The difference between the bottom two models in the 890 FX line up is the missing support for USB 3.0. The chipsets and all the other features remain the same. The board comes with a brown PCB with the various ports on the board being a mixture of black, dark blue and light blue. While the overall look is fine, the brown PCB kind of kills it for me.

The board has a pretty good layout with dual 16x PCIE slots in addition to four other expansion slots. The space between the two PCIE slots is more than enough to handle dual slot cards and will run them both with 16 lanes each. Now for most of us, two slots is more than enough, and three or more slots will normally be used only when benching. The memory slots are now alternating, which means that memory with larger heat sinks will fit comfortably, but it also means that one of the memory sticks is going to sit beneath most of the larger CPU heat sinks. There are three buttons on board for the Core Unlocker, Mem Ok and the Turbo Key, but the quality and finish of these switches leave a lot to be desired. I would rather have push button switches than these. The board boasts of a 6+2 phase design, and from our initial testing, the design seems to be doing a great job.

The various chipsets and VRM’s are cooled by aluminum heat sinks and Asus has done away with the heat pipe for this version. They have also followed MSI’s design idea of keeping the 890 chipset and the power phases under a single heat sink on the left of the CPU area. This allows them more space for expansion slots.

Coming to the bottom of the board, we see the IDE ports, which really don’t make sense any more unless you’re doing some hard core benching and still use an IDE hard drive, as well as 6 SATA III 6 Gbps ports. My only grouse with this is the upturned SATA ports, which tend to interfere with the second GPU slot when it is populated. A 90 degree port setup would be more convenient.

Overall, there are a few things that tend to be out of place on an 890FX board and I have listed them above.
Other than that, I am quite happy with the board on the whole, taking into consideration that this is the budget board of the line up and therefore some of the fancy specifications must take a back seat.

I will be testing the board with the following setup:

AMD 965 BE C3
Memory: Team Xtreem LV 2000 Mhz CL9 @ 1846 CL 8-8-7 1T
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-3
Motherboard: Asus M4A89TD PRO
Thermalright Venomous X
Coolermaster Storm Sniper Case
Coolermaster Silent Power 700W

We will run through a couple of tests in this blog and I will add a few more if required or requested in the next part.

So let’s start off with some Super Pi runs, just to see the performance of the memory. None of these clocks are at the absolute limit of the board or the chip, but more of an indication on the memory being used and the potential of this board. I must add that the bios seems to be working well with my 965 BE and I did not have a single issue on this front after the initial tuning. Unlike the MSI that I use everyday, the Asus board also has a much better recovery feature that does not need the constant use of a clear CMOS button every time we load a rather heavy overclock. Much appreciated Asus.

Please keep in mind that all of these benches are on air, on a normal install of Windows 7 32bit, without any tweaks.

Super Pi 1 M:

Super Pi 32 M:

As you can see, the memory timings and speed is not bad for the money. The G.Skill’s can barely reach this speed and timing with their 1600 CL7 kit and the same board. For anyone looking for budget ram with decent clocks this is it. I was not able to go above 1800 with slightly lower timings on my MSI GD70, so this shows that the 890FX chipset does add a bit to the memory speeds and timings. With an X6, the speeds and timings could improve even further with their improved IMC.

Wprime:

Cinebench:

The Cinebench score is no surprise here and of course would improve under a 64 bit operating system.

Let’s move on to the max HTT clocks that we can get with this board. I started with 300 HTT, so let’s take it from there:

300 HTT:

330HTT:

340HTT:

Well, that was the maximum I could reach for now, but I will continue testing to see if there is a hole in the HTT clocking. I’ve been seeing people hitting speeds higher than these, so as I said I will continue to push the board and report back. This is it for now and please do let me know if you would like to see some more benches and of what type.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day!

Welcome to the next edition of our Air Cooling 101 series of guides. In case you missed part 1 on CPU cooling, you can find it here. We move on to a topic in which there are consistently a lot of discussions around the net.

When we buy fans, we look at three main criteria:

1. CFM – Cubic Feet per Minute, or in simpler words, the amount of air that the fan can push/pull in a minute.
2. Static Pressure – The force with which the fan generates this airflow.
3. dBA – This is the sound rating of a fan and it gives you an idea of how quiet or noisy a fan is.

Most manufacturers tend to publish data on their fan’s with respect to these three criteria, however, most of the figures quoted by manufacturers tend to be a bit optimistic and I would take them with a pinch of salt.

With these basics in place, let us now take a quick look at the type of fans that are currently available in the market:

1. Sleeve Bearings – The cheapest to produce; most of the budget fans are made with sleeve bearings. The fan motor basically has two cylinders with a lubricant in between. The inner cylinder is covered with the lubricant and the fan runs when the inner cylinder turns within the outer one. This type of bearing, while initially fairly quiet, does tend to get noisier as it gets older and can also fail completely over time.

2. Ball Bearings – These fans use a ball bearing inside a pair of metal rings to turn the the fan blades. Ball bearing fans are more resilient over time and tend to last longer than sleeve bearing fans of a similar profile. The downside is that it’s also slightly more noisy. The quality of the bearings and lubricant are the two most important factors for this type of fan.

3. Fluid Bearing – Fluid bearings are made with two cylinders separated by a thin layer of liquid or gas. Since these surfaces do not make contact with each other, they tend to have an almost unlimited life and require very little maintenance. They are also relatively quiet as compared to the above two types.

4. Magnetic bearing – A magnetic bearing uses magnetic levitation caused by similar poles to keep the two sleeves apart. Again, these types of fans are very quiet and in theory have an unlimited life, as there is no contact between the sleeves. These are the most expensive of the lot .

Before we get into specific fan models that we recommend, it is important to note the most commonly used fans in a computer chassis, from an enthusiast point of view:

1. 120 x 25mm – This is the most common size that we see in a computer, either as case fans or for use as heat sink fans.

2. 120 x 38mm – This size is mainly used for heat sinks. The extra width of the fan’s case or shell helps to create more air pressure and therefore provide better cooling.

3. 140 x 25mm – These are used mainly as case fans as most heat sinks are not large enough to accept them. There are 140mm fans that have the 120mm type mounting points and are compatible with a large number of heat sinks and cases. The advantage of 140mm fans is that they need far fewer revolutions per minute to push the same amount of air as a 120mm fan of similar CFM rating can. This essentially leads to lower noise levels.

With the basics covered, we can start by looking at some of the fans that we suggest you use with a heat sink.

Heat Sink Fans

38mm

1. Sanyo Denki 109R H1011 – These are probably some of the most sought after fans for heat sink use and are considered the best amongst it’s peers, simply because it’s high static pressure at almost 6.6mm H2O and it’s acceptable noise levels. It puts out close to 102 CFM and is relatively quiet for this kind of airflow at 39dBA. Most of the extreme air coolers around the net will vouch for it’s performance. Extremely difficult to find at a decent price.

Link to product: Sanyo Denki 109R H1011

2. Delta AFB1212HHE – Rated at 120 CFM and 44dBA, these fans can push air at an amazing 9mm H2O. These are lot more noisy for daily use and need to be controlled with a fan controller if you intend to keep your hearing intact. They are great value for the money.

Link to product: Delta AFB1212HHE

There are a lot of other fans in this section, specifically Scythe Ultra Kaze’s and Panaflo’s, but these are the two that we have tested and have found to be extremely good. Any one of these would be capable of providing approximately the same amount of cooling that a pair of 25mm fans in a push/pull arrangement would provide.

25 mm

Now lets take a look at the 25 mm list.

1. Scythe Gentle Typhoons D1225C12B4AP-15 – The very high speed version has probably the best noise to airflow/pressure ratios available on the market today. They are very quiet, and while they do not move a lot of air in CFM terms, they do move the air with a decent amount of pressure. They are also highly rated for use with radiators. The very high speed version pushes around 58 CFM at a quiet 28dBA and runs on a hydro bearing. I could really go on and on about these fans as they are my personal favorites at the moment.

Link to product: Scythe Gentle Typhoons D1225C12B4AP-15

2. Delta AFC1212SH – PWM – A high speed, loud fan, but in the 25mm variety. Does a great job on heat sinks and is a PWM fan to boot, so you can turn it down using either your bios options or other software. It pushes close to 113 CFM at 46.5 dBA. Great for those who don’t have fan controllers.

Link to product: Delta AFC1212SH

3. Cooler Master Excalibur – Great fans, but a bit expensive for what they are. They have probably the best accessories package in this list as well as removable blades for cleaning. They are a bit noisy at full speed, but work well with fan controllers. They do about 86 CFM at 2000 rpm and most of the noise is generated due to the open air design of the frame more than the motor. These fans come with barometric ball bearings, which are somewhere between the ball bearing models and the magnetic models.

Link to product: Cooler Master Excalibur

4. Yateloon High Speed D12SH-12 – Another superb fan, though it can also get a bit noisy. They come with closed ended corners, so a bit of modding may be required to attach them to a heat sink or radiator. They run silently when undervolted and they don’t have any clicking sounds when turned down. Pushing 88 CFM at around 40dBA, these run on sleeve bearings.

Link to product: Yateloon High Speed D12SH-12

This is a fairly comprehensive list of the fans that we have tested within the last 12 months and should work well with any air cooling heat sink setup or water cooling radiator.

