We were recently sent a new heat sink/fan combo from the boffins at QuietPC. They were pretty excited about APACK/ZEROtherms latest product, so we decided to see what the fuss was all about.
Box Content
In the box you get everything you will need in order to install the cooler.
You have two plates for either an Intel 775 or AMD 939, 940 or AM2 Processor, a mini tube of thermal paste, a fan controller, screws and an installation manual.
Specification
- Supports Intel P4, PD, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Extreme, AMD Opteron, Sempron, Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon 64 FX.
- Dimensions: 128 x 95 x 150mm (L x W x H)
- Material: Fin - Aluminium, Base - Copper, Heat Pipe - Copper.
- Cooling Capacity: Over 150w
- Fan Size: 120mm with Blue LED
- Fan Speed: 700-2600 rpm.
- Noise: Under 39dBA.
- Connector: 3 pin.
- weight 628g.
Build Quality
We were really impressed with the Nirvana the moment we took the cooler out of the box, it is pretty large but its build quality is excellent and looks good once installed thanks to its Blue l.e.d that light that is installed at the back of the 120mm fan.
The separate fan controller was the only low point, as we felt this to be a touch out of place in its white finish and poor build quality.
Installation
Installation will be easier for those building a computer from scratch but we had to remove our motherboard in order to install the new fan.
However installation was stress free with the instructions being pretty self explanatory.
APACK/ZEROtherm seem to have designed the Nirvana really well, with the front fan being removable so you can get access to the screws at the base properly.
And even the tiny tube of thermal paste that is supplied will cover the top of your CPU, with just enough quantity so it does not go everywhere.
Once the heat/sink is in place you have to then attach the fan to the motherboard connector and then the fan controller daisy chains off this so it can be routed outside the case - where you can raise or lower the speed of the fan.
It’s just a pity the device does not have its own internal temperature sensor to raise and lower the fan speed as the external controller looks a bit cheap - as mentioned before.
The images in the gallery will hopefully show you the positioning of the fan in relation to the other motherboard components. The heatsink won't go in all positions so a bit of experimenting is required before final placement.
Noise
Once installed the lowest fan speed is not even noticeable, but at t the highest setting its quite noisy - but we have heard worse and it’s not noticeable when playing games or during office use.
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Standard Performance
We first tested the heat sink/fan without any overclocking and used Coretemp to log the temperatures of the cores on our MESH Test PC.
The first temperature setting we captured was when our PC first booted up with no load and the fan speed was set to low. The readings were as follows 36 33 30 26 centigrade - each number representing each core.
After a few hours use, which involved a gaming sesh on Unreal 3, the temperatures only rose to the following 49 46 43 39 centigrade.
The next day we set the fan speed to high and logged its initial temperature at 34 27 31 23 and then again we recorded the temperature during a gaming sesh of Unreal 3.
The highest temperature that the CPU reached was 49 42 44 36 centigrade. But on average the first core was running at around 47.
As you can see there is not much difference between the fan speeds, but we did find that on the high fan speed it took 35minutes to reach the highest temperature, compared to 10minutes on the low fan settings. Either way the above results are impressive especially as the CPU never hit over 50 degrees and the product only costs £33.
Bear in mind we already have two 120mm fans installed in our case and the Intel CPU's are more efficient than the AMD CPU's.
Overclocking Performance
Overclocking is really dependant on a number of things, the quality of your existing cooling setup and motherboard.
And though we admit we are not experts in this field we did manage to increase the CPU up a touch.
First we used our ASUS P5N AI Overclocking setting and pushed the clock speed to 2.63GHZ from the default 2.4Ghz. We then performed the same tests as above but mainly set the fan to the higher speed to prevent any melt down effects.
At the start with no load the CPU recorded 38 27 32 35 degrees and then peaked at 52 44 45 48 after a gaming sesh on Unreal 3.
We then manually pushed the CPU even further to 2.75Ghz and recorded the temperature during another gaming sesh and found the CPU had peaked to a max of 55 47 46 39 centigrade, but most of the time it was only pushing an average of 52 on the first core.
In the end we did not attempt to push the CPU any further because we had come to the conclusion that on its high fan setting the ZEROtherm is extremely efficient at keeping the overclocked CPU cool.
In fact most of the results are similar to the non overclock tests, so we reckon that experienced Overclockers could push the CPU even higher with the Nirvana.
