I'm a happy camper. Micro X-Press here in Indianapolis (http://www.emicrox.com) had the Volcano 9 HSFs for $19. That's a lot lower than the $25 that Directron.com was charging before they sold out of them. I got mine last Friday. Since it's only about a 30-45 minute drive to the Micro X-Press office and shipping center on Indianapolis's northwest side, I opted for the local pick-up option. Saves me about $5 shipping, and the service is pretty good. You go into the office and order what you want, and then you drive around to the back of the building where a Russian guy with a thick accent and big beard gives you what you need. Then you sign the reciept and you're good to go. All in all, not a bad deal for the quality of parts you can get there. They are a partner with Seagate, so I plan to look into getting twin 80-gig Barracuda IV's for Christmas from my folks.
First Impressions ------
Most of the reviews on the internet show the heatsink and fan arriving separately. Mine came all in one box, with a picture of an anime fireman boy on the front with a water hose and big nozzle. The instructions were printed on glossy paper, and were basically the same as those that are on the Thermaltake web site. I hooked up the speed-adjusting potentiometer and hooked wires into my 12-volt wall wart that I use for testing. I started the fan on its lowest setting. I was thinking, "this is pretty quiet." I slowly adjusted the speed, and soon the fan was really moving along. I was like, "this is cool, that's probably the most airflow anyone will ever need." Then I found that I could keep turning the knob, and by the time I had the fan at full honk, papers and things were blowing around on my floor (where I was working). I was like, "Wow, why would anyone need this much cooling except just to show off?" This unit can handle any socket-A processor you throw at it, just about. I experimented around with it for a while and found that removing the grille helps stop added high-frequency whissshing of the blades. I removed the grille and set it aside.
My CPU is an AMD Duron 1GHz. I have finally achieved the proper level of overkill to be worthy of the term ?computer enthusiast?. Hence my signature.
Installation ------
The unit came with a little baggie with thermal gel, and the thermal probe, and a little square of thermal adhesive. I removed the motherboard from the case. I strongly recommend this: WHENEVER YOU ARE WORKING WITH THE CPU?S HEATSINK, REMOVE THE MOTHERBOARD and set it on a flat, level, hard surface. I then pulled off my old HSF, an AVC Tundra. It?s not that the AVC Tundra wasn?t cooling well enough. It?s just that almost every slim 60x60x10mm fan I?ve come in contact with creates a whistling noise from the high number of blades and the high rotating speeds. This whistling sound was boring into my brain as I sat for hours in front of my computer, and I knew a fan with slower rotational speed and fewer blades would better accommodate my noise preferences. The AVC Tundra?s fan ran at 4500 RPM and pushed about 20 CFM. I will probably use the Tundra for a later project, but for now I removed it and repackaged it in its original box (which I held on to) and set it aside. I wanted to use the fan?s thermal control capabilities, but in order to use the thermal probe in an effective way, you need to attach it to the bottom of the CPU. In the pictures on the Thermaltake website, the processor being used has some stuff on its underside. My Duron doesn?t have any of these objects on the bottom of the CPU so there was a clear surface for the probe so installation should be easy. Before installing the heatsink probe make sure you don?t have it connected to the fan, It will be a lot easier to work with and you can connect it back up later.
It was the thermal adhesive that had me confounded. The thermal adhesive is packaged between two anti-stick slips of paper. One of these slips is yellow and the other is white. I wondered for a while whether the thermal adhesive was on the white part. So I cut out enough of the white piece to fit on the back of the probe and still have area to stick to the , and discovered the ?adhesive? was actually the clear white square of stuff hanging onto my scissors. I stuck that to the back of the thermal probe and trimmed around the thermal probe. I found I had to do a lot of trimming to get the thermal probe in a position that the heat shrink tubing would not keep the processor from dropping into the socket. I found I had to do quite a bit of trimming of the adhesive until it was just around the underside of the thermal probe and not sticking outside the shape of the yellow film covering the thermistor. The wires to the probe are thin so they slip between pins on the bottom of the processor, but as thin as the wires are, they prevent the processor from sitting quite evenly. I had to make sure the processor was level in the socket before lowering the ZIF lever so as not to crush the thermal probe or create an uneven contact point which could result in a crushed core. The probe fit quite nicely by the time I was done, and I let it be until I was ready to work with it.