Case Fans

The reason for having a separate sub section for case fans is that while all of the above would work well as case fans, high air pressure is not generally needed in open air. Low pressure, high CFM fans generally work fine and therefore, you should not need to spend as much on high pressure 38mm fans. This is a list of fans that we have tested in the past and have found to be excellent at increasing air flow in a case.

1. Cooler Master R4 – They come in three different colors, with wonderful translucent cables and push close to 90 CFM. What more could you ask for in a case fan with some bling? They tend to be a bit noisy on side panels, but otherwise they are quite decent in terms of noise levels, but don’t believe the official rating of 19dBA or the manufacturer stated CFM numbers. Great, cheap case fans which are readily available.

Link to product: Cooler Master R4

2. Yateloon Medium Speed D12SM-12 – Great fans and very cheap at that. They are a lot less noisy than their higher flowing brothers and do a wonderful job as case fans, as well as heat sink fans. Easily one of the cheapest options around. Remember that these are sleeve bearing fans, so some amount of motor whine is to be expected.

Link to product: Yateloon Medium Speed D12SM-12

3. Xigmatek XLF-F1253 – Very quiet, these fans push a decent amount of air and have all the bling that you could want. They come in a couple of different colors, so you can match them to whatever theme you are using in your case. Great case fans, but not so good when strapped on to a heat sink.

Link to product: Xigmatek XLF-F1253

4. Enermax Apollish – Again, great fans with a whole lot of bling. They come in three different colors and most modders should love the style quotient. The only thing I don’t like about these fans are the thermal controls. They push about 71 CFM at full tilt and are a bit noisy when running at max.

Link to product: Enermax Apollish

Again, there are a number of other fans that you could look at, but these in my opinion should be amongst the best around, both in terms of performance and style.

That brings us to the end of another section of the Air Cooling 101 series. We will be back next time to take a look at Thermal Interface Materials.

As always we recommended Performance-PCs for all of your case and cooling needs as they offer some of the best service and product selection that we have seen.

]]> http://www.techreaction.net/2010/05/12/guide-air-cooling-101-fans/feed/ 0 http://www.techreaction.net/2010/05/07/guide-air-cooling-101-cpu-cooling/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=guide-air-cooling-101-cpu-cooling http://www.techreaction.net/2010/05/07/guide-air-cooling-101-cpu-cooling/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 18:00:47 +0000 mav2000 http://www.techreaction.net/?p=5174 Hello and welcome to the first article in my series on Air Cooling.

Over the last year or so, I have reviewed a number of air coolers and also a number of different fans and cooling setups. I thought that sharing my experiences would be useful to a lot of people and this is the reasoning behind the writing of this series. This series will cover a number of topics and to start with we will take a look at CPU cooling, which is by far the most important part of our computers.

So, why do we need to cool our CPU’s?

Well let’s look at it this way. A single core of a CPU is made up of millions of transistors, which operate continuously to complete any command. The moment we open a word file, for example, we are running a command which involves thousands of operations on each of these transistors, every second. The operation of these transistors within the core is what causes the CPU heat up. The greater the number of cores, the greater the power that is required to run it and the greater the heat produced.

If unchecked this heat can cause damage to our expensive CPU’s and that’s the main reason to keep it cool. That is where increased air cooling comes into play. Heat always moves from a warmer mass to a cooler mass, and in this case it is air which helps to move this heat away from the CPU.

All processor manufacturers provide some type of a heat sink solution for use with their processors.

What we see above is a heat sink which is slightly better than a stock all-aluminum heat sink. Let’s look at how each part of this heat sink works to keep a CPU cool.

At the bottom of the heat sink, we have a copper base which is in direct contact with the CPU. Through this base run a number of copper “pipes” known as heat pipes. The heat pipes are basically tubes of copper which are filled with a pressurized fluid and a wick. The heat pipes then run through a series of aluminum fins, and right on top of all of this is a single fan. Now let’s see how this works.

The copper base of the heat sink is in direct contact with the surface of the CPU. The heat from the CPU is conducted to the copper base, which then causes the fluid in the copper tubes to heat up and vaporize. This vapor travels to the top of the heat pipes, where with the help of the fan and the fins, cools down and turns back to it’s original liquid form and travels back to the base of the heat sink.

* Image from wikipedia

The aluminum fins help to increase the total area of the heat sink, which in turn helps to dissipate the heat faster.

Now that we have the basics in place, the next question is, why do we need an after market cooler? Well, there are two main reasons to get an after market heat sink:

1. To reduce the amount of noise – The basic heat sink shipped with all CPU’s tend to be extremely noisy, especially when the CPU is running at a high load. Remember that most of these heat sinks come with puny 60mm-80mm fans, and these need to run a lot faster to produce the same airflow that a larger 120 mm fan can produce.
2. To look at safely increasing the speed of the processor through overclocking – The stock heat sink should be capable of running the CPU at decent temperatures as long as the CPU is running at it’s rated speed. The moment we increase this speed, even by 10-15%, the amount of heat generated by the CPU increases and the stock heat sink may not be able to keep the CPU within it’s predefined temperature threshold.

So, taking all of this into consideration, let’s look at some suggested aftermarket heat sinks:

High performance

1. Cogage Arrow- The Cogage Arrow is a dual tower solution with the capability to use up to three fans. It’s made by a sister company of Thermalright and the design is based off of the IFX-14. It uses four 8mm heat pipes, which are very capable of pulling heat away from the CPU. We have done a thorough review on this heat sink on the AMD Phenom II platform, and in our tests, it beats it’s nearest competition (the Noctua NH-D14) by a very small margin. It is currently the best cooler money can buy.

Link to the product: Cogage Arrow

2. Noctua NH-D14 – The current king of the hill, but not by much. It costs an arm and a leg, and your case better have a lot of space as this is one big cooler. Please check clearances around the motherboard before buying this. It is just slightly behind the Cogage in temperatures, but it does come as a complete setup (including fan) and you do not need to spend anything extra to get this cooler up and running.

Link to the product: Noctua NH-D14

3. Thermalright Venomous-X – The Venomous-X is by far the best single tower design to date. It even manages to beat the previous king of the hill, the Prolimatech Megahalems. The Venomous-X comes ready with two sets of fan clips and an excellent thermal paste. I just wish they would concentrate more on the finish as the base is not up to par with offerings from Noctua. The best solution for those who cannot fit either a Noctua or Cogage in their cabinets.

Link to the product: Thermalright Venomous-X

4. Prolimatech Megahalems – The Megahalems and the Megashadow are the last entrants in the high end list. The Megahalems was the first cooler to dethrone the TRUE and held on to the crown of the best air cooler for almost a year. It is still rated highly amongst the top five coolers.

Link to the product: Prolimatech Megahalems

After the top four we have a number of players, but the more noticeable are the Noctua NH-U12P, the Prolimatech Armageddon and the Xigmatek Thor’s Hammer. You can also look at the H50 from Corsair. It’s a nice piece of hardware, but I would rate it more as air cooling than liquid cooling. Remember, that it’s not going to beat the top four air coolers, but it does tend to keep the rest of your case rather clutter free and therefore keeps the motherboard a lot cooler.

Budget Coolers

1. Thermolab Baram -The Thermolab Baram is one of those coolers that never got the right amount of marketing behind it. It’s one of the best budget coolers around, and at its price, it’s really very hard to beat. It has a very good fit and finish, and a great mounting system.

Link to product: Thermolab Baram

2. OCZ Vendetta 2 – The V2 is by far one of the best coolers for dual and triple cores available on the market. The three direct touch 8mm heat pipes do a wonderful job and it’s a snap to install on an AMD board. For a dual or triple core look no further as this cooler can handle your overclocks pretty well. The stock fan is good, but the stock TIM should be avoided.

Link to product: OCZ Vendetta 2

3. Cooler Master Hyper 212+ – The “+” version of this cooler is wonderful for dual and triple cores. One of the few budget HDT coolers that have the ability to handle a push-pull setup, and the included fan and TIM provided is pretty good as well. The mounting system is a bit difficult to use, but it does it’s job and gives a very tight fit. I have seen a fair number of high Phenom II overclocks using this cool which should tell you not to judge this cooler by it’s price.

Link to the product: Hyper 212 Plus

4. Xigmatek S1283 – Like the TRUE, the Xigmatek S1283 is legendary. This cooler has spawned a lot of look-a-likes, including the OCZ Vendetta 2. Both are similar in terms of their specifications and even share the same fan. The OCZ V2 has a larger fin area and that’s where it wins.

Link to the product: XIGMATEK S1283

Another heat sink that is worthy of mention is the Scythe Mugen 2, and the only reason that I did not add this to the list above is that we have not had the opportunity to test it ourselves.

That brings us to the end of the first part of this write up, we hope it provided you with a solid guide for your air cooling solutions. Part two will concentrate on fans for case and CPU cooling.

As always we recommended Performance-PCs for all of your case and cooling needs as they offer some of the best service and product selection that we have seen.

