Well, at least the Mine at 5V performs better than a fanless Ninja (due to space constraints).


Could the fan have been adjusted such that there was no contact at all?


Even quieter than CoolerMaster Hyper 48?

I must say, I didn't find the stock fan on the Hyper 48 very quiet at all, in fact I threw it away almost immediately (after testing). I don't know if they changed fans or what but it was certainly not quiet by any definition SPCR would be familiar with.

Hang on a minute...
The 120mm fan wasnt tried because it would provide airflow outside of the fins as well as through them?
Stop me if I'm wrong, but the 100mm fan would miss about 25% of the area of the fins, due to the fan being round. The current set-up is only about 75% as efficient as it could be. While some air would be drawn across the corners of the HS, it is nowhere near the same volume of air that would be present if the fan covered the entire area.

Methinks this HSF could do better...

quote from http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&number=7&artpage=1819&articID=419

Should spcr have tested the mine and the ninja with the same 120mm fan? or
maybe it'd take a hot P4 to show that the mine is not as good as the ninja?

I would like to have seen a Nexus 120 tested in this heatsink as well, as the madshrimp review shows that not only is the CPU cooler with a bigger fan, but the PWM also.
The Mine is interesting not just because of the lower weight and price compared to the Ninja, but also the smaller footprint compared to the Ninja with its external fan. This means it will fit on some motherboards that can’t take the Ninja and for that reason I think it is worth giving the Mine a fuller review. I’m sure there are people reading this that have spare 120mm fans and are wondering how the Mine performs with one. Any chance of adding this to the review?

Surely, the A64 at 2.4 GHz and 1.7V in the madshrimps review is a hot enough CPU to indicate that the Mine is pretty close to the Ninja when cooling what counts as a top end CPU today; I’m using 65W as a benchmark figure.

Nice review, apart from the one omission.

how is this even a fair review/comparison at all? not only is it not the same 120mm fan used on the other heatsinks, its not a 120mm fan at all.

ive seen heatsink reviews done in the past on SPCR that test with the stock fan, but they always put in a reference fan that is the same on the other heatsinks its being compared to also.

this review needs to be redone, or at the very least add'd to.

Does the mounting mechanism allow you to choose direction of the fan? If not would it be blowing towards the back of an ATX case on a S939 motherboard or up towards the PSU?

I'm inclined to agree with the others...it doesnt seem fair to compare the 100mm fan to the 120mm fans. Yes, it may be very quiet and thats great, but I think the point is to test the HS not the fan, correct?

A fair comparision would be all-stock: mine with 100mm fan and ninja with no fan! I can guess the results:

• the ninja would be much quieter! it's silent.
• the mine would be a much better cooler since the fanless ninja has limited use.

On my k8ngm2-fid, the fan blows toward the back of the case.

I'll wait until they test it with the Nexus.

uh no, that would be testing each product as is sold out of the box.

i could care less how it performs out of a retail package. i want to know which HEATSINK is the most EFFECIENT, then i will decide which fan i will use with it. Mabey i will keep the stock fan, mabey i wont, but its my decision, and using different fans on each heatsink doesnt prove which heatsink is better than the other.

its not like a fan swap takes all that much time. put all the data in there, test them all stock out of the box AND with the same fan on each, and put up all the data.

putting a new fan on a heatsink and taking it off takes all of what? 10seconds?

I agree with everyone. If a heatsink can be tested with a reference fan then it shoud be tested to determine how it cools compared to other heatsinks. Since this heatsink can accept a 120mm fan and it is compared to other 120mm fans then it should get the ninja too. While I may not use the ninja I at least want to know how well it may work.

Also, some quiet fans are not expensive. I was able to pick up 4 Yate Loon low speed 120s for $5 each. This makes a fan swap basically free to me becuase I have extra fans. I don't think i am the only one who does this.

This statement, which is repeated, puzzles me: "Both the Ninja and the HR-01 are designed for fanless operation and are significantly more expensive than the Mine."

I checked four sales outlets: Directron, Heatsinkfactory, Jab-Tech, and Newegg. Two of the sites had the Ninja-Plus at the same price as the Mine, one had the NP $2 cheaper, and one had the NP $7 cheaper.

If the above sites are not a statistical anomoly, it would seem you have it wrong (twice) about the Ninja(-Plus) being more expensive than the Mine. I hasten to add that the rest of the review is excellent!

(I agree that's a fantastic fan on the Mine. I bought three of the 1000RPM version for spot cooling on my system HDDs. Extremely quiet!)

Well, it takes longer than that. About one minute.

Anyway, in response to popular demand, I subbed a Nexus 120 in the Mime and ran the test again. Three hours later, I have a Postscript added as another page to the back of the Mine review.

On most K8/AM2 mobos, the Mine blows toward the exhaust fan, not the PSU.

Yeah, I'm not sure where Devon got that.... he was it a bit of a rush on this one, but not to worry; this and other comments related to price have been edited.

I think the Mine's competitor is not the Ninja but other hs. If I could, I would have put the Ninja in my system. The Ninja is simply too big for some case/mb combinations. The big plus of the Mine vs other like the Noctua U9 is that its fan blows toward the back of the case (where I have my 120mm nexsus.)

Are you sure about that? I woulda sworn the Mine and the U9 blow in 90 degree different directions.

I mean, on my mb (k8ngm2-fid):

• The noctua's fan blows toward the PSU
• The Mine's fan blows toward the rear of the case

Sorry, I read that wrong. Must be my eyeglasses.

