture when looking at the price/performance ratio.

I mean, you could put a 70db cyclone of a fan on the Archon and get an excellent dollar/performance, but who would want it?

Like I said, don't know how to do it, but shouldn't the Archon's virtually silent fan should count for something when compared to the A70 and the COGAGE?
 
jhatfie said:
Yeah I would be interested to see how it performs in a dual 140mm fan push/pull configuration.
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why, just take 2C off the temp and you have your average temp with push/pull. thats about all the benefit it add's. being that its so thin push/pull probably wont make much of a difference anyways.


gathagan said:
I've no idea how to do this, but I think the sound levels need to be factored into the picture when looking at the price/performance ratio.

I mean, you could put a 70db cyclone of a fan on the Archon and get an excellent dollar/performance, but who would want it?

Like I said, don't know how to do it, but shouldn't the Archon's virtually silent fan should count for something when compared to the A70 and the COGAGE?
Click to expand...

in my opinion sound is subjective which shouldnt be included into performance/dollar. plus you have heatsinks that dont come with fans. so ok the heatsink makes 0 noise so is it better then all the others? no not really. ok then you add the price of a fan to its total price, well what about the fan being used? sure you could add a 5 dollar fan but what about the people that use 20 dollar noctua or gentle typhoon fans? its just to subjective in my opinion. i think its fine the way it is. the reader can decide if the price/performance is worth the noise factor on their own.
 
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gathagan said:
I've no idea how to do this, but I think the sound levels need to be factored into the picture when looking at the price/performance ratio.

I mean, you could put a 70db cyclone of a fan on the Archon and get an excellent dollar/performance, but who would want it?

Like I said, don't know how to do it, but shouldn't the Archon's virtually silent fan should count for something when compared to the A70 and the COGAGE?
Click to expand...

We give specifics on sound. Some people do not care, others do. We give the reader the information to make their own call.
 
I was wondering why not use on-board video to take the GPU out of consideration altogether.

I can't say I'm a big fan of the way the noise charts were done, but I'll go to SilentPCReview for noise analysis anyway.

Thanks for the article. Hard-core Starcraft fans will be getting one of these for sure.
 
jeremyshaw said:
Maybe I'm reading this wrong:

was there a test with dual 140mm fans? When you said "same fans used across all models" at the apples-apples comparison, it seemed like you meant 120mm fans (so all HSF had the same setup?)?


Or am I way off? :(
Click to expand...

I think there is even more to be said here. The Archon presents a much larger frontal area and requires at least a 140mm fan to cool evenly. Using a 120mm fan would definitely leave some dead or low flow spots. It would be like using 92mm fans on a HSFs that require 120mm fans for an apples-to-apples comparison.
 
waja said:
I think there is even more to be said here. The Archon presents a much larger frontal area and requires at least a 140mm fan to cool evenly. Using a 120mm fan would definitely leave some dead or low flow spots. It would be like using 92mm fans on a HSFs that require 120mm fans for an apples-to-apples comparison.
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Agreed. Perhaps a fan shroud could make the comparison fairer. Or maybe they could test the smaller fan with and without a shroud/duct to show us if it even makes a noticeable difference.
 
I have this on my am3 740 at 3.8 266x14 @ 1.275 v

Prime95 max temp was 24c average 21c

Stock speed and voltage idle is 15c.

This is bench test no case.

Nice cooler.
 
its sad thermalright cant compete better on there coolers price wise. especially given there are other coolers out there just as good and cheaper.
 
txmale4969 said:
its sad thermalright cant compete better on there coolers price wise. especially given there are other coolers out there just as good and cheaper.
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I'm sure they could compete on price, they just choose not to and instead market their products as a higher-end solution. Just because you can buy a Nissan GT-R for 100K doesn't mean Ferrari should stop making 250K 458s (I just couldn't resist bringing it around to cars).
 
I think the Silver Arrow would slightly outperform the Archon even with 2 fans (furthermore, the Silver Arrow can accommodate 3 fans).

If Thermalright modified the Silver Arrow a bit (perhaps with slightly deeper towers because even their own chosen fan doesn't need 38-39mm of room), and used 5x 8mm heatpipes (as opposed to 4 (That Zerotherm heatsink uses 6x 8mm heatpipes, and [H] has proven it to be effective for its size)), then it'd dominate. It'd be even better if the user adds a third fan of course. As good as the included TY-140 is (and I own 3 of them, they're great 140mm fans), they're still not as good as my scythe GTs - if only we had a 140mm+ variant.