]]> http://www.techreaction.net/2010/05/07/guide-air-cooling-101-cpu-cooling/feed/ 2 http://www.techreaction.net/2010/04/27/asus-crosshair-iv-formula-890fx-performance-review/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=asus-crosshair-iv-formula-890fx-performance-review http://www.techreaction.net/2010/04/27/asus-crosshair-iv-formula-890fx-performance-review/#comments Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:36:16 +0000 mav2000 http://www.techreaction.net/?p=6269 Introduction

Welcome to the performance review of the new 890FX chipset and more specifically, the Asus Crosshair IV Formula motherboard.

We have already done an extensive pictorial preview of the board and today we are going to concentrate more on the performance of this board. We are going to compare the board to the MSI GD 70 790FX board. As many of you know, the MSI GD70 was one of the best 790FX based boards and was regularly considered amongst the big boys.

The main focus of this review is to take both of these boards and put them through a series of tests to figure out whether or not the 890FX offers any measurable performance advantages over the 790FX.

The tests that we will be reviewing with today are as follows:

1. 3D Mark 06
2. 3D Mark Vantage
3. PC Mark Vantage
4. Crystal Mark
5. Everest Memory Tests

Apart from this we will also take a look at the overclocking potential of this board.

The test bench for this review will be:

AMD 965 BE @ 3.4Ghz (1.25V) and 4.0Ghz (1.525V)]
Memory: OCZ 1600Mhz Platinum @ 1333Mhz 1.65V
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-3
Motherboards: Asys Crosshair IV Formula 890FX, MSI GD70 790FX
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Venomous X

So without ado, let’s head in to the first of our tests.

3DMark 06

We’ll kick things off with 3D Mark 06. 3D Mark 06 is a PC benchmark suite designed to test the DirectX9 performance of your graphics card.

A 3DMark score is an overall measure of your system’s 3D gaming capabilities, based on comprehensive real-time 3D graphics and processor tests. By comparing your score with those submitted by millions of other gamers, you can see how your gaming rig performs, making it easier to choose the most effective upgrades or finding other ways to optimize your system.

Let’s first take a look at the benchmark at stock settings and then move on to the overclocked settings.

As we can see from the chart above, both of the boards are fairly similar in performance and none of them beats the other by a large margin in any of the three tests. Let’s take a look at the overclocked settings.

With the overclocks in place, the Asus Crosshair IV beats the MSI by around 4% in the final score, taking a huge advantage in the graphics tests.

Moving on to the next set of tests…

3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed to test the DirectX10 performance of your graphics card. 3DMark is widely used by the PC industry, press and media as well as individual users and gamers, for comparing performance levels between whole systems or even specific components.

Lets start off with the stock settings again.

The difference between the two boards is again negligible. This is to be expected as the CPU and GPU are a constant in these tests and we are only trying to see if the implementation is better in any one of these boards. Moving on to the overclocked settings, we can see that the Asus again has the upper hand, but by a margin of around 2%.

Lets now move on to the third of our tests, PC Mark Vantage.

PC Mark Vantage

PC Mark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts. A PC Mark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.

From desktops and laptops, to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PC Mark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.

For the tests going ahead, we took only the stock settings into account, as we did not find a significant difference between the two boards with overclocked settings.

Again the Asus is just a small step ahead of the MSI and the difference can actually be put down to changes in the setup environment. There is practically no difference in scores between the two boards. The Asus takes the lead in the gaming, music and productivity suits, while the MSI manages to win on the other four.

Moving on we come to our second to last test for the day, Everest Ultimate Edition.

Everest Memory Benchmarks

EVEREST Ultimate Edition is a complete PC diagnostics software utility that assists you while installing, optimizing or troubleshooting your computer by providing all of the information you can think of about your system – from hardware devices and installed drivers, to operating system security and stability metrics.

More than just system information, EVEREST also offers comprehensive benchmarking and hardware monitoring capabilities with real-time reporting.

Let’s take a quick look at the results.

Again, the difference between the two boards is minimal. The Asus takes the read and copy rounds, while the MSI makes up by getting slightly better scores in the latency and write tests.

So for the first time I am at the last test of the session, with absolutely no clear winner in sight.

CrystalMark 2004 R3

CrystalMark is a benchmarking suite that tests each and every component of the system. The benchmark works to give a comprehensive view of the system performance on every front. Let’s take a quick look at the scores here.

The Asus Crosshair IV manages to narrowly beat the GD 70, but the difference again is around 2.4%.

Taking into account all the testing we have done at various levels, the stock or overclocked performance does not differ between the two boards. This was to be expected, taking into account that other than the board, the rest of the core components remained the same. Over a period of time, better BIOS’s may help to improve the overall performance of the chipset, but as of now, the difference is negligible.

Overclocking

At the end of all that testing, it was time to take the gloves off and work on some overclocking. We started off with the best boot into windows that we could achieve, while concentrating only on the CPU clocks. What we managed to achieve was a boot of 4.2 Ghz. This was pretty much the limit that we got from here on and it was very stable. We managed to run a couple of benchmarks and also play a half hour of games before we had to give up due to the CPU heating up. You must remember that we are currently at around 30C ambient temperatures and to keep the CPU cool at those voltages and clocks on air cooling is next to impossible.

We then started off with bus clocking. Now a lot of you may wonder why we looked at this aspect, especially since a lot of the AMD line up is made up of BE processors with unlocked multipliers. The reason we did this test was to see if we could overclock a processor like the 1050T (which by the way costs somewhere in the region of $200) significantly, only using the HT bus. Overclocking the HTT is also a good way to see how good the implementation of software and hardware is on a board. I could not go above 285MHz with my MSI GD70 and the same setup, so I started off with an HTT frequency of 286MHz on the Crosshair to kick things off. To test stability, we ran IBT for ten runs with each jump in HTT speed.

Moving on to 300.

Going for more at 325.

At this point I tried for 350, but unfortunately that was a no go. I hope bios improvements will help this board to reach even better HTT clocks. The best that we could get with stability was an HTT speed of 335MHz. Impressive!

I would also like to add that this board was a breeze to overclock with and it comes with a lot of features to help. The clear CMOS button on the rear panel really helps closed-case overclockers like myself. The motherboard itself managed to keep temperatures in check and I did not have any trouble with the NB and PWM area.

The one aspect that really troubled me was the constant shifting of the HTT frequency within the OS, as well as a slight movement in CPU voltages under load. I don’t know if this was because of load line calibration, but I would think that there needs to be some bios updates to keep this in check. The hardware should be more than capable of keeping voltages stable. This also may have just been a glitch in the software that I was reading from.

Photo Gallery

I thought that since this was more of a performance review I would leave the pictures out, but what review is really complete without a lot of pictures? So in the interest of all fellow AMD overclockers, here is a small set of pictures for your enjoyment.

Conclusion

Well, what can I say that we have not already covered in the review? Performance wise, under similar clocks, the 890FX chipset is not going to give you anything extra over the older 790 FX boards. Every single test that we did gave us equal or similar performance results. There was practically no difference between the two boards.

Taking that into account, Crosshair IV does manage to bring a lot to the table. To start with, the package and accessories as a whole is a lot more than we have seen from most high-end performance boards. There is absolutely nothing that has been left out, save the really handy LCD poster. Secondly, the Crosshair IV has the capability to really help with overclocking and that’s exactly why people would want to buy this board. Thirdly and most importantly, the board just looks sexy. I mean, who doesn’t love red and black?

Finally, looking at the pros and cons:

Pros:

• Great bundle as a whole
• Build Quality
• Well laid out BIOS and options
• Overclocking software works well
• Lot’s of new features like the “GO” button and the ROG connect
• Superb looks! (can’t be said enough)
• Lot’s of PWM fan connectors
• Great overclocker!

Cons:

• Does not have any additional performance over the 790FX chipset
• Missing LCD poster
• Voltage and HTT fluctuations

To sum it up, if you are looking for a new AM3 board and like to overclock, then this board has it all. But if you are planning to move up from an existing 790FX board, depending on the current board that you have, you may want to hold off as your upgrade cash may be better spent elsewhere. No question about it though, if you’re in need of a quality board for some extreme overclocking, Asus has it here in spades.

The Asus Crosshair IV Formula 890FX achieves the TechREACTION.net Gold Silicon Award!

We will look at retesting this board with a hexacore processor in the near future, and we may see some differences between the two contestants at that time. Thank you for reading!

Asus launched the first of the Republic of Gamers (ROG) series for the AMD platform way back in 2007, calling it the Asus Crosshair for the AM2 platform, which was based on the Nvidia nForce 590 chipset. The second in the series was the Asus Crosshair II Formula, which was based on the Nvidia 780a chipset. The third in the series is the Crosshair III Formula and this time Asus did the smart thing and ditched the Nvidia chipsets. They went ahead with the brand new 790FX chipset and made one of the best overclocking and feature rich boards for the AM3 platform.

The ROG series has always been the top end of the Asus line up of motherboards and the Crosshair III lived up to it’s pedigree. Today, we have the opportunity to take a quick look at Asus Crosshair IV Formula, which is the latest iteration in the legendary series of AMD based ROG boards.

