Scythe pushes towards Infinity

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Apprentice_GM
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Post by Apprentice_GM » Wed Sep 13, 2006 12:29 am

jaganath wrote:
I bought 5 x Nexus 120mm fans, and to be honest, the 2 I have tried so far (at 12V) aren't that impressive - quite a lot of thrumming like they are off-balance and wobbling. Could be a bad batch but I thought Nexus cherry-picked YL's?
I don't think they "cherry pick" them so much as have YL make them to their specifications (ie lower top speed). Can I ask where you bought them, and whether they are new or secondhand?
I bought them through www.pccasegear.com.au and they are new. It seems to have gotten better after 3 days running constantly, but still slightly throbbing. I haven't tested the other 3. I might drop the voltage on them as well to 7V.

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Post by Apprentice_GM » Wed Sep 13, 2006 12:37 am

chienpourri wrote:Wow... now that's a dissapointment. I tought that:

1) the Infinity could be used passively
2) given it's bigger, heavier and all that it would perform better than the Ninja

Glad I bought 1 extra Ninja in prevision for my new computers later this year. They do seem to be harder to find now....
1) It does passively cool some CPU's, although I guess it obviously depends on the thermal output. I am running an A64 3500+ with stock voltages and stock speed atm, but I do plan on some undervolting / overvolting and overclocking experimentation. Given it's only 31 degrees in 22 degree ambient I think there is plenty of headroom there.

and from Aris & Noli:
Aris wrote:
Noli wrote:er... am I the only one thinking this but why did they bother even making and selling this if it is a step backwards?!
wouldnt be the first time i saw a company make a new product to replace somthing that is actually worse than the original.
2) I am sure it would with higher (and louder) fan speeds. So if you had a 120mm fan going at >2,000rpm I reckon it would outperform a Ninja. So I think Scythe are aiming this heatsink at a slightly different crowd - good passive / excellent slow fan / best fast fan, as opposed to the Ninja aimed more at best passive / best slow fan / good fast fan.
Last edited by Apprentice_GM on Wed Sep 13, 2006 12:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Apprentice_GM » Wed Sep 13, 2006 12:45 am

ecto wrote:
mbetea wrote:Can anyone at SPCR say how the weight is distributed in the heatsink? One thing that initially attracted me to the Ninja was a couple places (SPCR included) commenting how most of the weight seemed to be in the base.
Maybe someone who has a Ninja and someone who has an Infinity could place it on some kind of narrow stick, move it around till it's balanced, and take a picture and measure how far from the base the center of weight is. Would be interesting. If say 50% of the weight is located at the 25% nearest the base, one wouldn't have to be so worried about the ~1 kg weight.
I don't want to dis-mount it, but I might get another one soon. If so, I'll do the weight distribution test and report back here (only the Infinity though).

Another way to get the balance point of anything (broom, whatever) is to slide your hands together whilst supporting it, from ends in. The hand with the least weight slides more, the hand with the most weight slides less or not at all, they come together at the balance point. It's quick and needs no tools :)

err, b4 any1 comments, it only works with objects you can lift. So don't try finding the balance point of your car that way . . .

Although for a heatsink a bit of cardboard under the edge of the fins might prevent them getting bent sliding hands together.

FireFoxx74
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Post by FireFoxx74 » Wed Sep 13, 2006 3:32 am

I guess some other important thing to consider is how well it passively cools.

I remember seeing a Ninja in a P180 case with the rear and top fans providing more than enough passive airflow to cool the CPU, in fact just a single rear-mounted fan in many cases seemed to be enough to enable passive cooling.

So, how well do you think the Infinity would passively cool a Core2Duo?

chienpourri
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Post by chienpourri » Wed Sep 13, 2006 4:27 am

[quote="paapaa"]Ninja is not discontinued. I asked from Scythe and they said that they'll start selling Ninja Plus rev.B "end of this month or early next month". It will be AM2 compatible and it will have a different mounting mechanism.[/quote]
Maybe they will use their "Universal Mounting Mechanism", juste like the Infinity. I think the current Ninja system is great, the backplate makes me feel much safer about it. And if you're wise, you'll plan to buy the Ninja at the same time as your new hardware and not have to remove the mobo.

