Thermalright Ultima-90

farns · Post by **farns** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 12:55 pm

Has anyone compared this with a low speed (maybe 1000 rpm) fan?
The Anandtech review had it beating nearly everything except its big brother the Ultra-120extreme, IIRC they used a higher speed fan though which suits Thermalrights denser fins better.
It killed the Ninja and equalled the Ultra-120 (non extreme) but higher fan speed as I said.

Anyone compared this to the likes of a Ninja with a low speed fan?
I like how its low profile and weighs less.

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 2:56 pm

farns wrote:I like how its low profile and weighs less.

The Ultima-90 is really a tower HS designed for a 120mm fan, but shortened to the cooling-grid height of a 92mm fan. That leaves the user with a choice:

A) Use a 92mm fan and leave the outer portions of the cooling grid with no cooling air. Obviously, this diminishes performance whatever the fan speed. The unused outer portions of the cooling grid now have the usual opportunity to conflict with NB coolers and VGA coolers, with no offsetting benefit.

B) Use a 120mm fan, at which point your "low profile" just emigrated to Khazakstan, because the top of that 120mm fan is gonna be far higher than the top of the Ultima-90. The airflow produced by the top 28mm of the fan causes noise but doesn't help the cooling - so the cooling/noise ratio suffers. If you have that much room, why not use a tower heatsink designed up-front for a 120mm fan? Thermalright makes a couple of them and they're fine products.

Marketeers don't care about such practical issues; they just want to make that sale. Think about it before you buy.

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 4:55 pm

I have an Ultima-90 sitting on a G0 Q6600 (stock speed for now), with an S-Flex SSF21E controlled by one of the AUX headers on an Abit IP-35 Pro. CoreTemp is reporting idle temps of 36, 34, 36, 33, with the S-Flex spinning at around 780rpm (the 8V lower limit allowed by the motherboard). I've set the header to begin gently ramping the fan up at 45C, and after an hour or so of Prime95 the hottest core had stabilised at 58C with the fan still spinning at just 1020rpm.

The Ultima-90 seems well suited to a 120mm fan, even though some of the airflow gets "wasted" over the top - the heatpipes are clustered in such a way so that they're all nicely in the direct line of fire from the fan blades (not the case using a 92mm fan). The light weight and small size is a nice bonus, but with a 120mm fan it stands every bit as tall as an Ultra-120 - in fact, the tops of the fan clips will come into contact with the side panel of a P182 (naturally I discovered this the hard way). It was actually quite simple though to bend the tops of the clips outwards, so they clear the panel while still holding the fan reasonably securely.

I haven't tried it with a 92mm fan, but I doubt if it would be anywhere near as effective, at least not at the low speeds preferred around these parts...

farns · Post by **farns** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:33 pm

Felger Carbon wrote:
farns wrote:I like how its low profile and weighs less.
The airflow produced by the top 28mm of the fan causes noise but doesn't help the cooling - so the cooling/noise ratio suffers. If you have that much room, why not use a tower heatsink designed up-front for a 120mm fan? Thermalright makes a couple of them and they're fine products.

Yep I guess its not low profile with a 120mm fan doh

I read also that it cools better with a 120mm but does the 28mm bit that pokes over the top really make turbulence noise?
I also thought it might help a tiny bit more with case temps because of that, than a 92mm
Im keen on this as its a bit cheaper but mainly Im uncomfortable about the weight of the big ones hanging on the mobo longterm.

Fungi · Post by **Fungi** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 3:54 pm

I use an Ultra-90 (not Ultima) with a 92mm Nexus in a Solo setup because the Ultra-120 is way too big for it, and I get fine temps. Not too low, but really stable and no problems. The 120mm exhaust right near it helps a good deal, I assume.

If you're not overclocking a lot, like you say, the lighter 90 series is definitely more appealing. Lots of people say the motherboard will handle it no problem, but it's just more peace of mind, you know?

