I have started using a new case and my set-up calls for a reletively short heatsink (less than 100m tall), which means my Xigmatek tower cooler and indeed pretty much all tower coolers are off the cards. Also because I use a 220mm sidefan as my main cooling I am wondering if you guys know of a cheap top-down heatsink (under £30) with good low airflow cooling capabilities?

I am hoping that the 220mm fan can server the case and the CPU heatsink, but if i still need a fan on the CPU it is not the end fo the world (so ong as I can run it sub 1000rpm).

I have been using the Xigmatek for so long to cool my Intel G850, that I have no idea what heatsink will serve this purpose.

Many thanks for your help.

Hehe, "less than 100 m tall".

Typos aside.
- Scythe Shuriken rev. B (64 mm tall)
- Scythe Kozuti (40 mm tall, only recommendable for very tight spaces)
- Scythe Samurai ZZ (94 mm tall, but I believe that's without the fan, sadly. It's a very good cooler)
- Arctic Cooling Alpine (a whole serie)

100m is certainly an acheivable goal!

Thanks for the info, I have been looking at the Scythe Samurai ZZ already, but i am unsure of the low airflow cooling of it. Looking at the pictures and the dimensions (94 x 122 x 94 mm) one of the 94mm must be the overall height as the heatpipes extend way beyond the heatsink to one side and the fan is 92mm.

So that makes it still a viable option.

The SilverStone Nitrogon NT06 is 82 mm tall w/o fan and about £30.
The Enermax ETD-T60 85mm tall. Not sure about the price.
Antec Kühler Shelf is 127mm tall with a fan slightly above £30. If you remove the fan assembly it should just squeeze below 100mm, or maybe just 1-2mm over.
The Thermalright AXP-140 is still the best top down cooler, only 71mm tall but £41.15 @ scan.co.uk.
The Thermalright is pretty much the only high performance heatsink that would allow an additional fan under 100mm. This will only be necessary if you upgrade to a quad core CPU.
The G850 produces little heat, any of the above should be able to cool it with the side fan only.

Should be about £45 when it becomes available. It may be the best solution if there isn't more room. With 100mm clearance you can use a cheaper cooler that performs better.

This is probably the only one worth considering right now:
Noctua introduces low-profile NH-L12 with dual PWM fans
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=63949

Another alternative would be a Scythe Big Shuriken (version 1 or 2).
http://skinflint.co.uk/440569


It isn't the cheapest, but I think it will perform well.
93 mm with the upper fan (which is included) attached isn't really low profile.

Most of your alternatives are heatsinks that are taller than 100 mm with a fan attached.
I doubt he feels like buying yet another one if a fan is needed.

Given the large fin area, the 66mm height (with one fan), and the PWM fans that start at 300rpm, the Noctua is hard to beat. It's like the Scythe Kozuti, only on steroids.

The big Shuriken - a PITA to mount.
Scythe Samurai ZZ - if you have room for the zz, you are better off with the Noctua C14 with a single fan.
Arctic Cooling Alpine - I just don't think it is in the same class
Thermalright AXP-140 - not bad... but the new Noctua can squeeze into lower headroom or it can run with two fans.
Scythe Shuriken rev. B (64 mm tall) - I own one and am unimpressed with it. It uses a 100mm x 12mm fan that just makes too much noise. Also you need an extra 12 mm for the fan to breath.

Don't forget, that with other top downs, you have to leave an extra 25 mm space (equal to the depth of the fan blades) on top for the fan to breath properly. Here, that 25 mm is for the most part built in. (though I think I would still want to give it an extra 12mm).

And Noctua has a policy of providing free mounting kits to its customers for new CPU chips if you keep your reciept for the Noctua and show them the reciept for the new chip. No one else does that.

My two pennies worth:
The proposed G850 CPU is very easy to cool. Even quad core 3.4GHz i5-2500(k) isn't a big deal, easily handled by 92mm fan tower in my experience.
In fact Anandtech has a G850 consuming 78w under load. For the whole system! Probably only 30~40w in the CPU
My 2600k consumes 60~65w DC more under load than idle, just for the CPU. Over-clocked it's double that! So no wonder I find cooling quietly challenging.