I then applied some of the included thermal goop with my finger in some plastic wrap. They say thermal goop used to have mercury in it. Nowadays it?s silicon, but I?m taking no chances. I guess my mom?s caution about toxic stuff sort of rubbed off on me. I don?t want any of that stuff in my body. I?m enough of a mad-hatter as it is. I applied a tiny bit to the die of the processor and a dime-sized area of goop to the copper insert on the bottom of the heatsink. The thermal goop was good and thick in consistency. It was a lot better than most thermal greases I?ve come in contact with. Another big plus of the V9?s design is the clip that attaches to all 3 socket posts. The clip is pretty sturdy, I?ll say. It almost goes so far as to be a core-crusher. Being that I just don?t have money to spend on a new processor, I want to keep my stuff nice, so letting the core be crushed was not an option for me, so I was ginger about it, and I nearly reached the limit of the force I was willing to put on it. But the clip grabbed, and held tightly. The condition of high force was made even worse by the fact that the processor was sitting a little higher in the socket than it was designed to. But no damage occurred because I worked slow and was careful.
The V9 towers over my motherboard. I have an Asus A7V266-E, and the V9 fits well in the space allotted to it, but you should take out the memory so you have a better view of what you are working with. Once I had the HSF attached to the socket, I plugged the thermal probe wire into the fan. One might see the thin wires to the thermal probe and cry foul, because the wires look too small to carry enough power to the fan without burning out, but the V9 monitors its temperature and speed-adjust sensors via a microprocessor, rather than by sending the entire current through the resistive device. I reinstalled the motherboard onto the backplane of the case and reattached everything back to my motherboard. Then I plugged in the V9?s power. I wasn?t sure the motherboard headers could handle the power for the fan, so I used the 3- to 4-pin connector instead. The 3- to 4-pin power connector is a necessity for the CPU fan because it allows RPM monitoring by breaking off the RPM signal wire to a 3-pin connector and running the two power wires to the 4-pin pass-through power connector. Once everything was in place, I booted the system into the BIOS and watched the fan speed start out at 1400rpm and rise slowly to about 2800. I was impressed at the very low noise that the fan put out cooling the limited amount of heat put out by my little Duron, which was what I had hoped to achieve in the first place. The fan does not run faster than 3500 RPM and the processor is kept at a temperature of 43 degrees C throughout almost any task. Your results may vary with processor and installation but I?m quite happy with my Thermaltake Volcano 9. I think this is a sound buy for any AMD processor above 1GHz and its thermal sensor and low noise make it easy on the ears as well, while never leaving oyur processor without the cooling capability it needs.
First Impressions ------
Most of the reviews on the internet show the heatsink and fan arriving separately. Mine came all in one box, with a picture of an anime fireman boy on the front with a water hose and big nozzle. The instructions were printed on glossy paper, and were basically the same as those that are on the Thermaltake web site. I hooked up the speed-adjusting potentiometer and hooked wires into my 12-volt wall wart that I use for testing. I started the fan on its lowest setting. I was thinking, "this is pretty quiet." I slowly adjusted the speed, and soon the fan was really moving along. I was like, "this is cool, that's probably the most airflow anyone will ever need." Then I found that I could keep turning the knob, and by the time I had the fan at full honk, papers and things were blowing around on my floor (where I was working). I was like, "Wow, why would anyone need this much cooling except just to show off?" This unit can handle any socket-A processor you throw at it, just about. I experimented around with it for a while and found that removing the grille helps stop added high-frequency whissshing of the blades. I removed the grille and set it aside.
My CPU is an AMD Duron 1GHz. I have finally achieved the proper level of overkill to be worthy of the term ?computer enthusiast?. Hence my signature.
Installation ------
The unit came with a little baggie with thermal gel, and the thermal probe, and a little square of thermal adhesive. I removed the motherboard from the case. I strongly recommend this: WHENEVER YOU ARE WORKING WITH THE CPU?S HEATSINK, REMOVE THE MOTHERBOARD and set it on a flat, level, hard surface. I then pulled off my old HSF, an AVC Tundra. It?s not that the AVC Tundra wasn?t cooling well enough. It?s just that almost every slim 60x60x10mm fan I?ve come in contact with creates a whistling noise from the high number of blades and the high rotating speeds. This whistling sound was boring into my brain as I sat for hours in front of my computer, and I knew a fan with slower rotational speed and fewer blades would better accommodate my noise preferences. The AVC Tundra?s fan ran at 4500 RPM and pushed about 20 CFM. I will probably use the Tundra for a later project, but for now I removed it and repackaged it in its original box (which I held on to) and set it aside. I wanted to use the fan?s thermal control capabilities, but in order to use the thermal probe in an effective way, you need to attach it to the bottom of the CPU. In the pictures on the Thermaltake website, the processor being used has some stuff on its underside. My Duron doesn?t have any of these objects on the bottom of the CPU so there was a clear surface for the probe so installation should be easy. Before installing the heatsink probe make sure you don?t have it connected to the fan, It will be a lot easier to work with and you can connect it back up later.
