Nice to see something targeted at lower airflow. I still use my HR-01 Plus because of its wide spacing.

Great review as usual.

I have a question: Does its height exceed the clearance limit of Antec SOLO II?

From Solo II Review page 4


So according to SPCRs measurements it fits and you have a whole 2mm spare!

Regards, Seb

I think that as with the Prolimatech Armageddon, it will be a tight fit in a lot of cases, but in most of the cases with foam or acoustic lining on the side panel, a bit of that stuff can be removed where the heatsink sits to make a bit more room. If you don't mind living a bit dangerously, the tip of the heatpipes caps touching or even pressing a bit against the side cover should not be detrimental -- the extra pressure and heat conduction might even help w/cooling.

If you look at the bottom of page2 http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1271-page2.html at the heatsink imprint pattern,
it looks like the base is convex to a siginificant degree.

I had the same problem with my Thermalright True Spirit 140 and had absolutely disastrous temperatures before lapping,
so it looks like its a common problem befalling their heatsinks lately.

Its still a great sink but if you get one I would say you should probably check for flatness...

If you're referring to the pic of the CPU with TIM on it, that's not necessarily after the Archon was mounted on it; it could have been taken before the TIM was cleaned off after the last HD tested.

If the TIM imprint pattern was indeed that of the Archon, our results suggest that it did not hurt the performance in the least.

Thermalright intends its bases to be slightly convex, to match the slightly concave shape of most heatspreaders on CPUs, both Intel and AMD. I've checked about 10 CPU samples, and all but one of them have a very slightly depressed center, which can be seen by holding a good metal straight edge across the top of the CPU and holding it to a light (or window) -- the gap is easily visible.

Yes thats right a slight convex warp would be ideal in most cases, however, it seems that sometimes TR heatsinks bow out too much. I can only speak for myself and x-bitlabs also seemed to have issue with this. My situation was so bad that about 60% of the heatspreader was entirely left without TIM, and temperatures were worse than the stock intel heatsink, after a quick lapping though, everything behaved as it should. Naturally I'm not saying the Archon definitely has this problem its just something that bothered me when I saw the pic of the imprint posted in the article.

Another theory of mine, which might be completely unscientific and wholly incorrect, but one I observed in how my system behaved was that when you've got a convex heatsink mount pushing away the TIM, it might not initially manifest itself in higher temps, but rather after a few hours of use, when TIM will migrate outwards as a result of the pressure. This could explain why temperatures might initially look good but later on start to worsen.

I've got a True Spirit 140 (which is the same height as the Archon original) in a SOLO II and I use the TY-141 fan which already sticks out above the heatpipes, at least the way I mounted the fan.
The sidepanel clears it fine and doesnt hit the top of the fan.

So if the Archon SB-E is only 2mm taller than that you will definitely be able to fit the SB-E in the Solo 2, because you can push down the fan or mount it with tie downs etc if you need to.
That said, if for some reason you run into problems just swap the TY-150 out with a TY-141, that should give you around 5mm extra clearance. (the ty-141 is already a beast of a fan and is very similar to the ty-150, only a bit smaller).

Also there is another user that reported the Archon and TY-150 combo does fit in the SOLO II viewtopic.php?p=555380#p555380

That is most likely a misconception. The laws a physics simply answer your issue. If TIM "migrates" outwards that is because of the laws of physics, a few hours later the same laws of physics still apply, so your question has nothing at all to do with the laws of physics. Unless you come up with some "evidence" to the contrary you, and your post(s) will be ignored by the majority. NOTE: TIM "is supposed to be squashed out" that's its whole damned point".


Andy

PS: I hope that you/your posts are not ignored.

TIM is supposed to form a super thin layer, just enough to fill any voids in the interface between HS and CPU. Most also harden at least somewhat over repeated heat/cool cycles; it doesn't stay in liquid form.

