SLK-900-U+Tornado level performance for less $$$ and less noise....

Hi guys,

I've happened upon a neat little setup that appears to be getting C/Ws of between 0.17 and 0.21, (Edit: latest best accuracy results show this is a little optimistic, 0.236C/W seems to be more on the mark, see http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=3534439&postcount=38 ) I am both impressed and amazed by it. My applebred at stock is running cooler than my northbridge. It's taken me a week to beleive what I'm seeing and that the the hardware monitoring utils didn't have the sensors mixed up. I am only going by my in socket thermistor, but I know that this setup beats my AX-7 and Tornado hollow, and that should be getting better than the 0.28 C/W Joe tested it at because he used a lower powered fan. I should be getting about 0.26 off that.

Anyway, what is this marvel?

It's one of these...
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=220300&item=CF-150&type=store
Stuck on top of one of these...
http://a7vtroubleshooting.com/articles/coolers/DetailsCoolerMaster.htm
(CoolerMaster DP5-6I31C-A1 at the top of the page)

The specs don't look impressive do they? 25cfm on an aluminum sink? I can tell you though that with the blower mounted longitudinally on a baffle plate that covers the top of the sink, you feel more air coming out the sides of the sink than you've probably ever felt on any sink with any fan.

Similar sinks to that one that would probably work just as well with that blower would be the volcano 5 and the volcano 6CU, do use a baffle plate though.

This whole setup cost me under $10, I picked up the old coolermaster used from one surplus store for a couple of bucks and the Nidec Gamma 30 blower from another for $6. Allelectronics are good to deal with if you want 1 or 2... or 10.

Get this! These results are without bothering to lap the sink and with using Lumiere testing compound. I just plonked the sucker together to screw around with the system and didn't get round to tuning everything up.

Noise? Well it's not quiet quiet, but it's less than half as loud as the tornado, and I've heard louder hard disks, there's quite a bit of whoosh, and frequency is fairly low because it's at about 4400 RPM vs a tornado's 5500ish. In this rig I'm screwing with, it's totally drowned out by a pabst 50cfm case fan.

If you're thinking of putting one of these blowers on a much different sink, baffling and shrouding it well will give the best results I think. These babies have a lot of pressure behind them so put it to good use.

When I initially tried this out a month or so ago I did just have the blower wedged into the coolermasters fan mount and that did pretty good too. I was just going to wedge it in there again for testing but I broke the mount and had to make a baffle plate/mount for it. I just cut a piece of galvanised steel (duct material), so it made a U channel shape that slid into the top of the sink with sides that are about 3/8 of an inch and let the socket clip have a full range of movement still.

I've got another of these blowers, and I hope to find a close vaned copper sink cheap to try one out on. Though actually I wouldn't be surprised if copper wasn't all that much better since you're blowing right down over the core with these, no dead spot that the copper helps spread the heat better for.

Don't hold your breath for pics of mine though, my cam sucks.

My C/Ws might not be too accurate, but this is seriously noticably better than an AX-7 and tornado, so they're not THAT far off. Try it out and be amazed.

regards,

Road Warrior

Can we get some pics of that setup man? it almost seems too good to be true. just want to clearify what you mean on mounting too, would be curious to grab one of these to replace the fan on my VGA silencer, or slk 947 on my heatsink.

Beg, borrow or steal a camera. We gotta have some pics of this. I just put that same HS on a rig I built for some one last week. I am sad I got rid of it now. I wonder how that would work on my new Aerofow.

P.S. GET US SOME PICS

Here's a quick rendition of how I made the baffle/mount plate. I cut the galvanised sheet (you could use aluminum or whatever you've got handy that's easy to work with and will hold a bend) to that shape. The black areas I bent downward 90 degrees and I made the "I" shaped cuts in the middle and bent the light grey areas upward 90 degrees as flaps to hold the nozzle of the blower. Mine turned out tight enough with enough spring that I can just wedge the blower nozzle into it. I was just gonna tape it on around the flaps if it didn't

Looking for a cam battery.......

Or maybe to get some cheapo copper heatink with straight fins and make blower blow side->side instaed of top -> sides?
Eventually you could play with adapting Prescott heatsink and using blower with it, but I have no slightest idea how this would work. I got mine for around $3.50 and works nicely on my GeForce.

btw, interesting research

Holy cow. That thing is 57 decibles here is Nidec's web site. That is just as loud as a Tornado.

I smell what your stepping in =D but is that able to distribute enough air over the heatsink? im looking at my 947 and it dont look like it would do that well =\ but its curious to me... your design would place all the air in the center of the heatsink.
which wouldnt be a bad thing nessisarily, as thats where its needed most. when you said longitudinal, I thought you meant along the side edge instead ^^;; like some xeon coolers.
Damn, i wish i still had one of my sk6's lying around to try this out myself =\ never the less, i might have to try this on my mobile. its just using a ghetto'd on v9 *which doesnt fit and doesnt have a clip <_<, dont ask* i still have my athlon64 stock heatsink, drill some holes, shabam.