It was the thermal adhesive that had me confounded. The thermal adhesive is packaged between two anti-stick slips of paper. One of these slips is yellow and the other is white. I wondered for a while whether the thermal adhesive was on the white part. So I cut out enough of the white piece to fit on the back of the probe and still have area to stick to the , and discovered the ?adhesive? was actually the clear white square of stuff hanging onto my scissors. I stuck that to the back of the thermal probe and trimmed around the thermal probe. I found I had to do a lot of trimming to get the thermal probe in a position that the heat shrink tubing would not keep the processor from dropping into the socket. I found I had to do quite a bit of trimming of the adhesive until it was just around the underside of the thermal probe and not sticking outside the shape of the yellow film covering the thermistor. The wires to the probe are thin so they slip between pins on the bottom of the processor, but as thin as the wires are, they prevent the processor from sitting quite evenly. I had to make sure the processor was level in the socket before lowering the ZIF lever so as not to crush the thermal probe or create an uneven contact point which could result in a crushed core. The probe fit quite nicely by the time I was done, and I let it be until I was ready to work with it.
I then applied some of the included thermal goop with my finger in some plastic wrap. They say thermal goop used to have mercury in it. Nowadays it?s silicon, but I?m taking no chances. I guess my mom?s caution about toxic stuff sort of rubbed off on me. I don?t want any of that stuff in my body. I?m enough of a mad-hatter as it is. I applied a tiny bit to the die of the processor and a dime-sized area of goop to the copper insert on the bottom of the heatsink. The thermal goop was good and thick in consistency. It was a lot better than most thermal greases I?ve come in contact with. Another big plus of the V9?s design is the clip that attaches to all 3 socket posts. The clip is pretty sturdy, I?ll say. It almost goes so far as to be a core-crusher. Being that I just don?t have money to spend on a new processor, I want to keep my stuff nice, so letting the core be crushed was not an option for me, so I was ginger about it, and I nearly reached the limit of the force I was willing to put on it. But the clip grabbed, and held tightly. The condition of high force was made even worse by the fact that the processor was sitting a little higher in the socket than it was designed to. But no damage occurred because I worked slow and was careful.
The V9 towers over my motherboard. I have an Asus A7V266-E, and the V9 fits well in the space allotted to it, but you should take out the memory so you have a better view of what you are working with. Once I had the HSF attached to the socket, I plugged the thermal probe wire into the fan. One might see the thin wires to the thermal probe and cry foul, because the wires look too small to carry enough power to the fan without burning out, but the V9 monitors its temperature and speed-adjust sensors via a microprocessor, rather than by sending the entire current through the resistive device. I reinstalled the motherboard onto the backplane of the case and reattached everything back to my motherboard. Then I plugged in the V9?s power. I wasn?t sure the motherboard headers could handle the power for the fan, so I used the 3- to 4-pin connector instead. The 3- to 4-pin power connector is a necessity for the CPU fan because it allows RPM monitoring by breaking off the RPM signal wire to a 3-pin connector and running the two power wires to the 4-pin pass-through power connector. Once everything was in place, I booted the system into the BIOS and watched the fan speed start out at 1400rpm and rise slowly to about 2800. I was impressed at the very low noise that the fan put out cooling the limited amount of heat put out by my little Duron, which was what I had hoped to achieve in the first place. The fan does not run faster than 3500 RPM and the processor is kept at a temperature of 43 degrees C throughout almost any task. Your results may vary with processor and installation but I?m quite happy with my Thermaltake Volcano 9. I think this is a sound buy for any AMD processor above 1GHz and its thermal sensor and low noise make it easy on the ears as well, while never leaving oyur processor without the cooling capability it needs.
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