The large (220mm) case side fan is going to blow down on to the heatsink so large heatsink with no fan on it should work fine. Ones near the 100mm height will work best, probably.
The NH-C14 if it's not too tall is the biggest/best and very expensive, and overkill for this I think.
AXP-140 also looks like a good fit for this job, also probably overkill!

Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 (several models) as already mentioned would be fine with their included fan but not sure if would work from the case side fan only... Ditto the Freezer 11 LP. These tend to be less expensive if it's a consideration. Also in the cheaper range worth a look is Cooler Master Vortex Plus.

The Shurikens also look to me like they could work without fan directly on them, in which case to noise/quality of the stock fan is a non-issue, they're also not too expensive.

For me I'd probably go with the Nitrogon NT06-E, it's around the budget of £30, at 80mm tall will fit quite close to the case fan and is spec'd to work in cases with just PSU fan providing airflow for CPUs up to 65w (more with high speed PSU fans)
Regards, Seb

About the Scythe Samurai ZZ. It's most probably cheaper than the Noctua, and it has proven to be able to cool 95 W CPU's (AMD Athlon II X4) on an open test bench at SPCR. By cooling I mean when the CPU is stressed via Prime95 and when the fan is run virtually silent i.e. 11-12 dBA/1m. If it can cool a quad core 45 nm CPU, then it can most certainly cool an efficient, 65 W Pentium dual core too. So I believe you can save some money by purchasing the Samurai over the soon-to-come Noctua.

It can also be handled by a Scythe Kozuti, which is considerably smaller than a 92mm tower, with a much smaller fan.

the Scythe Samurai ZZ street price is about "US$30~$35"
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1049-page1.html
The Noctua's street price is likely to be about $49 ($10 under list)

For that you get an extra 120mm PMW Noctua fan with a street price that likely more than makes up the difference... plus a free mounting kit when Intel changes its CPU format.

While you never really know how good a cpu cooler is until you use it and experiment with it.... but do you really believe the Samurai ZZ will perform in the same ballpark as the Noctua? And the Samurai ZZ needs 122mm of headroom for the heatsink, another 25mm for the fan. and another 25m to give the fan some breathing room (you can't place the fan directly abutting a side panel or it won't move any air).... especially if you use both of the Noctua's fans?

Even with two fans, the Noctua needs less headroom than the Samurai ZZ. And the Samurai's single 92mm fan operates at 300 - 2,500 rpm. The Noctuas fans (a 120mm and an 80mm) operate at 300 - 1200 rpms. Even with two fans, it is implausible that the Noctua will not be materially quieter than the Samurai ZZ.
At 12V and 2440 RPM Spcr measured the Samurai ZZ at 26~27 dBA (open air) and 34~35 dBA (mounted)
Even at full speed, no Noctua fan will ever come close to approaching such noise levels.

The Samurai ZZ was nice in its day... but it is already two generations behind the Noctua.

I thought the OP had a 220 mm fan in the side panel? Dunno if it's where the heatsink is, tho.

Yes, that's another issue. If the OP is looking for a quiet fan, it isn't so obvious to me that he will really want to use a 220mm fan. If he does, he probably wants even more than 25mm distance between the CPU fan and the side panel fan.

It might help if he told us what the exact case is.

Thanks for all the ideas guys, I had not posted the case as it is not one what any of your will be familiar with, here is a picture of the set-up currently:



The development log I have been keeping

So as you see I am working with a very defined space, which for the CPU cooler is fairly standard (except in height) as the new position of the GPU only encroaches 10mm further than where it would be in the PCI-e port.

Thanks again guys, and I hope that these pictures can help in the discussion.

There is a fundamental flaw with the case. There is a place for the air to go in, but no place for it to exit. That can perhaps be fixed by just removing the 220mm fan but leaving the fan grating.

The location of the GPU is a game changer. If you removed the 220mm fan but left the fan grating, how much overhead space do you have?

