Arctic-Cooling NV Silencer 5 rev3 Review

[Wolf68k]

First time I've ever really written any kind of review, so give me a break if I don't go into the same depth that Pros do I'm not getting paid for this.

 

Arctic-Cooling's NV Silencer 5 rev3

Street price: Newegg.com $29.99 + $4.99shipping

Directron $24.99 (shipping varies) [this is where I got mine only because they are local, ok and cheaper than Newegg]

 

I spend many many hours doing Google review searches on this cooler as well as Zalman's VF700-Cu. From what I found in these many reviews was that both offer the same cooling performance and are both very quiet.

So what is the real difference? The Zalman will work on just about any card while Arctic-Cooling has different versions of it's cooler for different cards and they still don't cover every version of nVidia's or ATI's line of cards. Also the Zalman is really best for those with really good airflow in their case, because it blows air down onto the heatsink. Arctic-Cooling is designed to push the air across the heatsink and out the back of the case, so if you don't have good airflow in your case this is the one to get.

 

My case is crap for airflow and I still regret buying. A quick look at the airflow of the case lays out like this.

Intakes: 80mm on the side and came with the case. 90mm in the front, however the mount is made for an 80mm but the 90 is all I have.

Exhaust: 80mm above the PSU, it didn't come with the case but the mount is there by design. 90mm in the back next to the I/O panel; a 50mm is what should be there by design but again all I have is a 90mm and it's postioned as well as possible but 1/4-1/3 of the 90mm fan is blowing out the grill.

The rest of the cooling comes from a Thermaltake Volcano 12+ running at 4272/4218/4166RPM (according to ASUS Probe). Also the PSU, an Antec True 430, as 2 fans; one I believe to be 120mm on the underside with a 80mm blowing out the back. The VGA coolers in there as well but that's the point of this review, so let's talk about that now.

 

The NV Silencer 5 rev3 is a big sucker and strangely has a nice look to it. The clear plastic casing is inclosed as much as possible with only a small-ish gap, about 0.25inch (6.35mm) or maybe 1/8inch (3.175mm), I doubt this gap would effect the cooling any but as one reviewer said, 'it might be a nice side project' talking about creating some sort of a mod to inclose that gap.

The fan is a good size pin-wheel fan that does a good job of pulling the air in the case into itself and then shoving it out the back, of course along the way blowing it over the heatsink. Many people might have a case cooler commonly called a PCI blower, well it's pretty much the same thing only without a heatsink.

 

Like I said this thing is big and it will take up the PCI slot below it. If you have an SLI set up you can use this on the lower card. I would think putting this on the upper card wouldn't do too much good since the lower card would be blocking the fan. But if you might be able to combine this cooler, on the lower card, with either the Zalman or Arctic-Cooling latest line of VGA cooler series the Accelero...but don't quote me on this since I obviously don't have an SLI set up to try this on, let alone the cash.

 

Let's look at the parts in the box/package. There is of course the big heatsink and fan assembly, a cross plate and 4 nuts to secure the heatsink in place, a backplate used only if you have ram on the back of the card, the VGA replacement faceplate the goes around the VGA, DVI and S-Video ports, a PCI grill for the cooler, a case badge and a paper with the general instructions.

 

The card I put this on is an eVGA 6800GS AGP stock speeds; 350MHz at the core and 1000Mhz memory. By the way this is a great card if you're still stuck in the AGP world as I am...for now.

Removing the eVGA cooler was more or less easy. there are 6 screws on the front cover. Then there are 4 spring loaded screws holding down the copper heatsink, which are linked to the cross back plate. Lastly there are 5 spring screws plus 3 more screws holding the black ram heatsink and fan housing in place. The last thing to remove is the fan power, this can be a tricky because it's held inplace by a clip on one side of the plug so besure you have some needle nose pliers on hand.

Becareful when removing the copper heatink and black ram sink as there is thermal compound/grease on them (compound on the copper and grease on the black).

Also besure to pack all of the parts and screws away some place safe. According to eVGA you can freely replace the cooler with anything you want but if you need to return the card for whatever reason you would need to put the stock cooler back on.

 

Installing the NV Silencer was a breeze. It comes with AC's own MX-1 thermal compound pre-applied to the heatsink as well as thermal pads for the RAM. Speaking of the pads there is a protective film on the pads, besure to remove them before you do your finaly fitting. And before doing your final fitting I personally placed the heatsink in place and even used the cross plate and it's nuts to secure it down some then removed it to make sure the thermal compound was going to cover the GPU fully. Over the part of the heatsink where the pre-applied compound is there is a peice of plastic to protect it, so don't forget to remove that before appling.

 

When tighting down the nuts on the back I would highly suggest doing a cross pattern to make sure everything is tightened down evenly. And just tighten them down untl they can't do any more, this should be about when the cross plate is level and well before the plate's corners touch the card itself. One more thing to note there is a black piece of rubber that goes with the cross plate, DO NOT forget to use this and have it between the card and the metal plate. Other wise the metal plate will touch the solder points which will result in really bad things happening.

 

There are 2 fan connections on the cable. The first is for 6800 cards while the other is for 7800 cards. So use the right one and just tuck the other one away. On a side note I like this for myself. Since I have a 6800 series now, when I finally move up to a 7800 series I can use the same cooler. There's money saved right there.

