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Printed On: | May 10, 2008, 1:47 am |
| Category: | Cooling & Chassis | |
| Type: | Reviews | |
| Posted By: | Firefox | |
| Date Posted: | January 28, 2008, 9:12 am |
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Bigger, Better?
Following the spate of price cuts by CPU manufacturers last year, finding an Intel Core 2 Quad in a system as of late is becoming common. Yet, with the additional firepower brings more heat and additional noise as the fan on the stock heatsink tries to keep up with the heat load. For overclockers who thought they found the bargain bin, it seems more likely that the heat has been turned on. Short of going for water cooling, perhaps the most economical way of cooling down that chip would be to invest in a heatpipe heatsink. That and maybe some Delta Focus Flow fans along with a pair of ear plugs. Enthusiasts are accustomed to the noise generated by these monsters; it's the missus' nagging that mandates the use of ear-plugs.
As we observe the trend of heatpipe heatsinks of late, having more heatpipes seems to be the way to go. Today, we have a new heatpipe heatsink in the labs that seems like it would perform well without causing too much of a racket. Ladies and Gentlemen, we present the Scythe Zipang to you. (According to Wiki, it's the anglicized version of an old chinese name for Japan)
Whereas most of its peers feature 120mm fans, the Zipang comes with a 140mm low speed fan that won't blow your ear drums out. Add to that, the 6 heatpipes which are properly soldered to the based and fins to ensure proper heat transfer and Scythe may just have a winning solution. Lets take a look at the basic specifications of the unit before we move on to more pictures.
Model Name: ZIPANG CPU Cooler
Model Number: SCZP-1000
Manufacturer: Scythe Co., Ltd. Japan
Overall Dimensions: 145 x 148 x 112 mm
Weight: 815g
Fan Dimensions: 139 x 139 x 25 mm
Speed: 1000 rpm (±10%)
Air Flow: 51.82 CFM
Noise Level: 21.00 dBA
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Sizing it up.
Here, we see the 6 heatpipes bent to contact the fins. Some manufacturers would lie and say there are 12 heatpipes but Scythe didn't.
The base of heatsink features a nice mirror finish.
The fan is a low speed 1,000RPM unit that consumes a mere 0.12A!
There are ridges on the heatsink to allow mounting of 120mm fans as well. Unfortunately, no clips are provided for this.
We will be using the LGA775 mounting for this review, the bracket is screwed onto the base of the heatsink.
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Test Setup.
Benchmarking Setup
- Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9650 (3GHz @ 333MHz x 9)
- ASUS Maximus Extreme - Intel X38 Chipset
- Kingston HyperX DDR3-11000 2GB Kit
- XFX 8800GTS AlphaDog Edition
- Enermax Galaxy 1kW reV2.0
- Seagate 7200.7 80GB
- Windows XP SP2
Tested against: Scythe Infinity with 120mm S-Flex "F" fan
We decided to pit the Zipang against one of the more prominent heatpipe heatsinks in the market, the Scythe Infinity. Featuring just one less heatpipe but running on a faster S-Flex "F" fan, we will see how the Zipang with a slow 140mm fan compares.
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Round 1 - Fight!
We loaded the QX6850 with 2 copies of Orthos to fully load all 4 cores of the processor for both the heatsinks. This was left running for at least 15 minutes when the temperatures have stabilized before the readings were taken. So how did the heatsinks perform?
First up - Scythe Infinity with S-Flex "F"
59'C on the CPU with a 41'C system temperature. Not too bad for cooling that's barely audible.
With a 1000RPM fan, the Zipang is not audible and yet it does admirably against it's elder brother.
Slapping an S-Flex onto the Zipang
Although the Zipang comes with a slow 140mm fan, it is capable of mounting 120mm fans as well. Unfortunately, the clips for mounting the 120mm fan are not included as part of the package. We tried the clips from the Infinity and it worked. In fact, very well indeed.
The S-flex mounted on the Zipang (Left) & Close-up of the clip (Right)
With the slightly faster S-flex mounted on the Zipang, we only see a 1'C drop in CPU temperatures. It's not unusual since the stock 140mm fan does push a fair bit of air albeit at a much lower pressure. Hence, we can see that the Zipang does not require high speed fans in spite of its fairly densely packed fins. A side effect of using a faster fan (with more pressure) is that the motherboard components receive more cooling on the downward draft and here, we see that the probe reports a 3'C drop.
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Confused about Orientation?
The advantage of running a LGA-775 setup is that the heatsink can be freely rotated as long as it doesn't hit the onboard components. The question begets, does the orientation of the heatpipes matter? Afterall, many manufacturers assure users that with the new wick based heatpipes, there won't be as much of a penalty running the heatpipes vertically. We shall take this opportunity to the test this and see if you should take the extra effort to orientate your heatsink.
With the heatpipes orientated vertically.
And horizontally. The motherboard was held up by some spare voodoo we had around the labs. : )
Results
CPU - 60'C with the heatpipes in the more "ideal" horizontal orientation.
That's a CPU temperature of a whopping 69'C!
The results are somewhat shocking! The difference in orientation made for a difference of 9'C on the CPU. As the heatsink is not centered upon the base, the change in orientation also affected the cooling of the system components slightly. All I can say is, take some effort and make sure your heatpipes stay horizontal or have the heat producing component below the fins at all times. Gravity is, sometimes, a good friend. If you're using an AM2 or Socket 939 setup, there's no need to worry too much. The mounting bracket is designed to allow the heatsink to be rotated around the socket.
AMD users need not worry, Scythe has thought about you.
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Does Size Really Matter?
Conclusion
With a 140mm fan that spins at a mere 1,000RPM, the Scythe Zipang is definitely inaudible in the chassis. In fact, we couldn't even hear the fan operating even in an open-configuration. So much so that we initially thought that the fan would be incapable of actually cooling the Zipang with its densely packed fins (compared to the likes of the Andy and Infinity). It appears that the engineers at Scythe have proven us wrong. Even as we mounted the faster S-Flex fan on the heatsink, the temperatures did not drop by much. However, the motherboard components benefited from it and so we know that the stock fan pushes enough ait to cool the heatpipes but that's about it. With the S-Flex, we saw a marked improvement in system temperatures but not much of a drop in CPU temperatures. The Zipang has indeed been optimized heavily by the Scythe engineers. That said, we did have some issues trying to remove the heatsink due to the size of the fins above the locking pins. With an elaborate heatpipe heatsink cooling solution on the motherboard that's becoming commonplace, accessing the push-pins proved to be somewhat difficult. However, there were no issues with the heatsink being blocked by the said motherboard cooling and the mounting is very secure and possesses more than enough mounting pressure.
If you have been on a look-out for a silent but high performance cooler, we would definitely recommend the Scythe Zipang. With the stock fan, the Zipang keeps up with the likes of the Infinity and offers much more than the stock cooler. Swap the fan out for a faster unit and you will have a cooler to negate the additional heat from overclocking that chip of yours. Although the choice of 140mm fans is limited, the Zipang is capable of mounting 120mm fans if you purchase the optional mounting kit. Here, we would recommend the likes of an S-Flex "F" if you would like to retain your sanity and a 38mm thick Silverstone FM-122 if you don't mind a little more noise.
For delivering a fantastic heatsink, we would give the Scythe Zipang 90 marks but the stock fan is a little lacking and so we would have to deduct 5 marks for not bundling a faster fan which showed greater cooling performance without significant increase in noise. In conclusion, 85 VR-Marks for a nice cooler from Scythe.
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