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 3:19 pm

i used an ultra 90 with a 92mm nexus at around 6v, mostly because a ninja or ultra 120 wouldnt fit because of components on the motherboard. But since its only cooling a mobile pentim M, its more than enough. It will even run completely passive, but for peace of mind sake, i put a fan on it anyhow which also helps cool the passive video card. And since a 92mm nexus at 6v is completely inaudible anyhow, i didnt see any reason why to go completely passive.

Just because a heatsink isnt the best performer, doesnt mean it isnt useful. Like a zalman 7000ALCU is still the best heatsink i know at its hight. And its been out for years now. I use it when i need a low profile cooler.

My current listing, in order of preference, for cpu heatsinks is:

Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme (mostly for its superior mounting over a ninja)
Ninja
Thermalright Ultra 90
Zalman 7000 ALCU

When i need a new cpu heatsink, i just go down the list in order from top to bottom, and pick the first one that will fit.

ame · Post by **ame** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 9:20 am

Just finished a build using Termalright ultima 90 on a Q6600 at stock speed. The fan is a 120 Galacialtech running at 450! rpm (motherboard bios controled) in an Antec Solo case. cores idle at 34-35 c

I've chosen this cooler for its light wight and high preformance balance.

kevral · Post by **kevral** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:09 pm

nick705 wrote:(the 8V lower limit allowed by the motherboard)

Hit "User Define" and then "Optimize", and you can go much lower than 8V. My IP35-Pro suggested 3.5V as the lower limit.

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 4:06 pm

kevral wrote: Hit "User Define" and then "Optimize", and you can go much lower than 8V. My IP35-Pro suggested 3.5V as the lower limit.

Thanks - actually someone else here mentioned that a while back, but I'd completely forgotten about it.

I think the lower limit may actually be 6V, although uGuru *seems* to let you go below that - at least, I can't get the S-Flex to go below 600rpm on the AUX1 header (the 4-pin CPU header doesn't play ball at all), regardless of whether I set the lower limit at 3V, 3.5V (as set by the "optimize" button), 4V, 5V or 6V. It's still a very useful improvement over 780rpm though - it's the difference between "very quiet" and "practically inaudible."

After a bit more fiddling with uGuru, I've set the low voltage at 6V, high at 12V, with the lower and upper temperature thresholds at 45C and 62C respectively - the optimize button initially gave unnecessarily low thresholds of 25C and 50C. I've now got idle temps of 38, 37, 36, 38 (600rpm), and after running Prime95 torture test for a while it again settles at a maximum of about 58/59C (but now, for some reason, at a fan speed of just 900rpm).

ame wrote: Just finished a build using Termalright ultima 90 on a Q6600 at stock speed. The fan is a 120 Galacialtech running at 450! rpm (motherboard bios controled) in an Antec Solo case. cores idle at 34-35 c

I've chosen this cooler for its light wight and high preformance balance.

That's very good - my idle temps aren't that low, even with a slightly faster fan speed. Maybe I was a bit sloppy applying the TIM, although my temps are still decent enough for me not to worry unduly.

TooNice · Post by **TooNice** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:19 pm

Does anyone know if the Ultima 90 with a 120mm fan is taller, or shorter than the Ninja with a 120mm fans? I am just wanting something that is -a little- shorter than the Ninja.

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 11:39 pm

TooNice wrote:Does anyone know if the Ultima 90 with a 120mm fan is taller, or shorter than the Ninja with a 120mm fans? I am just wanting something that is -a little- shorter than the Ninja.

I don't have a Ninja handy to compare them directly, but I'm pretty certain you're out of luck - with a 120mm fan installed, the Ultima-90 is as tall as an Ultra-120, let alone a Ninja.