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Post by EndoSteel » Thu Sep 14, 2006 9:03 am

1. I think everything is ok with the test, a 2.8GHz Northwood is just too cool to fully reveal the difference between the two heavyweights. A 4GHz Prescott-based testbed would have been more adequate.

2. As I can see from the pictures the Infinity has the same 4mm fin spacing as the Ninja. It would be interesting to see how does it perform on pure natural convection.

spworley
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Post by spworley » Thu Sep 14, 2006 9:33 pm

I'll take one of the all-copper Ninja! They only made 100. I wonder what they weigh. And how they perform.

Some pics when they showed one at Computex this year.

http://www.digital-daily.com/editorial/ ... ndex04.htm

jaganath
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Post by jaganath » Fri Sep 15, 2006 1:29 am

I'll take one of the all-copper Ninja! They only made 100. I wonder what they weigh
Copper is roughly 3x as heavy as aluminium; if they have not used thinner fins and base it will weigh almost 2kg(!).

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Post by Felger Carbon » Fri Sep 15, 2006 5:26 am

EndoSteel wrote:As I can see from the pictures the Infinity has the same 4mm fin spacing as the Ninja. It would be interesting to see how does it perform on pure natural convection.
If you'll take a closer look at the pics there are three sets of fins: the fins in the middle, and the fins on the two sides. The problem is there is significant overlap between the middle and outer fins. This would mean the fin spacing is halved if the fans were of infinite thinness, but they aren't. So, the distance from one surface of one fin to the closest surface of the adjacent fin drops to perhaps 40% of the nominal value.

hapveg
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Post by hapveg » Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:30 am

I've just upgraded my system and am now using an Infinity.

Asus P5B Deluxe, E6600 Core2Duo2, P180, stock speeds.

The Infinity fits in a P180 with a P5B, it looked like it wouldn't, and I'm not 100% sure the heatsink isn't touching any capacitors, but it fits. It should fit installed either way, but I installed in side-ways (longer left-to-right, rather than top-to-bottom). In hindsight, that wasn't the best way.

Using Arctic Silver 5, the installation was a bit nasty, I really didn't think those pushpins would hold the heatsink into the board, and it was pretty tough to actually install it, the pushpins are partially under the fins, and the case made getting good access to them a problem. I was considering wiping the TIM from the CPU / heatsink and restarting, but then got it installed.

Temperatures are great though, the Infinity is running passive, although it is only an inch away from a Nexus as the P180 rear exhaust.

Nexus@12v:
Idle: 37 C
2*CPU Burn-in for 50 minutes: 45 C
Ambient: ? normal room temp, maybe 22.

The only oddity is the motherboard temp, idles at 43, after much load it reached 44, the P5B uses fancy heatpipes and "8 phase power design", fancy market-speak, but basically the mobo heatsink is perfectly positioned for a P180 exhaust fan. It seems strange that the mobo idles several degrees higher than the CPU.

In a few days when I've got more experience I'll post more details, including temps at lower fan speeds, overclocked and with the X1900XTX under load.

Please forgive any spelling errors, I don't have Google Toolbar installed yet.

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Post by MikeC » Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:36 am

hapveg --

Try running 2xPrime95 instead of CPUBurn. You'll find that it will stress the Core 2 Duo more, by as much as 5-6 degrees C. (Depending on many of factors, tho.)

Also, 43/44C for the "motherboard" is nothing at all. Most chips on the board are safe up >2x that temp. But it does seem odd to see CPU temp lower than others. When you consider GPU temps, then it really seems weird.

hapveg
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Post by hapveg » Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:58 am

MikeC, you were right, Prime95 does increase the heat.

New figures:
Nexus rear exhaust at 12v (~1050rpm) after 30 mins: cpu 55, mobo 47, ambient ~19.
No fans at all after 4 minutes: cpu 80, mobo 50. I wussed out and shutdown the PC. It was stable though.

