Best cooler that is shorter than 110mm?

GamingGod · Post by **GamingGod** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 8:16 am

It seems that all coolers now days are these huge towers. I was thinking of getting a desktop case but that severly limits your cooling choices. Is there a list of short coolers that perform well?

SebRad · Post by **SebRad** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 9:48 am

Hi, I recently had a similar problem in choosing a heatsink for my new setup but I had more height to work with, ~135mm. Not enough to take any 120mm fan tower heatsink but enough to take some 92mm fan towers. I looked at the Noctua NH-U9, butterfly towers amongst others and ended up with Zalman 9500. I'm not sure any of these will fit 110mm, nor will most of the current large "top down" heatsinks as they are quite tall to start with and by time added fan and room for it to breathe it's as tall as a tower! The Thermalright XP-120 is discontinued but was top dog in it's day and pretty good even now, certainly enough for a Athlon 64 or Core 2 Duo unless you're into heavy overclocking. It's stated to be 67mm + 25mm fan gives nearly 20mm of breathing room which isn't great. The XP-90 is similarly tall and the Si-97 a few mm taller. I think you may need to look at some of the less high-end choices to get a small enough heatsink but then it may not be very quiet, what CPU are you thinking of? Without looking through lots of reviews / eTailors the other option that comes to mind is the Zalman 7x00 heatsinks. The older 7000 and 7700 series are 62 and 67mm tall, although the stock fans aren't well rated swapping for something better isn't too hard and the performance isn't bad. I had 7000B-Cu cooling my XP-3200 (nominally ~80w) pretty quietly with stock fan ~1200rpm (<5v). The 7700 maybe better still as takes 120mm fan rather than 92mm, or there's the new 7500 series. It too is 67mm tall but lists 110mm fan so fan swap maybe tricky although the listed minimum speed of 1150 rpm shouldn't be too bad.
Good luck, Seb

GamingGod · Post by **GamingGod** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:14 pm

Will the Noctua NH-U9 fit in a nsk2400?

Kremmit · Post by **Kremmit** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 9:32 pm

If you mounted a fan under the fins, the SI-97 is only 75mm tall by itself.

For that matter, the SI-120 is only 90mm tall, and the SI-128 is 91.5mm tall. On either of those, you'd have to cut the "support struts" away to allow the fan to be mounted, but I'm sure the heatpipes are strong enough to hold the heatsink up without the struts.

I thought I had seen a picture where somebody tried undermounting on the SI-97, but darned if I can remember where it was. You'd want to get measurements on the space between the fins and the hs base, with retention mechanism in place, to be sure it would work. I'd measure my 97 for you, but it's been modified such that I can't get accurate numbers anymore.

Delta_42 · Post by **Delta_42** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 2:15 am

NorthQ do a range of 'Media Centre' coolers which are very low-profile

click

Looking at it it seems to be a GPU cooler with a kit to mount it to either the cpu or GPU and is only 27 mm high. There are a couple to choose from, although I can't immediately see the difference between them all, apart from the obvious one that 2 are Alu and two are Cu.

What CPU are you looking to cool?

GamingGod · Post by **GamingGod** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:27 am

I was considering a case similar to the NSK2400, so whatever height cooler that fits in that case is what I want. I wanted to get either a 4300 or 6340 or 6440 and overclock to max on stock voltage. Does anyone know what height cooler will fit in a nsk2400?

Vanseb · Post by **Vanseb** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:34 am

Delta_42 wrote:NorthQ do a range of 'Media Centre' coolers which are very low-profile

click

Looking at it it seems to be a GPU cooler with a kit to mount it to either the cpu or GPU and is only 27 mm high. There are a couple to choose from, although I can't immediately see the difference between them all, apart from the obvious one that 2 are Alu and two are Cu.

What CPU are you looking to cool?

Hi !
I'm testing the FlexQ, and the only difference is this version is able to be installed on a GPU

GamingGod · Post by **GamingGod** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 2:01 pm

Which is better between the Apack ZeroTherm BTF90 and Zalman 9500CU
They are both rated as 8, but does one have any advantage over the other?

SebRad · Post by **SebRad** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 4:55 pm

Hi, when I was trying to choose a heatsink I made this, fairly crude, spreadsheet. All the figures were taken from SPCR reviews, if I remember right the black figures are from one test bed, the red figures another and the green ones are interpolations to make the graph nice. The figures are thermal resistance Â°C/W, lower is better and the x axis is volume in dB(A).
The superiority of the Ninja is clear, also impressive is how flat its curve is, how little it loses as the noise (hence airflow) drops off, especially compared to the XP-120. The NH-U9 drops away at the lowest levels but remember it's using 92mm Nexus fan and the lowest figures are 5-7V, i.e. very quiet.
The curve for the Alpine is suspicious in how flat it is, it's not impossible but I do wonder about the data.
I chose the Zalman 9500 as it appeared to be on par with the XP-120 and beating it at lowest noise levels, also easily available and found a good deal on it. I now wonder about the Butterfly as it's the best (bar the too tall Ninja) and I found somewhere selling it at reasonable price but the difficulty of changing the stock fan bothered me, a bit. As it turns out my motherboard will only auto control a 4pin PWM CPU fan, which the Zalman 9500AT has.
I believe the Zalman 9500 can be made to fit the NSK2400/Fusion with bending / cutting of the top fins.
Very helpful thread
Also try searching for "9500 and fusion", get several more useful threads.
Hope helps, or at least gives something to think about, Seb

GamingGod · Post by **GamingGod** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 7:26 pm

couldnt you just remove the stock fan and use some garbage bag ties or something to rig a quiter fan on it. Or duct it to a nearby exhaust.

Kremmit · Post by **Kremmit** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 10:34 pm

GamingGod wrote:couldnt you just remove the stock fan and use some garbage bag ties or something to rig a quiter fan on it. Or duct it to a nearby exhaust.

Have an actual look at the heatsink in question and you'll see why that isn't possible.

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 10:54 pm

Kremmit wrote:For that matter, the SI-120 is only 90mm tall, and the SI-128 is 91.5mm tall. On either of those, you'd have to cut the "support struts" away to allow the fan to be mounted, but I'm sure the heatpipes are strong enough to hold the heatsink up without the struts.

Don't forget the K8 mounting on the SI-128, which sticks up pretty high over the CPU block, and would block the fan. The SI-120 may have the same problem, but it's been a while since I've seen a pic of one of those.

Kremmit · Post by **Kremmit** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 11:00 pm

Felger Carbon wrote:
Kremmit wrote:For that matter, the SI-120 is only 90mm tall, and the SI-128 is 91.5mm tall. On either of those, you'd have to cut the "support struts" away to allow the fan to be mounted, but I'm sure the heatpipes are strong enough to hold the heatsink up without the struts.
Don't forget the K8 mounting on the SI-128, which sticks up pretty high over the CPU block, and would block the fan. The SI-120 may have the same problem, but it's been a while since I've seen a pic of one of those.

Mounting hardware, that's a good point. I mounted my 97 with the old-school spring-clip, which (once installed) bends down flat and doesn't stick up much at all, but the hardware that came with it for other sockets looks taller.

Best cooler that is shorter than 110mm?

Best cooler that is shorter than 110mm?

NorthQ

Re: NorthQ