You can shave maybe 5mm or so off the overall height by bending the tops of the fan clips "outwards" - I had to do this to stop them touching the side panel of a P182. You can get an idea what needs to be done from the Anandtech pic here - it will still hold the fan in place OK, but if a Ninja's already too tall I think you'll have to settle for a 92mm fan or look elsewhere.

quadraphonic · Post by **quadraphonic** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:51 pm

Remember - just because you can fit a 120mm on the Ultima90 doesn't mean you can fit a larger heatsink. Given case design, the position of the fan (and it's accompanying height, could be fine, though a larger heatsink just wouldn't fit. From what I've heard about the Ultima-90, it seems like an excellent choice when considering cooling ability, size, weight and mounting.

MsGr · Post by **MsGr** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 1:26 pm

I have a question regarding Ultima 90. According to the Thermalright website it has a backplate:

I want to install it on a Gigabyte P35-DQ6 motherbard with Crazycool backplate without removing it. Is it possible to do the same thing as some people do with Zalman 9500 - they cut out 4 corners on backplate and use them as washers? What is the material of ultima's backplate? It seems like metal to me...

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 3:15 pm

that's steel back plate alright. But the parts touching the mobo are covered with thick plastic. Its same backplate with SI-128-SE.

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 2:19 am

MsGr wrote:I have a question regarding Ultima 90. According to the Thermalright website it has a backplate:

I want to install it on a Gigabyte P35-DQ6 motherbard with Crazycool backplate without removing it. Is it possible to do the same thing as some people do with Zalman 9500 - they cut out 4 corners on backplate and use them as washers? What is the material of ultima's backplate? It seems like metal to me...

I haven't seen the mod you're talking about, but I think I understand what you mean - even if you could cut the steel backplate accurately (doubtful), I can't see it working very well. The mounting pressure of the heatsink isn't applied at the corners, where the bolts go through, it's the plastic padded parts at the centre of the backplate which are pulled tight against the back of the mobo, "squeezing" the CPU socket area between themselves and the base of the main heatsink (if you can make sense of that very badly-worded explanation). The rigidity of the steel backplate is critical in allowing the spring-loaded screws to apply the right amount of pressure.

If you just used the corners as washers, the clearance between the heatsink base and the CPU heatspreader would be different (looser), and even if it all mounted securely (again, doubtful IMO), I don't think there would be anywhere near enough pressure once the spring-loaded screws were fully tightened down.

I guess with a few DIY parts from a hardware store you might cobble together something which would "sort of" work, but it's a lot more trouble than I'd be willing to go to, especially for unpredictable results.

I'm not sure the Crazycool heatsink is that important anyway - other top-end mobos seem to manage just fine without anything similar, even when massively overclocked, so I think I'd just get rid of it...

TooNice · Post by **TooNice** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:38 am

Thanks Nick, I've been trying to figure that out for ages. Guess the Ninja going to be my best bet then. It might -just- fit my case.

But I am surprised that even the P182 requires bending. I was thinking of getting that case so as not to have to worry about heat sink height, but from the sound of it, maybe I should settle for the venerable Ninja for simplicity.

Dexx · Post by **Dexx** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:20 pm

What is the difference between the Ultima 90 and the Ultra 90? Which cools better?

Voldenuit · Post by **Voldenuit** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:38 pm

The Ultra is an outmoded heatsink and is outperformed handily by the Ultima.

Got an Ultima 90 with a Scythe Kama 92mm PWM fan on an ASUS P5E-VM HDMI mobo.

Running an E8400 at 3.6GHz @ 1.325V (vdroop would drop my vcore too low under load at stock).

33-34C idle, 55-57C load (ASUS QFan @ optimal)

Manually controlling the CPU fan to 80% would give me load temps at ~50-53C, but is not worth the added noise.

The Fan+HSF combo is pretty quiet at idle, and takes a while to ramp up to an audible level under load. I have the PC sitting on the desk ~12 inches from my face, so I do tend to notice the noise more than a typical tower user, but I have no qualms with my current setup.

Thermalright Ultima-90

Thermalright Ultima-90

Re: Thermalright Ultima-90

Re: Thermalright Ultima-90