The Crosshair IV is now based on the latest high end 890FX chipset from AMD along with an 850 series southbridge, allowing a total of 32 usable PCI-E lanes, 6 Gbp/s SATA III and USB 3.0 support. Let’s take a quick look at the specifications before going ahead:

Model Name

• ROG Crosshair IV Formula

CPU

• AMD socket AM3 Phenom™ II /Athlon™ X4 /Athlon™ X3 /Athlon™ X2 processors

Chipset

• AMD 890FX/SB850

System bus

• Up to 5200 MT/s HyperTransport™ 3.0

Memory

• 4 x DIMM, dual channel, up to 16GB, DDR3 1866 (OC)/1600(OC)/1333/1066MHz
  

Expansion

• 3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slots (@ dual x16, triple @ x16, x8, x8) with ATI CrossFireX™ technology
• 1 x PCIe 2.0 x4
• 2 x PCI 2.2

Storage

• 6 x SATA 6Gb/s with RAID 0, 1, 5, 10
• 1 x SATA 3Gb/s
• 1 x eSATA 3Gb/s

LAN

• Marvell Gigabit LAN

Audio

• SupremeFX X-Fi 8-channel audio built-in with EAX 4.0 support

USB/ IEEE1394a

• 2 x USB 3.0, 12 x USB 2.0 (7 at back I/O, 5 onboard)
• 2 x 1394a ports (1 at back I/O, 1 onboard)

Software

• Kaspersky antivirus 1 year license

Features

• ROG Connect
• GameFirst
• Core Unlocker
• Turbo Key II
• MemOK!
• CPU Level Up
• SupremeFX X-Fi built-in
• Extreme Tweaker
• iROG
• Loadline Calibration
• Voltiminder LED

Form Factor

• ATX, 12” x 9.6” (30.5cm x 24.4cm)

As you can see, this board comes with all the features that were available on the previous Crosshair series, with a few differences. We will get into that in the next part of our review.

Unboxing

The Asus Crosshair IV Formula comes in a box very similar to almost all the ROG series motherboards. The only difference is the AMD/ATI badges at the bottom.

The rear of the box has a whole list of specifications, along with pictures of the more innovative features of this board.

Once we open the box, we are greeted by two small black boxes, stacked one on top of the other. The first one contains all of the accessories and the second, the board itself. Let’s first take a look at the accessories.

The list of accessories is quite large and consists of everything that you could ever want or need with a new motherboard. They have even included stickers for your SATA drive cables, a large ROG sticker for your cabinet, and a smaller ROG sticker for your case or what have you. They have also included six SATA III cables and they are thankfully black in color. The only thing missing from this accessory list is the LCD screen, which I did miss during my OC session. There is also a white USB connector, which is used for the ROG connect feature.

Now let’s move on to the highlight of this preview and that’s the board itself.

Beautiful right? Asus has changed the colors on this board from Blue/Black to Red/Black and this in my opinion only goes better for all of the AMD/ATI fans around. On to a closer look at some of the features of this board.

A Closer Look

Lets start with the rear connectors first and contrary to expectations, there are a few things worth checking out here.

To start with, we have the usual sets of USB, LAN, 1394 and Audio connectors. What I would like to draw your attention to are the USB 3.0 connectors, marked in blue, the clear CMOS button (it’s extremely helpful in a closed case) and the ROG connect button. The ROG button is a new feature on an AMD board, which basically helps you to monitor and overclock the system using another computer. Now this is quite an interesting idea and Asus did demonstrate this earlier this year, using an Asus Eee PC to overclock an i7 system. The system uses a special USB connector, which is a part of the accessories list.

Moving on to the board, let’s look at the CPU area.

The board uses a single 8 Pin E-ATX connector for power. The PWM area has a beefy heatsink which keeps the 10+2 phase VRM’s cool. You also have the Game First chip, which helps to give priority to your online gaming sessions and maintain a low ping time, even as you use the internet for other tasks.

Moving on, the CPU area remains the same as previous generations, with AMD stubbornly holding on to the same bracket type, which in a way is great news for those who want to carry over their existing cooling setups. The things to look out for are the alternate slot arrangement for memory. AMD boards have had adjacent slots running dual channel for a while now on most boards, but in this board it’s the alternate slots which provide the same feature. Asus has also made it so that the ram slots need only one side to be closed now which makes it a bit easier to install ram.

The second important feature is the “Probe It” points, which will give you accurate and real time information on all the major voltages using a multimeter. The CPU area does look a little cluttered, but I did use a Noctua NH D14 on the board and it cleared everything fine. Ram using tall heatsinks will probably cause a problem however. If you look carefully, you will also notice that Asus has done away with the IDE/Floppy drive connectors and that in my mind is not a bad idea at all.

We can see the NB heatsink in the picture above with the three heatsinks on this board being connected by a heatpipe. This should help to dissipate the heat better than individual heatsinks can, but mostly it’s just for flash. The heatsink does look a bit close to the first PCI-E slot, but it does not interfere with the 5850 that I installed there.

I would have loved to take the heatsinks off to show you the new chips, but that’s not possible at this point in time.

As we get closer to the bottom of the board, we can see the southbridge heatsink as well as the six sata ports. The SB heatsink covers the new 850 series SB chip. There is also a small red “GO” button, which will help to configure your ram for optimal performance settings automatically. Moving along to the bottom, we can see the ROG chips, as well as a bunch of headers for various front panel connectors.

And finally we come to one of the last parts of this preview, the on board buttons area.

The board comes with a total of five on board buttons or switches. We have already seen the first, which is the “GO” switch. The other four are at the bottom of the board and consist of the start, reset, core unlocker and the turbo key. The first two are pretty straight forward. The third switch, which is the core unlocker, is used to unlock hidden cores on AMD chips. Theoretically AMD had disabled the ACC unlocking functionality on the 890 series chipsets, but Asus was able to re-implement this feature on their own.

The last switch is the Turbo Key, which is also a pretty nifty feature to have. The Turbo key helps to overclock the computer while in the OS. You have to set a predefined OC, which is then activated at the press of a button.

A little higher up we see a VIA chip, which is part of the Supreme X-Fi chipset for the audio. This should provide a superior audio solution to what most boards offer with Realtek HD Audio solutions.

Conclusion

This is one good looking board which also brings a lot of the features from the high-end Intel line up to AMD. In the final review we will take a look at various benchmarks as compared to the MSI GD70, which has been one of the top selling, high performing 790FX boards on the market. As of now we have the following list of benchmarks that we will be working on:

1. 3D Mark ‘06
2. 3D Mark Vantage
3. PC Mark Vantage
4. HD Tune Pro
5. Crystalmark
6. Everest Memory and System Benchmarks

And of course we will also be trying to OC the hell out of it.

Overall, this looks and feels like a really solid board, which should work well for both beginners as well as advanced users. There are a lot of features built in and we will be spending a lot of time on benchmarking this board, so do come back for the final review.

Thanks for reading!

Hello and welcome back to the last installment of the AM3 round up for this half of the year. Over the last year, we have done a number of cooler reviews on the AM3 platform and this review will look to add to these results. But before we begin, we would like to thank Noctua and Thermalright for helping us to put this extensive shootout together.

Over the last two years, there have been a number of changes in the rankings of the top air coolers. The TRUE was at the top for a long time before the Megahalems came along. The Megahalems held on to the top spot for a while, but then it saw some intense competition from a number of new products, mainly the Thermalright Venomous X, the Noctua NH D14 and then later from the Cogage Arrow. The last year has seen a lot of competition for the top spot, with some innovative designs and ideas coming into play as well. Today, these three are widely regarded as the top dogs of air cooling and we are going to take a look at these, plus another four coolers to see who will take the top spot. Most of us have seen these coolers fight it out for the top spot on the various Intel platforms, but we rarely see an AM2+/AM3 shootout, even though the Phenom II line up has had considerable success in the market. This review should help all AMD users in making a better decision when looking for a new high end cooler.

Let’s take a look at the seven competitors for today’s shootout:

1. Thermalright TRUE RevC
2. Noctua NH D14
3. Cogage Arrow
4. Thermalright Venomous X
5. Thermolab Baram
6. Coolink Corator DS
7. Corsair H50

We have a nice looking list which comprises of three twin tower coolers, each working on a different idea, three single tower coolers and one closed loop water cooling setup.

Now lets take a short look at the three new entrants before moving on to the test bed. For the other four, please check previous reviews in this section.

Thermalright TRUE Rev C

The TRUE Rev C has been one of the all time greats in the air cooling world and it was important for us to add this to our list of coolers, simply to see whether it still had enough to run with the top dogs. The new Venomous X is a reincarnation of the Rev C, and both share a lot of features with each other. Let’s take a look at the specifications before going ahead:

Features

* Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme Ready
* Intel Core i7 Ready
* AM2 & AM3 Ready
* Quiet and powerful cooling due to multiple heat pipes and large aluminum fin area
* Proprietary bent winglet design to minimize airflow resistance
* Heat pipes soldered to base (nickel plated)and fins for optimum heat transfer
* Includes thermal paste Chill Factor

Technical Spec

* Dimension: L63.44 x W132 x H160.5 mm (heatsink only)
* Weight: 790g (heatsink only)
* Recommended Fan: All 120mm

Compatibility

* INTEL: LGA775/LGA1366/LGA1156 (Optional)
* AMD: Socket AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 Processor

The TRUE comes in a plain brown box with only the name written on it. All of Thermalright’s products used to be packaged in the same way till the Venomous X came along. Once we open the box, we are greeted by the cooler itself along with a box of accessories.