 

Last thing to note of the install of the Silencer is that like I said before it comes with a VGA faceplate. As far as I know all of the Pro's removed the stock faceplate and used the one in the box. I did take mine off and compared their size. They are exactly the same before the stock faceplate is held in place by not only the screws around the VGA and DVI ports but also a screw on the card itself. Because they were the same size I used the stock faceplate, plus this way it's one less stock screw to worry about losing. From some of the older reviews of the Silencer 5 the card faceplate and the "grill" were one piece and you for the "grill" you had to cut out your own grill work. Thanks AC for not keeping with that stupid idea.

 

Now for the testing. The room temperature was around 72-74F (22-23C) for most of these testing, even for the stock cooler's testing.

 

The stock cooler, these numbers are based on my memory after looking at the numbers during other benchmarks in the recent past. So yeah I screwed up and didn't do proper benchmarking before replacing the cooler....so sue me, I don't I wasn't a pro or getting paid for this.

Idle:

Core: 61C on the average, but this has fluxed to 60C and in rare cases 59C.

Ambient: 45C

 

Load is purely memory but I know it because I've talked about many times before, the load was created by playing Splinter Cell Chaos Theory for a while (I forget how long).

Core: 85C on avg but I've seen get up to 90C

Ambient: I have no real I idea, but atleast I'm honest. I think it might have been around 60C at it's peak

CPU: 45C read above to find out the fan speeds

Mobo: 35C

 

NV Silencer with the case open. It should be noted the load was made by running rthdribl for 10mins, great of putting a fast and heavy load on your card and fun to watch as well.

Case Open...

 

Idle: Core: 54C Ambient: 43C CPU: 47C Mobo: 29C

Load: Core: 67C spiked to 69C Ambient: 56C spiked to 57 CPU: 52C Mobo: 30C

Case Closed; I shut down the system for about 1 hour before closing it up.

 

Idle: Core: 57C Ambient: 43C CPU: 44C Mobo: 30C

Load: Core: 72-73C spiked to 74C Ambeint: 57C CPU: 48C Mobo: 34C

The CPU is cooler with the case on because the sided fan blows onto the CPU fan. But of course the Silencer got more cooler air with the case off, so I guess to help it I would have to mod the side panel and put a fan pointing at it but that's not a big deal.

The Silencer does just fine on it's own keeping the GPU much cooler.

 

One thing I couldn't really show, mostly because I didn't plan this that far ahead, is that the temps with stock cooler would rocket up under load both the core and ambient temps. Where as with the Silencer the core jumps up a few degress from the start but level out and very very slowly rise from there. The max load temp didn't really show it self until near the end of the test. With the stock cooler the max would show up a lot sooner but luckly the cooler could hold it from going too much higher.

 

I can't really tell how much quieter it is compared to the stock cooler, the case fans are loud enough to trown out the sound. I did for a short time unplug all of the case fans to see if I hear a difference between the stock cooler running at it's stock 53% (which btw was the speed that was used for all of the testing above) and 100%. There was but it was minimual to me. According to AC this is supposed to be inaudible measuring 0.9 Sone. What the hell is a Sone?

 

Noise Level

All measurements are taken using full fan speed.

The noise level is measured in Sone (loudness) instead of dB (sound pressure).

The loudness depends upon ears response curves and tells you exactly, how bothering a certain noise is. Sone takes the frequency and bandwidth of a sound into account.

A doubling of the number of Sones sounds to the human ear like a doubling of the loudness.

The comparison of products from different manufacturers is basically impossible, since all manufacturers measure in different ways. Even a rough translation from Sone to dB doesn't help. A 15dB cooler can be louder than a 1 Sone cooler from another manufacturer.

 

 

Nevertheless with the Sone data you can compare our coolers between each other and get a quite precise idea how annoying the product will be.

1 Sone:    nearly inaudible in a computer case

2 Sones:  clearly audible

3 Sones and more:  disturbing

According to the back of the box the 6800 Standard is 2.9 Sone

Sorry no fancy graphs and I didn't think to take pics of the install of the cooler until after it was done.

I plan to take some pics a bit later to atleast show the cooler in place in the case. It's not what I really had in mind to do, if I had remembered I was going to get my dad's digital cam and take a bunch of pics of the removal of the stock cooler and install of the Silencer.

 

Conclusions:

With the case closed up my idle temps aren't a bit better than the stock cooler but by only a few degress, when I get a better case those temps should/might comes down a good deal more. But it's the load temps that really make it all worth the time, effort and price. A drop of 10+ degress while under load, that's something to be proud of.

 

If you're looking to build a quiet PC this is one of the best VGA coolers you can get, the Zalman is also listed as a good one for that as well.

 

Quiet, cool, looks good. Sorry not fancy leds but for the modders out there that should be an easy fix.

 

 

Last thing to note is that the thermal compound is fresh and usually the temps will drop once it sets, so we'll just have to wait and see. I do have some AS5 one hand and I may give it a shot some time down the line.

 

 

I've got a Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu and depending on the responce I get from this I might write a review of it later. And no I didn't get the LED version but I had thought about it, infact I'm still thinking of maybe taking it back in exchange for that one plus the price difference.

Edited April 18, 2006 by wolf68k

[Sixdust]

Great review wolf, I have always been thinking of buying on of these off newegg. Seeing as it dropped 10 + degrees C under load, I might just pick one up, either for me or one of my gamer friends.

[Wolf68k]

50 views and 1 reply...well thanks.

 

And thanks to Sixdust for replying.

[gta95]

Nice review, ive been thinking about getting an AC Silencer.