Also: Thermalright's back-of-socket heatpipe solution (mounted to the back of the motherboard) included with the IFX-14 was damned cool. It did reduce load temps by 1-3C - they should bring that back for those who really want to max out aircooling's performance potential. This would obviously be an add-on option - and I could see it supplementing ANY above-ambient cooling solution (water included).

I'd like to see Thermalright do all of the above (or similar - it's their plan) and maintain a similar pricing.
 
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What if Thermalright did all that and made the heatpipes direct touch....
 
Damnit, I'm completely derailing this thread from the Archon now... so I'll keep it short:

- It remains to be seen whether or not Direct-Touch Heatpipes actually provide any performance improvement. I haven't seen any HDT coolers actually topping the performance charts.

Disadvantage: The outer heatpipes will have less contact with the heat source, and thus a full copper-encasing would better conduct heat to them.

We could recess the outer 2 heatpipes slightly, surround them in copper, and close all gaps with copper, but then we'd essentially have a regular copper conducting block as normal, but sanded down to the heatpipes...

Anyway - the Archon seems to be quite good, and the Zerotherm review is down for some reason... maybe they're re-evaluating something - can't be a bad thing.
 
Overheating an i7 CPU doesn't happen until 99C but the sad part is they can easily put out enough heat to do that to any air cooler if you start pushing near 1.4-1.5V.
 
I can have temp pics for you tomorrow night. I just built a 2600K SB system for my uncle and I spec'd him out the Archon. It was EASY as hell to install. It's simply awesome.

A little preview would be the 2600K @ stock (turbo enabled) it was at 29*C, idle. At 3.7Ghz, when Turbo kicked in, I didn't see it raise above 33C. However, this was just doing measly driver installs. I am finishing the system tomorrow and will be testing out gaming and am going to attempt an Overclock.

Therefore, I'll have a better idea of temps. While gaming, chances are I'll be using the AI Suite II to monitor the temps due to it's recording feature.

Also note, this is using Thermalright's stock TIM. I have MX-4 on the way, but it won't be here until Monday :(.

EDIT: This IS in his case (CM HAF-932). Also, the fan is dead silent. These temps were achieved with the fan plugged into the CPU MB header, which the Mobo throttled it down to 600RPM, which is the lowest setting.
 
So..... anyone tested yet ? is it beating the SA and D14 as claimed in one review ?
Problem with most reviews are they aren't doing extreme overclocking with it, want to see what it's like on Intel burnt test compared to the silver arrow and noctua D14.

Or a Q6600 @ 3.6ghz and beyond is a very hot chip ideal to test on that setup would give a good indicator hoping it will get a Q6600 @ 3.6ghz sub 75c intel burn test.
 
I have it up and running on my uncle's and my dad's. However, due to the P67 fiasco and small BIOS issues, we haven't bothered overclocking yet and therefore I cannot really give true testing temps. In the end, I'm hoping to take the chip near 4.8Ghz...hopefully!

However, I can say at idle, the 2600K sits at 22*C. Using Intel's Burn Test sent to 5 passes of the default setting, which I believe is 1024(?), the highest it hit was 40*C and that lasted for only 10 seconds. Otherwise, it stayed around 37C. This is all according to the AII Suite Temperature monitoring software ASUS provides. This is at stock 3.4ghz with Turbo enabled, so essentially around 3.8Ghz.

I will have more information once I get my board and can begin overclocking. Unfortunately I'll have to wait until they re-ship the P67's. Hopefully it will be soon enough!

Thanks and sorry for the delay!
 
firas said:
thanks for the review. I think it's Venomous not Venemous
Click to expand...

Informative and simple. no need for 13 pages of details and scenarios with 3 multicolor glowing bars for each product in every chart to review a CPU cooler.

hate to join the “add this to the comparison” club but this is what I thought at the beginning…
It almost seems like we hit a wall with single fan configurations on the tower design and to break through the 47C barrier it takes an additional fan [so we did it and here is the results that’s shows a more than the usual 2 degrees increase…]

The dollar/performance chart shows the Silver Arrow having a better value than Archon, but the way I see it is that the Archon is cheaper, smaller and quieter with less than 3 degrees difference.
 
1x stock ty-14 fan @ 1260 rpm 1.46 volts set in bios thermal paste is mx-3 I shall be comparing mx3 as5 and Ic diamond 24 this weekend as IC sent some of us over at ocuk samples to supply test results with.
You need to set IBT to use free ram amount NOT available ram if you aren't seeing 43-45 gflops per second on a q6600 for example you aren't running IBT correctly.
Forget the presets use custom.
 
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