The cooler itself traveled all the way from Taiwan. Since it reached me without a single scratch or dent, I am pretty happy with the kind of safety that this package ensures to the product. Let’s now take a look at the list of accessories. As you may remember, the company decided to go all out with the kit on the TRUE Rev C and included every possible piece of equipment other than a fan.

The only thing that I can think of that would be good for this kit is an additional set of fan clips. Other than that, Thermalright have got the setup spot on and I wish they had carried this forward to the Venomous X and included the AM2+/AM3 bolt through kit with it as well.

The cooler itself is a massive piece of work and weighs in at a pretty impressive 790 grams, and that’s without a fan attached. It follows the design of the previous versions of the TRUE, so there’s not much to discuss on that front. The fins are evenly spaced out and as has been proven, it should do a good job with even low pressure fans. It has six 6mm heat pipes to help dissipate the heat and they seem to do a good job going by the results. The heat pipes are staggered, to allow for maximum airflow to reach each individual heat pipe.

The overall fit and finish is not as good as a Noctua product and as you can see from the base below, it’s a bit rough when compared to the finish on the newer coolers we see these days. The base has a slight curve to it and this is actually by design to improve performance.

I wish Thermalright would spend more time on the final finish as this is a common complaint that I have against all the coolers that the company makes. The base on the TRUE still has the scuff marks from machining and a nice shiny chrome finish would have looked much better here.

The cooler is a bit painful to install on an AM2+/AM3 platform as you do need to make sure that your motherboard is outside the case. Secondly, the cooler tends to move a bit even with screws all the way down and you do need to move it around a bit even during installation. The same installation is carried on to the Venomous X and the Cogage line up. Thermalright should look at a better mounting system that is more user-friendly.

Lets now move on to the Noctua NH D14.

The Noctua NH D14

Let’s take a look at this beautiful piece of engineering from Noctua.

The NH D14 has been hailed across various forums as the cooler to beat and it comes into this round up with some massive expectations. It has been topping the charts over the last few months and it certainly appears that this is one cooler you need to keep your eye on. First we’ll start with the specifications:

Noctua NH-D14 Heatsink Specifications:

* Socket compatibility: AM2, AM3, 775, 1156 and 1366
* Height (with fan): 160mm
* Width (with fan): 140 mm
* Depth (with fan): 158mm
* Weight (with fan): 1070/1240g
* Material: Copper (base and heat-pipes), aluminium (cooling fins), soldered joints & nickel plating
* 1x NF-P14 premium fan
* 1x NF-P12 premium fan
* 2x Ultra-Low-Noise Adaptor (U.L.N.A.) Y-Split Cables
* NT-H1 high-grade thermal compound
* SecuFirm2 Mounting Kits
* Fan compatibility: 140×140x25 & 120×120x25mm

Fan Specifications – Noctua NF-P14 & Noctua NF-P12:

* Dimensions: 120 x 120 x 25mm
* Bearing: SSO-Bearing
* Blade Geometry: Straight-Blade-Design
* Rotational Speed: 1200 / 1300 RPM
* Rotational Speed w/ ULNA: 900 / 900 RPM
* Airflow: 64.7 / 54.3 CFM
* Airflow w/ ULNA: 41.7 / 37.3 CFM
* Acoustical Noise: 19.6 / 19.8 dBA
* Acoustical Noise w/ ULNA: 13.2 / 12.6 dBA
* Input Power: 1.2 / 1.08 W

This is a great example of a complete setup, with the fans as well as every single mounting accessory thrown in. At this price, this package is hard to beat. The cooler is also way easier to install as compared to the Thermalright line up. Let’s now take a look at the packaging.

The cooler comes in an attractive box with a picture of the cooler as well as a few lines on the most important features. Once we open the box, we are greeted by the accessories box, under which lies the cooler, safely packaged in two sets of cardboard boxes.

The accessories for the NH D14, as mentioned earlier, leave nothing out. You get a whole kit, including a set of two fans.

Noctua also added a screwdriver to make it easier to install the cooler. Once we take the cooler out of the box, the first thing that hits you is it’s size and weight. All put together, with the fans, this cooler weighs in at close to 1.24 kilos and that’s no joke.

The cooler comes installed with both fans, and only the middle 140 mm needs to be removed for installation of the cooler. Now we’ll take the fans off and take a closer look at the cooler itself.

This cooler is simply massive. The primary components here are the six 6mm heat pipes, which are evenly coated in chrome. The heat pipes run in such a way as to make sure that each and every one of them gets direct airflow from the fans. This helps to cool down the heat pipes much faster. Again, the fins have sufficient space between them to provide good cooling even with medium pressure fans. The whole idea of this cooler is to give great results with relatively low noise.

Looking at the NH-D14 from the side, we can see that the cooler only has place for a 25mm fan here and that is a bit of a disappointment. What is not, is the absolutely wonderful finish of the cooler itself.

As you can see, the cooler comes completely prepared for mounting with even the fan dampeners in place.

The base is finished in chrome and comes with a slight curvature. Again, this is a due to the design and Noctua does not advise any lapping to the base.

Overall, it’s got quite a few positives going into the test, including the wonderful finish of every single part and the fact that its a complete package. The only thing missing is an extra set of fan clips and you can mount only a maximum of two fans with the included kit. Also, taking the clips off of the fans is a bit of a task in itself, so be prepared to spend some time if you want to change the fans out. The clips will also hold only open corner fans, so I had to use rubber bands to keep the GT’s running on them.

Keep in mind that the installation may be very simple, but it will block any ram with large heat sinks. Luckily I am using an OCZ platinum kit and that helped in making things easier. You will want to install the ram before the cooler as otherwise there is barely any space to work with. Overall, it is a much easier install than the Thermalright coolers.

Lets now move on to our third new comer.

The Cogage Arrow

The Cogage Arrow came in as a wild card entry and was not supposed to be a part of this shoot out to begin with. But with the rave reviews that it has been getting across the globe, we were more than happy to put it on the test bench. The Cogage is a twin tower cooler with the added advantage of being able to accommodate a 32mm fan in the center. We did do some testing with a 32mm fan on all the coolers, but since this one was able to get it in the right spot, the results really showed. Here are the specifications before going ahead:

Features:

* 4 X 8mm large sintered heat-pipes efficiently remove excessive heat away from the CPU, allowing for great Overclocking potential
* Nickel Plated Base and Heatpipes, increase the longevity of the heatsink by slowing oxidation and deterioration rates… maintained performance over time
* Double fin stack design, provides each tower with an impressive 147 x 103mm of surface area for heat dissipation
* Special Arrow fin design, which allows cool air to pass through while rapidly moving heat away and maintaining a quiet operating volume
* Soldered Heat-pipes, Fins and Copper Base, ensure all components maintain the higest of Thermal Efficiency
* Support for Multiple-Platforms: Intel Socket 1366/1156/775 and AMD Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3
* Includes a Quiet 120 x 25mm PWM controlled fan 1000-1800 rpm
* Capable of supporting up to three fans (2x 120×25mm or 140×25mm fans) for the Ultimate Enthusiast (1x 120×38mm fan will fit between the two towers)

Specifications:

* Cooler Dimensions: Length 147mm x Width 123mm x Height 160mm
* Cooler weight: 825 g (excluding Retention Hardware and Fan)
* Heat-pipe: 4, 8mm Sintered Heat-pipes
* Cooler Base Material: C1100 Pure Copper with Nickel Plating

The cooler comes with a full setup, but unfortunately it does not include an AM3 mounting kit. It however does include three pairs of fan mounting clips and that’s a big plus point right there.

The Cogage Arrow comes in a nice black box with the picture of the cooler dominating the front.

The box clearly says that this cooler is made for a variety of Intel socket types, but you can use the same AM2+/AM3 bolt through kit to get this running on an AMD setup as well. Once we open the box, we are greeted by a cardboard placeholder which holds both the cooler as well as all the accessories that go with it. Lets take a quick look at the accessories before going ahead.

The accessories list is quite extensive as you can see and it comes with everything other than the AM3 mounting kit. The fan is pretty decent, but we will not be using it for the testing up ahead. Overall, the kit is in line with what we get from Thermalright, which makes sense.

The fan is held securely between the two towers and overall the packaging, though not as flashy or well done as the Noctua, did a good job in keeping the products secure.

The cooler itself is a twin tower design, with the capacity to hold a 38mm fan in the middle slot. So, an overly extreme setup can be done with 3 X 38mm fans. This is achieved in almost the same dimensions as the Noctua by keeping the towers a little smaller in depth.

This cooler is different from the previous two in that it makes use of four large 8mm heat pipes rather than six 6mm. The fins are also more closely spaced and a high pressure fan will be required to bring out the best in them. The fit and finish, while not up to Noctua’s mark is pretty decent. The heat pipes are placed in such a way as to make sure that all of them get the best possible air flow and this helps in the final analysis.

The base is very similar to the Venomous X, and again, has a small curvature in the center by design. The sample we got had a small line on one side, but that did not affect it’s performance in any way.

Overall it is a much better made cooler than the TRUE, but there is room for improvement in the finish and the package as a whole.

The cooler is as difficult to install as the TRUE or the Venomous X, as it uses the exact same mounting system. Due to the size, it is recommended to take the motherboard out of the case, as a run away screwdriver can cause a whole lot of issues to your board. The fan clip system needs to be installed before you install the cooler as it is very difficult to install this with no way of looking at the bottom of the cooler.