Some pedantry:
Page 3: "With some mnotherboards, it will be with the fan blowing towards the PSU or away from it (assuming the PSU is in the conventional location), or with the fan blowing towards or away from the back panel."
Apart from the typo, it's not very clear. Perhaps it should read something like:
"With some motherboards, the fan will blow towards or away from the PSU (assuming the PSU is in the conventional location); with other motherboards, the fan will blow towards or away from the back panel."

I was going to comment on the paragraph after the second table on page 5, and then I realised that it was rise above ambient, not load temp that you were referring to, and that the Load Temp in the table was misleading without knowing that the ambient temperature varied. So that's just a clarity/transparency thing.

The reason people might fan swap a mine instead of buying a Ninja Plus is AM2 compatability; however, if the HR-01 is compatible with AM2, presumably that would be the best option until the Ninja AM2 bracket comes out.

Thanks for the info, and the person who answered above too.

That was a quick update to the review

Why did you compare the various heatisnks at such a high noise level in the review update? Did you not have enough data to make a full comparison at lower noise levels with a Nexus 120mm at 5 and 7V?
It’s a shame that your Ninja review with the Nexus didn’t go as low as 5V, as that is the comparison that interests me and no doubt others. I guess 7V used to be the benchmark for when you reviewed in the past!

I’ve realised that the comparison that I’d like to see is the Ninja+ versus the Mine, which isn’t possible as you haven’t reviewed the Ninja + with its stock 120 mm fan. The question for me is whether the stock 120mm Ninja+ fan is quiet enough so that you don’t need to upgrade it. The outcome will affect the value for money comparison between the two coolers. In the UK the Mine is £25 versus £30 for the Ninja Plus.

I like the look of the Mine because it might make a great base for creating a duct with a 120mm fan installed. Since the 120mm fan is larger than the heatisnk, a duct could be connected directly from the fan to the back of the case. I imagine it’s preferable and easier to attach something to a fan than a heatsink, although only if using a low speed fan otherwise vibration may be passed to the back of the case. Not sure if this theory is practical though!

The decision to not originally review the Mine with a Nexus 120mm shows how dangerous it is to make assumptions about what other people might want to do with a product. I don’t mean this as a criticism, but as a general observation.
For me, the lighter weight and smaller overall footprint of the Mine which makes it more compatible with motherboards, on top of the slight cost saving and ducting potential make it an interesting product in its own right. If I use one in my next system I’m sure I’ll stick a spare Nexus in it at some point

Any thoughts on the feasibility of my ducting idea?

The Mine with a 120mm YL fan. Mounted flush on the right side and sticking out on the left side. Adds .3" to the overall height.

Proves the fan need not be centered.

Not at all, when the Panaflo 80 was king, 5V was a target, as there was a noise difference between 7BVB and 5V. With the Nexus 120, the noise advantage between 5V and 7V is so small that we just can;t see anyone needing this info or wanting to run it that slow. There's no audible difference when it's in a typical quiet case, so there is no reason not take the higher cooling power of the higher speed.

BTW, 22-23 dBA at 1m is hardly high, and it's a number that was reached not with just the Ninja/Nexus but with many others in the comparison.

In absolute terms I agree that the noise level that the comparison used is hardly high; but it’s hardly silent either! Since it equates in the tests to a Nexus at 12V, I was surprised that you used such a high figure. I find a Nexus 120mm at 12V to be too loud and since many people in these forums run a Nexus 120mm at 5 – 9V, I thought that making the comparison at these voltages made more sense. I can dig through the old reviews to get the data myself, but it still seems an odd choice to me.

but if you are THAT concerned about the noise wouldn't you just go for a ninja? do you think the relative performance of the heatsinks will change very much going from 12V to 7V?

I think it's pretty easy to see that the Ninja is going to be better at both voltages......and it's pretty easy to see what type of CPU you could run with the Mine and a Nexus at 7V.

Actually, the Mine should get worse and the Ninja get better, relatively, as the airflow is dropped. Right at the start, Devon cites Scythe's intention for the Mine to be a better cooler where lowest noise is not the main priority. Our testing shows no reason to disbelieve Scythe.

Scythe's own testing, also linked in the review, shows the stock Mine achieving CPU temp of 50C while the Ninja Plus gets 47C. Their spec puts the Ninja's fan as 1.5 dBA louder. When the Mine stock fan is replaced with a 2000rpm model (at 30 dBA), the CPU temp improves to 43C.

Really, it all comes down to fin density, total surface area & total airflow across them. The two HS would appear to have similar surface area because while each of the Ninja's fins are as big has nearly 3 of the Mine's, the spacing between fins is much tighter on the mine. So then it becomes a question of which fan can blow greater air at the same low noise level. The answer is that a quiet 120mm can blow more air through the Ninja than through the mine -- at the same low speed.

No, for two reasons. Firstly, because the Mine is compatible with more motherboards than the Ninja+, it’s just not a choice for some people. Secondly, it’s a different product and has its own unique strengths. If the Mine offers good enough performance for peoples’ needs, it’s another option. Surely, that’s a good thing!

Whatever I ‘think’ is purely conjecture, I come to SPCR for hard facts. BTW, heatsinks can vary considerably in how they perform with low CFM fans.

Agreed. I went back to the Ninja review to make the comparison directly, as the postscript omitted this comparison. I’m still perplexed though why the postscript comparison table was using data collated with a Nexus 120mm at 12V. Surely a comparison at 7V would be a more natural choice to make? I know I’m banging on about this, because it just stands out as very odd to me. I’m going to petition the UN and force a recount.