OH, question though, would it work well to have two of these blowers side by side?

Very interesting. I cant wait to see physical pix. Paint really doesnt do it justice

I have the exact same heatsink! I dont see how it can move that much heat but it only comes standard with a tiny underpowered fan. I can beleive it is possible to get better results. Still without a copper core I dont see how it is able to match the SLK900 with that same blower.

JT

hibner said:

Holy cow. That thing is 57 decibles here is Nidec's web site. That is just as loud as a Tornado.

Click to expand...

Yeah, for some reason it doesn't sound as loud as the tornado though, and I've got both, maybe it's because it's a lower tone, it's got as much "whoosh", but not as much "whine" Also it seems to be loud on spinup then settle down quieter. Maybe "half as loud" should be "half as annoying" Kinda hard to compare random dBA figures though because it's often not stated how far away they were taken.

Valk, that was actually what I was planning on doing when I bought a pair of those blowers, but found that performance with just one was so damn good that I haven't tried it. Also now in this rig, the CPU socket is too close to the PSU so I won't be able to try that. I'd put them right up against each other though so there's no dead area. I do think for these blowers to shine though you need a sink that's got fairly close vanes that aren't cross cut. i.e. These might not work so well on something like those swiftech sinks with the spiral pins. Another point to mention about using two, is that you probably only want to do it with a sink that has mounting holes, the blower's center of gravity is quite high up when mounted and the weight of two of them wobbling around on a clip mounted sink might do something nasty to your core.

SLK-900-U with a couple of these on a baffle plate on top might be absolutely frigging kickass awesome and beat a lot of W/C rigs however, I think the height of it is such that by the time you put the blowers on it, they might be sticking out the side of your case by half an inch, as it is on this sink there's about half an inch clearance.

My AX7 probably isn't a good sink for these blowers though, I'd need 4 staggered around it to cover all the fins, and the fins are quite wide spread on 2 sides, probably they don't cause enough back pressure to a decent fan for a blower to be noticably better. Although I have got a 12V bilge blower that I could duct to cover the whole ax7.......

Well, couldn't find a new battery and this is as good as a dying battery and a crappy camera can do..... Couldn't risk more shots even because I wouldn't have got it off the camera....

Lookin good, any chance to make it blow side->side ???
(a little similiar to Silencers)

Well, as you can see (maybe) the ports are close on one side and the ATX connector is on the other side of the sink, so no room to mount it sidewinder style. I don't think performance would be any better like that really. I just got the CPU mobile unlock working, gotta take it out and mess with the L6es I think though, can only get 11x max multi at the moment. Anyhoo, when I've done that I'll let her rip and see what kind of Mhz we can hit with this sink. Dunno if the CPU is up to doing too much, think the MUICB stepping is okay but not stellar. At default voltage and 1600Mhz default, it's running at a chilly 27C running Toast even if the hsf combo is only doing about 0.25C/W that means it will cope with 80W more heat before we break 50C Apparently that should be good for around 2.8GHz at 1.85V if it will do it, probably 2.6Ghz is a more likely ceiling though and I'm not entirely sure the cheapo "cyber power" PSU will cope. Hmmmm now I want a 35W mobile barton to shoot for 3G on air

Looks good. How did you make the shroud?

Photo just looked as blower could fit at right side...
Anyway it's still cool (but I like huge blower project more - that article on overclockers.com)

I have a SP-97 and this blower setup looks pretty good. Its really too bad its not a bit quieter. Right now, I'm using a ducted 120mm Delta and the noise is starting to get to me.

With the following setup I get 34C CPU/21C mobo and while this is just the mobo sensors the mobo temp is right on as far as the ambient in my house. These are temps while F@H, vcore at 1.82v actual.

Pic:

Very nice duct - what's that?
And I think if it worked better if nozzle was smaller...

And I see you have some graphics card cooling mod too...

The duct is made from thin wood. That's actually not my videocard. That belongs to an engineer acquaintance of mine. Yes he made this thing at work. I think it predates the Arctic Cooling line of coolers but I'm not sure.

oh and regarding the width of the nozzle, at first I had the duct slide over the outside of the heatsink, very snug. However, I kept getting alot of back-pressure. The best position seemed to be about 1/2 in. back from the sink.

I've got a similiar setup on my rig only with a SLK-948 and a blower, works pretty well and it's significantly quieter than my old Tornado. I really need to reorganize my rig, it looks so ghetto right now