Lets now move on to the test setup.

Test Setup And Methodology

The test setup will be the same as with the previous reviews and we will look at three mounts per cooler. The best of the three results will then be taken as the final result. Each cooler will be tested at stock clocks and an overclock of 4Ghz at 1.525V. The test will be run on OCCT for 30 minutes per test.

The results will be calculated with a base ambient and additions and subtractions will be made to the results taking this number. So if the base ambient is 25 degrees, then a cooler tested at 27 degrees will have 2 degrees deducted from its final readings. All testing will be done in a closed case environment.

Now moving on to the test bench, which will remain the same for all the coolers that we have tested so far and for a few more in the near future.

Test Setup

CPU: AMD 965 BE @ 3.4Ghz (1.30V) and 4Ghz (1.525V), CPU NB @ 2.6Ghz (1.20V)
Memory: OCZ 1600Mhz Platinum @ 1333Mhz 1.65V
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-3
Motherboard: MSI GD70 790FX
PSU: OCZ Modextreme 700W Modular
Case: Coolermaster Sniper with 3X120, 1X200 Intakes and 3X120 Exhausts
GPU: Sapphire 5850 @ Stock
Fans: 2 X Scythe Gentle Typhoons 1850 in Push/Pull

Test Results

Moving on to the main part of the review. Let us first take a look at the results at 3.4 Ghz, 1.30V.

Kicking off at stock clocks with a slight under volt, the Coolink Corator DS gets the lowest idle temperatures at 29.5 degrees. This is closely followed by the Noctua and the Cogage Arrow. Our contender from a previous generation, the TRUE comes in at last place in the idle test.

Moving on to the load results, the lowest temperature was recorded using the Cogage Arrow, with the Venomous X coming in at a close second. The Noctua rounds up the top three, and the Thermalright Rev C manages to beat the Thermolab Baram in the load test, but only by a whisker to take 6th place.

If we look closely at these figures, we will see that the difference between the best and the worst cooler on load at stock settings is a very meager three and a half degrees. So for anyone planning a mild overclock, any of these will do just as well as the other and be a lot more quiet than the stock AMD heat sink.

Now let’s turn the heat up and separate the men from the boys.

I am sure this is the part of the review that most people want to see, so here we go.

The NH-D14 leads the pack in terms of idle temperatures at just 34.5 degrees, with the Venomous X and the Coolink following closely behind. The total difference between the best and the worst temperature is around 3.5 degrees, which again is not that high.

When we move on to the load tests, surprise surprise, it’s the Cogage Arrow which leads the pack with a load temperature of just 56.5 degrees. It is closely followed by the Noctua in second place with a temperature of 57.3 degrees with the Venomous X rounding off the top three at 58 degrees. The difference between the top and bottom spots now opens up to around 5 degrees. The Corsair H50 comes in at last place with a maximum recorded temperature of 63 degrees.

Conclusion

The Cogage Arrow was the surprise package, beating it’s more well known sibling the Venomous X, as well as the Noctua NH-D14. Keep in mind that the temperature difference amongst the top three is around 1.5 degrees, but all the same, the Cogage Arrow is the new top dog for the AMD platform.

The Noctua comes in second to the Cogage and the Thermalright Venomous X comes in at a not too shabby third. The Venomous X manages to beat the third twin tower cooler, the Corator DS, as well as the other three coolers that we tested. For a single tower cooler, this is not bad at all and for those looking for that extra bit of space on their motherboards, this would be the top cooler for now.

The Cogage Arrow receives the TechREACTION.net Gold Silicon Award!

But if I were to buy a new cooler today, space not being a constraint, I would happily go for the Noctua NH-D14, simply because of it’s overall package, ease of installation and the fact that it comes with a good set of fans. The Noctua is still a bit ahead of Thermalright in terms of their build quality and ease of use and that’s one reason that they will see me coming back to them in the future. For now, I’m back to my Venomous X, which gives me top rate performance at probably half the size.

The Noctua NH-D14 receives the TechREACTION.net Gold Silicon Award!

The TRUE is clearly showing its age and finishes near the bottom in both the tests. But it does manage to edge out the H50 in the final test and that’s the number that we are more interested in.

All of the coolers we tested were able to keep the CPU within it’s thermal limits, but when it comes to the final few Mhz that we need for a benchmark attempt, it’s the top three that will go the distance.

Finally, coming to the price, the Noctua rightfully charges close to $85-$90 depending on where you shop, with the Venomous X and the Cogage Arrow both at the $65-$70 price mark. Remember to keep an extra $10 for the AMD mounting kit though. Taking this into consideration, all three coolers from the top three cost nearly the same. The Baram is the cheapest cooler we used in this review and it comes in at around $40, which makes it a great value proposition.

Thank you for reading and I hope this review helps you in making the right cooling choice.

You can also check out Performance-PC’s to purchase either the NH-D14 or the Cogage Arrow.

Cooler Master’s current best seller, the CM 690 was initially launched in 2007 and has been one of their mainstays ever since then. The popularity of this chassis was such that it spawned a number of variants, amongst them a windowed version and later the pure version with an all black interior. The chassis was very simple in design and construction and what made it such a great product was that it was designed keeping a lot of the market requirements in mind.

With changing times and a lot of competition in the same price bracket, it was time for CM to look at a redesign of its current mainstay and that’s exactly what they have done. They worked on the relevant additions required in today’s market place and cam back with the CM 690 II advanced and the CM 690 II pure. The Pure is an Asia Pacific specific model and is a little less customizable than the Advanced, but it still retains most of the practicality and all of the looks of its more expensive sibling. So without wasting anymore time, lets start by taking a look at the features of the CM 690 II pure.

Available Color
Black

Material
Steel body / Plastic + Mesh bezel

Dimension (W / H / D)
214.5 x 511.8 x 528.8 mm / 8.4 x 20.1 x 20.8 inch

Weight
Net Weight: 9.56 kg / 21.08 lbs
Gross Weight: 11.56 kg / 25.49 lbs

M/B Type
Micro – ATX / ATX / Mini-ITX(supports)

5.25″ Drive Bay
4 (without the use of exposed 3.5”drive bay)

3.5″ Drive Bay
6 Hidden
1 Exposed (converted from one 5.25” drive bay)

I/O Panel
USB 2.0 x 2 , eSATA x 1 , MIC x 1 , Audio x 1 (supports HD / AC97 audio)
Expansion Slots
7 + 1

Cooling System
Front: 140 x 25 mm Blue LED fan x 1 / 1200 RPM / 19 dBA
Rear: 120 mm fan x 1 / 1200 RPM / 17 dBA
Top: 120 x 25 mm fan x 1 / 1200 RPM / 19 dBA (supports 120 / 140 mm fan x 2)
Bottom: 120 mm fan x 2 (optional)
Right side: 120 / 140 mm fan x 2 (optional)
Left side: 80 x 15 mm x 1 (optional)
HDD cage: 120 mm fan x 1 (optional)

Power Supply
Standard ATX PS2 / EPS 12V (optional)

As you can see, the cabinet is a bit bigger than the 690 and also has a slight change over the configuration of drive bays. Overall the extra room is a requirement of most modern mid to high end systems and CM has done the right thing by increasing the space available.

Unboxing and Accessories

The chassis come packaged in a nice glossy white cardboard box. The front of the box has an image of what you can expect inside.

The rear has some more pictures of the chassis with the main features highlighted. This helps uninformed customers to get a good idea of what they are buying.

As usual the chassis is covered in plastic and is saved from any major damage with the help of some styrofoam inserts on each side of the case. The packaging has been the same for quite some time now, and since it seems to work well, there is no reason to change it.

Now lets take a quick look at the accessories that come along with the case, before going on to the case itself. The accessories are packaged in a small brown box, which is securely tied into the chassis itself. The list is quite long and impressive for a cabinet of this price.

Starting from the left, we have a small metal bracket, which can be used to securely lock your chassis. Then we have a speaker and something that I have seen for the first time, a set of plastic fan holders, which by the way are extremely easy to use. There are also a small packet of zip ties for wire management, the 3.5″ bay adapter, various screws and stand offs and a 5.25″ to 3.5″ converter. They have also provided an extra fan filter, which can be used for the PSU if required. The cabinet also comes with an SSD holder, which we will look at later in the review. The motherboard screws are also black to go with the theme and this is a good touch.

The cabinet also comes with a manual, which will help first time builders to get going.

External Impressions

Lets start with the front panel. As you can see below, the front panel remains almost the same as the older 690, but the bottom has a more rounded look. Now, if we really look at it, I will not call this a negative, as the original 690 looks good even today.

Moving along to the left side, the panel looks exactly the same as the older 690, with only a small change in the fan placements. The rest of the panel is pretty bland, and I wish CM had done something here to spice it up. Even a logo like what they have on the HAF series would have helped, or a set of air ducts.

The right side of the case is pretty plain and there’s not much to see here. There is a small fan holder to take away heat from the cpu area and this is something which does help.

