I picked up the Ultra-120 to cool my overclocked Opteron dual core after reading excellent reviews and being a huge fan of Thermalright's products.
After installing the new Ultra-120, though, something was off. Monitoring temps for awhile, I realized the cooler was performing terribly - 5-7 degrees worse than my Thermalright Mini Typhoon (not as good as the big typhoon). This was with a 1600 rpm fan (vs a 2200rpm 90mm SilentCat fan I used on the mini typhoon ).
I took off the Ultra-120 from the CPU and noticed the problem right away: the heatsink was only making contacts around the edges - the middle of the surface didn't even smudge the Arctic Silver. Clearly this was a poorly machined heatsink (reading around online, such as Newegg proved my suspicions - some are fine but some are uneven).
Anyways, I finally had time to get some acceptable sandpaper here in Canada (up to 600 grit), and I lapped the heatsink to 600 grit in stages as described in numerous guides online (ideally I'd go down to 2000; maybe when I next upgrade I'll find some higher grade sandpaper continue the lapping process).
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The first 10 minutes of lapping got the edges of the heatsink base all nice and copper (Thermalright uses copper bases on all their new heatsinks but coats most of them with a thin plate of nickel). The center of the heatsink surface (as I suspected) was still the nickel-plated silver colour after 10 mins of lapping and required some more work to get the surface level. This heatsink had a terribly uneven surface to begin with!
After 25 minutes or so I lapped it down to a nice smooth surface. I touched it the cooler to a dummy CPU with some thermal compound on it and, no surprise, the thermal compound smudged all over the heatsink, not just the edges.
I reinstalled the heatsink in my computer after washing the surface with some distilled water and dish soap, and the results are incredible.
Here were my results (all results obtained on an ASUS A8R32-MVP + Opteron 165 CCB1E @ 2.52 GHz, 1.44V):
TT Mini Typhoon with SilentCat fan @ 2200 rpm
idle: 40C (Qfan slows the fan to ~1500 below 45 degrees C)
load: 52C
Thermalright Ultra-120 (out of the box, uneven heatsink surface)
idle: 44C (Antec 120mm fan @ 1600 rpm)
load: 61C (!!!)
Thermalright Ultra-120 (lapped to 600 grit sandpaper)
idle: 35C (Qfan drops fan speed to 1200 rpm)
load: 46C
The arctic silver 5 hasn't even settled in yet - it should drop a couple degrees after time. I suspect if I continued to lap down to 2000 grit or so I could probably drop another degree or two as well.
Anyways I wanted to share my results with everyone about the heatsink. When I next upgrade I'll find some higher grade sandpaper and continue to lap up to 2000 or so.
What makes this cooler great in my opinion are several things: the bolt-through installation is sturdy, and the slight wave in the heatsink fins designed to reduce noise (barely perceptable, but the fins do slope a few millimeters from top to bottom) actually works! The cooler is incredibly silent with a 1200rpm fan, and still very acceptable at 1600rpm.
After installing the new Ultra-120, though, something was off. Monitoring temps for awhile, I realized the cooler was performing terribly - 5-7 degrees worse than my Thermalright Mini Typhoon (not as good as the big typhoon). This was with a 1600 rpm fan (vs a 2200rpm 90mm SilentCat fan I used on the mini typhoon ).
I took off the Ultra-120 from the CPU and noticed the problem right away: the heatsink was only making contacts around the edges - the middle of the surface didn't even smudge the Arctic Silver. Clearly this was a poorly machined heatsink (reading around online, such as Newegg proved my suspicions - some are fine but some are uneven).
Anyways, I finally had time to get some acceptable sandpaper here in Canada (up to 600 grit), and I lapped the heatsink to 600 grit in stages as described in numerous guides online (ideally I'd go down to 2000; maybe when I next upgrade I'll find some higher grade sandpaper continue the lapping process).
------------
The first 10 minutes of lapping got the edges of the heatsink base all nice and copper (Thermalright uses copper bases on all their new heatsinks but coats most of them with a thin plate of nickel). The center of the heatsink surface (as I suspected) was still the nickel-plated silver colour after 10 mins of lapping and required some more work to get the surface level. This heatsink had a terribly uneven surface to begin with!
After 25 minutes or so I lapped it down to a nice smooth surface. I touched it the cooler to a dummy CPU with some thermal compound on it and, no surprise, the thermal compound smudged all over the heatsink, not just the edges.
I reinstalled the heatsink in my computer after washing the surface with some distilled water and dish soap, and the results are incredible.
Here were my results (all results obtained on an ASUS A8R32-MVP + Opteron 165 CCB1E @ 2.52 GHz, 1.44V):
TT Mini Typhoon with SilentCat fan @ 2200 rpm
idle: 40C (Qfan slows the fan to ~1500 below 45 degrees C)
load: 52C
Thermalright Ultra-120 (out of the box, uneven heatsink surface)
idle: 44C (Antec 120mm fan @ 1600 rpm)
load: 61C (!!!)
Thermalright Ultra-120 (lapped to 600 grit sandpaper)
idle: 35C (Qfan drops fan speed to 1200 rpm)
load: 46C
The arctic silver 5 hasn't even settled in yet - it should drop a couple degrees after time. I suspect if I continued to lap down to 2000 grit or so I could probably drop another degree or two as well.
Anyways I wanted to share my results with everyone about the heatsink. When I next upgrade I'll find some higher grade sandpaper and continue to lap up to 2000 or so.
What makes this cooler great in my opinion are several things: the bolt-through installation is sturdy, and the slight wave in the heatsink fins designed to reduce noise (barely perceptable, but the fins do slope a few millimeters from top to bottom) actually works! The cooler is incredibly silent with a 1200rpm fan, and still very acceptable at 1600rpm.
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