The P5B deluxe has trouble detecting low fan speeds, so I haven't done any tests with my Zalman fanmate, I've got some inline resistors, but haven't tried them yet.

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Post by arisus » Mon Sep 18, 2006 1:04 pm

hi,

so I woke up one day and had this idea.....to make Scythe Ninja, AM2 compatible


....would it be possible to put this (SCNJ-1000)

Image

together with this (Thermalright RM rev B):

Image

because judging from the pics both RM's look alike. But the pictures themselves can be misleading so I wanted to ask someone with more "hands-on" experience.


I don't want this post to be a complete hijack so IMO the mounting on the new Infinity is "infini inferior" They expect me to mount and secure almost 1kg of aluminum with this:

Image

??? (it clips to only one out of 3 available mounting...thingies)

why not use something like that:

Image

nightmorph
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Post by nightmorph » Wed Sep 20, 2006 2:54 am

Well, several online stores say they're receiving the new AM2 compatible Ninja at the end of this month, or early next month -- mostly at the end of this month. In fact, AcousticPC says they're getting the new AM2 Ninja September 26 -- somehow, having an actual sale date makes the wait harder for me. :wink:

hapveg
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Post by hapveg » Sat Sep 23, 2006 8:52 pm

Just a minor update, a few days after installing the Infinity my CPU temps jumped considerably.

Using the same hardware as before I noticed the CPU had reached 91C while gaming, a few days earlier under load (2*prime95) it had only reached 55C.

I've added the fan that came with the Infinity as a top exhaust (~7V), and kept the Nexus as a rear exhaust, temps are now about 70C idle (was 37C) and 86C load (was 55C).

I'm assuming the heatsink isn't making a good connection with the CPU anymore, I'm going to reseat it.

Hopefully it's just related to the problems I had installing it, but if others have the same problem it could indicate that the heatsink is just too long and heavy to be reliablely mounted without some kind of backplate.

Terje
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Re: Scythe pushes towards Infinity

Post by Terje » Sat Sep 30, 2006 11:12 pm

I have built a new P180B recently using a core 2 duo 6600, the infinity and an intel badaxe.

Things I have noticed:
- I could under no circumstance manage to mount the infinity properly with the motherboard already put into the P180b. It was simply not possible to get my hands down between the back side of the case and the cooler so I could get the plugs pushed down hard enough to lock it properly to the motherboard (the top of the plugs are partly under the cooling fins). They felt ok, but they where not. Once I took out the motherboard I also discovered that I had not manage to get proper connection between the CPU and the infinity base.

- It is a very tight fit with the badaxe. The infinity mounting bracket on the backside is just a mm above one of the capacitors on the badaxe. I though for a while that it was actually touching it, and this prevented it from getting full contact with the CPU surface, but closer checking reveals that there is a very small space there. The space is so small that I would not be suprised if production differences might cause trouble for some people with badaxe motherboards

- I do not feel that heat is transferred as good as I would expect up the heatpipes. Having some experience with other heatpipes, I would expect more heat to get "up" to the cooling fins than what I can feel (and measure) with the infinity. It might be that the cooling area is just so darned large that the heat is not very noticable, but my stomach tells me that the pipes are not working as well as they should.

This especially goes for overvolting the cpu. The cpu temperature increases quickly, but I just cannot feel the heat rising the same way in the tower. It is just as if the heat is not transfered from the CPU as well as I would expect.

I have double checked the termal paste and it is good.

- The fan I got with the infinity does not work well when the fan is controlled by the motherboard. For whatever reason, when the fan controller on the motherboard is used to reduce fan speed, the fan starts emitting a clicking/buszzing noise. I tested with other schyte fans I had and they all have the same noise problem with the fan speed controlled by the badaxe.

In any case, I replaced it with a PABST, which did not have the problem. The PABST also generated less noise and had significantly less vibration. The standard fan did seem to make a bit vibration noise in the infinity.

It is not a lot of vibration and did not really notice this until I tested other fans, but any noise reduction is always good.