Moving along to the rear of the case, there are a few changes to note. Firstly, we have a set of water cooling holes, near the top of the chassis, instead of the right bottom. This will help those who do want to get into water cooling as its placed very conveniently as compared to the original 690. Secondly, the top again is a bit more rounded, to keep with the overall theme of the new case. Thirdly, we have an additional expansion slot on the side, which is very helpful for those who want to use a fan or led controller. And finally, CM seems to have done away with the plastic PCI-E slot holders. But lets leave that for when we look at the interiors.

This is also the first look at the paint job on this chassis and its extremely durable and has a wonderful matte finish, without looking dull.

Moving along to the top of the chassis, we have place here for up to 2 x 140 mm fans. Now what I realized is that the fans can be fit inside the cabinet, OR between the cabinet and the top panel. Now this will be very helpful for anyone looking to get some more space around the CPU socket area, or for a person looking to install a 240 mm rad up top.

The top also holds the I/O panel and we have the regular set of controls, plus a switch for the lights on the front fan. All the buttons have a solid feel to them and work with a nice click. The silver accents continue from the front and its a nice touch.

Lets not take a closer look at the interiors.

Interiors
The side panels are held in place with a pair of thumb screws. Once we take those of, we are greeted by the lovely black interior. I am sure that most of you will love and I am happy that CM decided to paint even the basic model with a black interior. I for one would have saved a couple of days if they had offered the same interior on my CM Sniper.

The manual and accessories box is kept inside the chassis and the box is secured well enough to make sure it does not move while shipping. Once we remove these, we can admire the full beauty of this cabinet.

So lets start with some basic observations about the interiors. The paint work is extremely durable and unless you try real hard, its a bit difficult to scratch. This is a well done machine finish with not a single blemish or bubble on it and CM have done a very good job of it.

Next, we have six HDD caddies, each with its own plastic retention bracket. I wish they had put in some more effort to dampen the HDD sound though. On the plus side, its a very easy to use and straight forward mechanism and much better than the ones on the previous 690.

The 5.25″ bays have a new locking mechanism, which also works quite well. But if you do plan to move your system around, make sure to use the included screws to secure the other side as well.

Moving on, we see six cable management holes in the motherboard tray, as well as a large hole behind the CPU area. This is very well thought out and gives any person the chance to get the most wire free finish with minimal work. there are also a couple of areas where you can use zip ties to hold down those massive cables behind the motherboard tray. The bottom has three ventilation points, one of which will be sued by the PSU. The second one can hold a 120 mm fan and the second and third together can be used for a 240 mm radiator if required. This should work extremely well with the new Swiftech MCR 220, since both the radiator and the pump can be fitted down here and then you only need tubes going to your CPU block. However this version does not have the removable HDD brackets, and so you would have to do a bit off work to get that done.

Looking at the top, this is where the 2 X 140 mm fans can be installed.

The chassis comes with one 120mm fan as part of the package.

Continuing with the fans, we see the rear fan, which again is a plain jane 120 mm with no LED’s and the front blue LED 120 mm fan. In the second picture, we can also see the cable management holes, and I wish CM had left a little more space between the motherboard tray and the rear panel to make it easier to hide the thicker cables.

Finally we take a closer look at the HDD caddy’s.

The one on the left will accommodate a normal 3.5″ HDD and the one on the right would be helpful to those who have invested in an SSD. The positive of this system is how easy it is to work with, but I wish there was a little more rubber to keep HDD vibrations down.

Lets move on to the last part of this review and the conclusion.

Final Installation and Conclusion

I sat down to install a couple of components in this case and was presently surprised. Cable management is a breeze and I probably finished installing the below components in around 25 minutes, with minimal fuss.

Well the surprise here is the motherboard, but leaving that aside for another day and another review, you can probably make out how much those holes help in keeping things tidy. A nice sleeved PSU would probably enhance the overall looks a lot more. Everything went in without a fuss and as you can see we can easily install a 5870 or any of the new GTX series from Nvidia.

The reason for no CPU and ram is that, thats a secret we are keeping for sometime later.

To end this review, lets take a short look at the main pros and cons:

Pros:

• Great price – Should be around 5k for this version and 5.5k for the Advanced version
• Great build and finish
• Well thought out cable management features
• Sufficient filters all around
• Radiator compatible
• LED switch
• You can install a total of 10 fans

Cons:

• Very similar to the 690 Pure
• Rear side panel should have had a bulge to help easier wire management

All in all, a great chassis but I would rather spend the extra Rs. 500 and get the advanced version. I expect the street price to be a bit lower than Rs. 5,000 once the initial hype ends.

The chassis will be available online as well as in shops around the 15th of this month.

This chassis has earned the TechReaction Gold Silicon Award

Also be sure to check out TestFreaks for more reviews on the Cooler Master 690 II.

]]> http://www.techreaction.net/2010/04/14/review-cooler-master-690-ii-plus/feed/ 6 http://www.techreaction.net/2010/03/11/review-coolink-corator-ds-cpu-cooler-shootout-on-the-am3-platform/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=review-coolink-corator-ds-cpu-cooler-shootout-on-the-am3-platform http://www.techreaction.net/2010/03/11/review-coolink-corator-ds-cpu-cooler-shootout-on-the-am3-platform/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:59:19 +0000 mav2000 http://www.techreaction.net/?p=5090 Introduction

Hello all and welcome back to my never ending quest to find the best air cooling solutions from across the globe. Today we have in our hands a new cooler called the Coolink Corator DS. I would like to thank Kolink International for sending us the cooler.

Kolink International Corporation is a cooling specialist established in 1996 and well known amongst industry insiders. Through the years, Kolink designed and manufactured many top-performing heat-sinks, under various different brand names. An experienced R&D team and ultra-modern production plants in Taiwan ensures continuous progress, efficient manufacturing conditions and strict quality standards.

Kolink’s retail brand, “Coolink” stands for an effective conjunction of no-frills performance, excellent quality and attractive pricing. While Coolink held a strong presence in the South East Asian markets ever since the late 90’s, it was not until 2005 that the brand was introduced to the European market on a large scale. After the launch of Coolink-Europe.com in late 2005, Coolink has quickly become a well recognized brand for high-quality cooling components.

As many of you may remember, there was a lot of buzz around this particular cooler a few weeks ago considering the new base setup that the company had worked on. Well, it looks like the new idea does work well, but lets analyze that later in the review. Let’s first take a look at the specifications:

There are a couple of things that stand out from the list above:

1. This is a complete package with all the necessary mounts thrown in
2. You do not need to buy a fan
3. The copper base and heatpipes – look out for this
4. Its heavy!!!

The first two points have been a major point of contention, as most top coolers come without the AMD mounting system and a packaged fan. Coolink’s approach in a way is refreshing, since they follow the approach of Noctua and believe in providing a complete package rather than just selling individual components based on requirements.

The Package

This cooler came to me all the way from Europe, without a single scratch or dent and that goes a long way in proving the robustness of the package.

The front of the box has some classy graphics along with a picture of the actual product. As you can see the box is a little beat up from the long flight from Europe, but that is to be expected, as I feel way worse after any long flight myself.

The rear of the box has a few pictures of the product as well as the fan. The picture to note is that of the base.

The side of the box gives a few interesting details about the product itself as well as a small write up on GDT (gapless Direct Touch) technology that is used on the base of the heatsink. It also mentions some of the other noteworthy features of the product, such as the addition of a TIM, the mounting system and some details of the packaged PWM fan.

Finally the other side gives the technical details of the product itself, along with a few specifications.

Meet the Beast

Upon opening the box you are greeted by two cardboard boxes, one of which contains the cooler and fan, and the other contains all the accessories. The accessories consist of the fan, which is packaged with the cooler, the mounting clips (one set), the AMD and Intel mounting systems, a tube of the company’s own paste and two product sheets, one each for AMD and Intel mounting setups. Of particular interest at this point is the fact that the Corator uses the SecuFirm2 mounting system, which was first introduced to us by Noctua. On looking at both the systems, one can tell that it is the exact same mounting system as the one on the NH D14.

The Corator ships with Chillaramic thermal paste, which seems to be of good quality. This can also be bought separately in 10 gm tubes. Overall, I was quite happy with the temperatures that I recorded with the included paste, but for the purpose of this review we used MX-3.

Now let’s take a look at the cooler itself.

The Corator is a twin tower cooler, with four massive 8 mm heatpipes doing the duty of taking the heat away from your CPU and to the aluminum fins. It come pre-mounted with a fan as well as the anti vibration strips. As you can see from the picture above, the gap between the fins are quite large and the fins are also dimpled, to increase the amount of heat dissipation area. Overall the finish of the product is at par with the best and there are absolutely no complaints on this front.

When we look at the cooler from a side-on view, we can see the installed fan.

The included fan is a PWM fan and can be controlled with various software, as well as through the bios. The fan runs between 800 and 1700 rpm, with a maximum sound of 27 dBa. The fan has a hydro dynamic bearing and this is of a much better specification than your normal sleeve bearing fans.

The fan overall has nice aesthetics, and personally, I love the colors as its very different from your normal black and blue fans. The wires are also sleeved in heatshrink. I only wish that they had used normal sleeve for the fan as sleeved wire goes a long way as far as aesthetics are concerned.

Finally, we come to the most important aspect of this cooler, the base. The Corator uses a Gapless Direct Touch (GDT) base, which is a first in air cooling overall. The GDT base uses the positives of the HDT system, along with the positives of the normal direct touch base. What they have basically done is to have the heatpipes directly in touch with the CPU IHS and used copper rather than aluminum for the gaps between the heat pipes. The picture below will probably go a long way in helping you understand the concept.