We've reviewed a dozen or more TR heatsinks over the years, and I don't recall ever seeing less than excellent performance from the vast majority of them, nor of their performance changing over any period of time. I'm not positive that TR has employed this convex base design all that time, but certainly for some years.

If you found an improvement with lapping, well that's good, but I wonder what other factors were in play? There are a few, potentially --

-- less than ideal tightening of HS to CPU (for whatever reason)
-- too much/little TIM

Finally, sure, you could have had a sample with too convex a base -- or a CPU with a really flat or even convex heatspreader -- anything is possible.

Do you happen to know whether the first Solo has the same width?

A misconception or not, I saw this behaviour multiple times when mounting and remounting my heatsink now you can explain it how you want if that theory isn't according to your liking but the fact remains that my temperatures were initially ok and then steadily worsened over a few hours. I don't know where the laws of physics come into the equation all I said was that i think that it gets pushed out over a period of a few hours and not necessarily immediately. Yeah and I understand that TIM is supposed to be squashed out but when theres no TIM on your heatspreader and heatsink right underneath the die and most of the heatsink is also barren of TIM and the TIM is peeling out into the socket ( even though only a little has been used) I think that isnt exactly ideal. To be clear i saw a 15C drop in IBT @ stock 3570k speeds, and more when overclocked. Forget the theory if you want, the fact remains that if you have a sink that is too convex and/or a cpu heatspreader that is also misshapen (in a way that doesn't 'fit' the bow in the heatsink) you will have an unoptimal cooling solution...I thought that much is accepted as general knowledge and that is the real point I'm trying to make.

I experimented with TIM and I experimented with different pressures and mounting directions, nothing made a real difference until I lapped it.
Yes I have considered that the CPU heatspreader might be at the root of the problem but that doesn't really change anything as far as the solution is concerned,
as I don't think the store would let me return my CPU because of a convex base

In all honesty its such a simple fix and I think if you are willing to mount gigantic heatsinks to your motherboard, taking an hour to lap it (very roughly no need to go mirror polish it for 2 days) really is an insignificant investment of time and risk and therefore a nobrainer.

Plus it would be more secure when moving the case

The stock fan sticks out way above the heatsink so if anything you'll be hitting the fan not the heatpipes. It might not be as ideal because it could dislodge the fanclips if you're unlucky

I just wanted to post this because I'm just amazed at seeing another Lawrence Lee. It's rare enough to meet another person named Lawrence, but seeing it with my last name too?!!!

Sorry for the wasted space.....good article btw

Previous Thermalright heatsinks have had multiple socket support, but this is the first time using a single backplate for both Intel and AMD mounts.

Actually, the first iteration of IFX14 (with the bundled IFX10 backplate cooler) had a single backplate for both vendors. Afterwards came the amd/intel only variants.

The TY150 seems like a very promising fan (found information that the OEM is Sanyo Denky), but the clearance is an issue: I would swap my two TY140 on my IFX14 for them, but I'm not sure, if the fan could fit in my CM Cosmos RC1000, which is one quite bit tower... The same applies for the heatsink.

The fact that it performs good with a 140+mm fan is not a surprise, I had the same experience with my IFX14. A pair of TY140 defeated a pair of SFlex 1900 by a good margin (yeah, they are loud att full speed, but I use them mostly at 5V // 660-700rpm).

The base looks actually quite decent to me. It is not perfect, but hey, remember the time when some vendors sold prelapped TRUEs, because the inital base was so badly made?

Will this heatsink and fan combo fit inside a Silverstone FT02 case? (my google-fu was unable to confirm)

Also, I can only find the dual-fan Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E variant online. Hopefully that performs at least as well as the reviewed unit and can fit in a Silverstone FT02 case.

I was surprised to find the Archon SB-E for sale on Amazon. I didn't know they offered Thermalright products!

SilverStone states that it doesn't fit:



However I surprised the fact that the FT02 doesn't appear to be incompatible in the review, although it has not been cited as compatible.