I eventually hooked everything to a 4 channel Schyte fan controller which works well.

The infinity is pretty good despite my feeling that the pipes are not working as well as it should. With the PABST running at 1020 rpm, I top out at about 62C running cpuburn for several hours with the airconditioner in the room turned off (ambient around 30C) and with the CPU overclocked at 3.2GHZ.

- I did test with an 800rpm schyte on the infinity and it works well. So did passive cooling at standard CPU clock. However, I discovered that if I moved the fan down on the infinity as far as I could without hitting motherboard components, it will blow air on the infinity base as well as all the capacitors on the motherboard surrounding the CPU. Both CPU and surrounding components got colder by several degrees which allowed me to overclock to 3.2GHZ without very little extra noise and still keep nice temperatures.

The fact that the CPU got that much cooler from increasing airflow on the heatsink base is a major reason why I suspect that the heatpipes are not working as well as they should or could. At least not for my infinity sample.

- Next to infinity, almost under it, is the quite large passive northbridge heatsink on the badaxe. I have been playing with the idea of moving the 120mm fan on the infinity a little bit to the side so it also covers the side of this heatsink. It will reduce airflow on the infinity, but the tests I have done so far indicate that loosing airflow on 1-2 cm on the upper edge of the infinity has little effect on cpu temperature. The effect on northbridge temperature is dramatic though (10C reduction with a little bit overvolting). The problem is that parts of the northbridge retention bracked and a few fins blocks this from being done.

I am current itching for chopping of parts of the northbridge cooler to allow moving the CPU fan a few cm to the side (or rather, downwards when the P180 is standing). The tests I have done indicate that I can increase the CPU clock about 300MHZ more if I add more voltage on the northbridge. Only thing stopping me is that that the machine is very very silent right now and I will only do this if I can keep the noise down which I can if I move the fan.

It just seems drastic to destroy the standard cooler like that.

All in all, the machine is very silent. I have added noise dampening on all sides and edges of the cabinet (including the inside of the door). Got 4 western digital drives of the silent type with a bit of AAM enabled, a nvidia 7900 gtx, and a bunch of 120mm fans are all very silent and carefully tuned with the low speed I could get with acceptable noise (does such a thing really exists?).

With this new PC, I ended up turning off my mini mac on the desk the other day because I felt that it was too noisy at idle. This P180b system under my desk is less audible (even with the CPU and disks busy) than the idle mini mac from all other positions in the room except if you crawl under the desk to the backside of the machine.

Not sure why, but I am still trying to figure out how to make this thing even more silent and at the same time faster. There should probably be a mental institution for people like me ;).

Its getting borderline like HIFI addiction. You spend more time tweaking the system for perfection than enjoying it.

Got to finish this soon :)

Terje

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Post by jaganath » Sun Oct 01, 2006 12:00 am

Not sure why, but I am still trying to figure out how to make this thing even more silent and at the same time faster. There should probably be a mental institution for people like me
Nah, you simply have "SPCR disease". Welcome to the club! :lol:

Terje
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Re: Scythe pushes towards Infinity

Post by Terje » Sun Oct 01, 2006 12:49 am

Terje wrote:The infinity is pretty good despite my feeling that the pipes are not working as well as it should. With the PABST running at 1020 rpm, I top out at about 62C running cpuburn for several hours with the airconditioner in the room turned off (ambient around 30C) and with the CPU overclocked at 3.2GHZ.
Sorry, typo there. It topped out around 52C when I had 30C ambient in the room.

Terje

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Post by Terje » Sun Oct 01, 2006 5:29 am

jaganath wrote:
Not sure why, but I am still trying to figure out how to make this thing even more silent and at the same time faster. There should probably be a mental institution for people like me
Nah, you simply have "SPCR disease". Welcome to the club! :lol:
And this is the SPCR Asylum?

Mats
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Post by Mats » Mon Oct 16, 2006 9:35 pm

I know this has been posted in a separate thread somewhere, but I'm posting it here as well. A guide for mounting the Infinity with screws.

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