It looks like you are going to have to attempt to measure the sizes of the various downdraft coolers to see what is going to fit next to the GPU. Here are some options:
Noctua NH-C14 140mm fan
Thermalright 140 140mm fan
Scythe SCKZT-1000 Kozuti 80mm fan
Prolimatech Samuel 17 120mm fan
Scythe Shuriken 100mm fan
Scythe Big Shuriken 120mm fan
Zalman CNPS8700
Zalman CNPS7000
Noctua NH-L12 120mm fan
Scythe Samurai ZZ 92mm fan

Maybe the Samurai ZZ after all will be the best fit.

Have you taken a look at this case: LIAN LI PC-TU200A Silver Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811112347
You might want to consider going back to the drawing board and using it.

The case is very much a work in progress, I only got the PCI-e ribbon delivered yesterday and worked on fitting it in the evening so I am now in a position to look into the ventilation of the case. For example the PSU is currently just circulating air from the inside of the case, and this will not be the case when I am done (I wil be building a cover for above and below the PS to hide the cables and vent the air out of the case).

In my previous cases which also used the same 220mm as the sole case fan had panels with mesh sections, and this was more than enough to ventilate the heat. This might be the step I will take here, but i am as yet undecided.


Alot of the top-down CPU cooler I see on the market have the main heatsink offset from the touch plate, the Samurai ZZ is an example of this. So could it not just put the offset to the back of the case instead of down where the GPU encroaches?


I would have roughly 120mm to play with, but the fan is a fundimental design feature of the build and I would be very unlikely to consider this, just by changing the orientation of the GPU from the stadard position, I have cut 10c off the furmark load temp (from 70c to 60c) at 25% fan speeds. And that is even before I have added the required ventilation!


I am starting to come to the same conclusion myself.

I will take some measurements and photos of the case with a 120mm fan placed on the CPU heatsink so see how that looks and if the space is easier to determine.

Got home and took a close up photo of the area in question and upon closer inspection the graphics card is maybe 5mm over whete it would be if I had it plugged directly into the PCI-e port. Here is the pic with the PCI-e port highlighted:


Hope it helps.


I am not sure if this has any impact on the heatsink choice as 5mm is a fair amount in tight spaces like this; as it seems MSI don't make big heatsink friendly motherboards and stick their CPU sockets close to the PCI-e ports...

I may consider getting an Asus motherboard as the MSI one doesn't allow undervolting anyway.

I have been looking at the Scythe Shuriken, as photos on google seem to suggest that the heat sink only extends 5-10mm beyond the socket 1155 push pins on 3 edges, and if that is accurate; it will fit. What do you guys think?

Yes

If you have 128mm available you might be able to do that with the Noctua. See the NH-L12 dimensional specs below.

Or if you have enough headroom, you might be able to use the NH-C12 without any fan other than the 220mm one.

Greetings kiblams. Brilliant piece of work.

Two low profile coolers for you r consideration:

Samuel 17 and Titan TTC-NK95/HS.

Best regards.

Cheers.

I think I am decided on the Scythe Samurai ZZ as the extra height will put the heatsink much closer to the 220mm fan and should give the better airflow and it is much cheaper at £25 than the alternatives. Thanks for the input everyone, I will let you know how the installation and temperature reading goes.

Are you going to use it without a fan... other than the 220mm fan?

I will be trying both ways, to see the cooling vs. noise of each set-up.

It will arrive tomorrow at work so I will be able to let you know before Tuesday.

So the Samurai ZZ arrived and has been fitted, bad news; the Scythe fan is a little too close to the 220mm fan in order to be used, but the great news is that the temperatures with the fanless Samurai are fantastic considering that the 220mm fan is running at a very slow RPM.

Here is a show with the heatsink in place:


It is roughly 7mm taller than GPU, which puts it at a great distance from the case fan.

Very chuffed indeed, thanks for all for the suggestions guys!

kiblams: Where did you get the PCIe riser? I'm trying to find one that's at least 7" long, excluding the connectors.

Unfortunately I was only able to find one place selling them cheap in the UK and that was an Amazon Marketplace, I took the risk and thankfully it arrived and works great. It is only 6 inches though, sorry.

Link please!

Here is the page with the 2 sellers on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listin ... dition=new

I bought it from 'ukpk' as it was British, though for those on the continent, adaptare might be best as they seem a better seller.

Thanks.

Adex is another source for risers, you just have to find someone who sells their products.
Distributors: http://www.adexelec.com/adexhm.htm