It is pretty easy to make out the difference between the copper heatpipes and the copper base in the picture above. Overall the finish of the base is extremely good, with no curvature in the surface.

Overall I see a lot of similarities to the Noctua coolers.

I would like to add that the first two ram slots do get blocked with this cooler and two fans, so only low profile ram will work if you plan to use all four slots.

Lets now move on to the testing area and check out what this beast has to offer.

Test Results

Now we move on to the most important part of the review and that’s the testing. In the past we have done various comparisons, but we have never worked on more than two coolers at a time. I am happy to report that I have done some extensive testing on four coolers and four more will be added to this list over the next month or so.

We have tested each cooler with 3 mounts, recorded temperatures using OCCT for a one hour period and have recorded ambients for each and every test. The graphs below give us the best out of these results.

The results will be calculated with a base ambient and additions and subtractions will be made to the results taking this number. So if the base ambient is 25 degrees, then a cooler tested at 27 degrees will have 2 degrees deducted from its final readings. All testing was done in a closed case.

The idea here is to have a comprehensive view on AMD cooling solutions over a period of time.

Now moving on to the test bench, which will remain the same for all the coolers that we have tested so far and for a few more in the near future.

Test Setup:

AMD 965 BE C3 @ 3.4 Ghz (1.25V) and 4.0 Ghz (1.525V)

2 X Scythe 1850 Gentle Typhoons Push/Pull

OCZ 1600 Mhz Platinum LV

MSI GD70 790FX Motherboard

Sapphire 5850 @ Stock

The Competition:

Coolink Corator DS

Thermalright Venemous X

Thermolab Baram

Corsair H50

The reason for using this setup in a closed case is to try and judge real world results rather than just open cased benching results, though I must admit that the system in use is optimized for high air flow in the cpu region.

So lets start at stock settings with an undervolt to 1.25V.

The Coolink Corator performs extremely well in this test, coming very close to unseating the Venemous from its top spot. Its about three degrees better than the Thermolab and close to three and a half degrees better than the Corsair.

Let us now move on to the overclocked results.

Conclusion

When we finally come down to the basics, the Corator is an innovative product, with a great package and a superb result to boot. Taking into account that this is their first branded product, I am extremely pleased with the results. I would go so far as to say that I am extremely eager to see what they come up with next.

Pros:

• Great package with everything included.
• Great performance
• Good quality fan and thermal paste included in the package
• Excellent build quality
• Great mounting system and easy to install
• Price

Cons:

• Only one fan can be used with the cooler, we used rubber bands to keep two fans going
• Size and weight – please check your motherboard and case before buying. Height is not much of an issue but width is

For a MSRP of USD 60, this is a great product and gives full value for your hard earned money.  Check out the “Where to buy” section on the Coolink web page for online vendors in your area.

The Coolink Corator DS CPU-Cooler receives the TechREACTION.net Gold Silicon Award!

Be sure to check out TestFreaks for more expert reviews on the Coolink Corator DS.

After the recent review on the Excalibur, I was on the look out for a few low  noise fans, specifically for the Venomous X. I was pretty happy with the results that I was getting with the Scythe Gentle Typhoons and decided to get the two Noctua brothers to test. Before I go any further, let me clarify that this was a test to see which would be the best performer with low noise as an added criteria and is not meant for someone looking for benching fans.

And on a lighter note, the good looking models on their site seem to have the same “color scheme” as their fans. 

Noctua NF-P14 FLX

The NF-P14 FLX is the bigger brother and is a 140 x 140 x 25 mm fan with the capability to mount on a 120 fan hole. The fan has a nine bladed VCN (Vortex Controlled Notches) design. The VCN design helps to reduce turbulence as well as the sound associated with it.  It’s also something which is found on the Scythe GT’s, which leads me to believe that this system really works. The fan also works on an SSO bearing, which is a type of oil pressure bearing, helping to reduce motor whine and increase the life of the fan.

Lets take a look at the basic specifications before going ahead.

Noctua NF-S12B FLX

Testing Results

Conclusion

PROS:

• Great overall package on both the fans, with every conceivable extra thrown in.
• Very low sound profile, were the most quiet fans in the test.
• Well built and a nice six year warranty to boot.
• The NF P14 was outstanding for the sound profile that it has.

CONS:

• The S12B was bottom of the charts in each and every test.
• Pricing, even though they carry all the extras.

The Noctua NF-P14 FLX receives our TechREACTION.net Silver Silicon Award!

You can find the NF-P14 FLX and NF-S12B FLX fans at Performance-PCs.  Thanks to Noctua for the review samples.

For some more expert reviews of the Noctua NF-P14 FLX and NF-S12B FLX, you should check out TestFreaks.

Recently my good friends at Cooler Master gave me a call and asked me to take a good look at their new case fan. I half expected a 140 mm version of their famous R4’s or maybe a stronger version of their 200mm line up. Little did I expect to see the Excalibur. This fan is a far departure from their current units and I for one was pretty excited with the design.

The Excalibur has been named after the legendary sword of King Arthur, which was said to have magical properties and then some. So does this case fan live up to the name?

Lets first take a look at the specifications from Cooler Master:

A Closer Look

The fan came well packaged in a plastic container, more like the high end Scythe variety than the blister pack variety. I prefer the blister pack a bit more as it seems to be a bit more safe for things like fans, but the two review pieces did reach me without any damage, so no complaints on that front. Once we open the plastic box, we get straight to the fan and the accompanying accessories. lets start with taking a look at the accessories that CM provides with this fan.

Now that’s a lot of extras right there. CM provides four rubber fan mounts, four metal case screws, four rubber washers, a three pin extender cable and a wonderfully simple 3 pin to 4 pin converter. All of these are of extremely high quality and I am especially pleased with the finish of the 3 to 4 pin converter, which is extremely easy to work with and has a very small footprint as compared to the stuff that I have seen with most other fans. Lets now take a look at the fans.

The fan is essentially a nine blade design, with slightly angled blades. The whole frame is made of punched metal and is overall very light in weight. The punched design helps the fan to suck in more air from around the frame and seems to be a pretty good innovation.

The rear of the fan holds no surprises and is the same as any other fan.

The fan is pretty well made and the attention to detail can be seen in the quality of sleeving used for the wires as well. I wish they had used the transparent wires that they used on the R4’s as well, as that would have given it a cleaner look.

The fans have a removable blade design, which makes them easier to clean once mounted in your case. They also come with a 4 pin connector, so one can use software to monitor as well as control the speed of the fans. Overall, a well made sturdy design, with lots of style.

Lets now move on to the performance of these fans.

Test Results

We tested these fans on my older setup consisting of a pretty hot running AMD 965 C2 overclocked to 3.8 Ghz and within a case. The case that we used was a Cooler Master Storm Sniper and it has been modified to ensure some pretty decent air flow. The contenders that I did have with me at the time of the testing were as follows:

1. The Cooler Master Excalibur

2. Yate Loon D12SH-12 High Speed

3. Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1450 rpm (D1225C12B4AP-14)

4. Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1850 rpm (D1225C12B5AP-15)

Let me say that the Scythe Gentle Typhoons are my favorites and they are the only fans that you can barely hear at full speed.

All the fans were run in a push-pull setup, with OCCT 1 hour testing their cooling powers. The heatsink used was the Thermolab Baram.

Lets start with the results of the Gentle Typhoons 1450 rpm.

The Gentle Typhoons 1450rpm managed to get a idle of 37 and reached a high of 59.5 degrees. That’s not so bad taking into account how hot this particular CPU actually runs.

Next up are the Yate Loon High Speeds.

The Yate Loons fare better, topping out at around 55.5 degrees as compared to the 59.5 degrees of the lower speed GTs. The idle temps we recorded for this attempt was around 37 degrees.

Lets now move on to the Ultra High Speed 1850 Gentle Typhoons:

The 1850 Gentle Typhoons manage an amazing 54 degrees at load and an idle of 35.5 degrees. Remember, this is with minimal noise output and basically shows the strength of the high air pressure that these fans manage to generate.

Finally we come to the Excalibur. One point to note is that since this is a close cornered fan, I had to use rubber bands to keep the fans on the heatsink.

And I was amazed. The Excalibur’s manage to stay on idle at 34 degrees and manage to keep the CPU temps at 52.75 on load. Now that’s an impressive result for any 120×25mm fan.

And just to recap:

Conclusion

Well, the Excalibur did put in an astounding performance and are worthy of winning this round. They managed to beat my favorite pair of heatsink fans – not by much, but then when you are really pushing for that Pi run, every single degree makes a difference. Let’s take a look at some of the Pros and Cons before we end this review.

Pros:

1. Superb CFM and air pressure
2. Great accessories
3. Nice looking and sturdy design
4. Quiet when under volted and run at around 1700-1800 rpm

Cons:

1. They are quite loud, but are a little better than the Yate Loons
2. I wish they would improve the sticker in the middle (I know, that’s nit-picking)

Well, that’s all folks. The fan should be available soon at around USD  22. They are great lookers and perform even better. Just keep in mind that they are noisy at full throttle and a fan controller is advised.

Happy Cooling.