Thermalright Ultra 120: Elegant, Fanless and Efficient Cooling
by Wesley Fink on March 5, 2007 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Final Words
When the Tuniq Tower 120 was reviewed to begin this round of cooler tests we knew from benchmarking that it was an outstanding cooler. We really did not know at that time how good it would prove to be, as it has taken many cooler reviews to find a unit that matches or surpasses the performance of the Tuniq. The Thermalright Ultra 120 is that cooler.
The Ultra 120 is the first cooler tested that can effectively cool a stock Core 2 Duo without a fan. This works best when you use a fanless Ultra 120 in a case with a down-facing power supply cooling fan. You will also get better performance by paying careful attention to airflow and exhaust in the case design. However, this is true with any effective fanless design, and we are still impressed that the Thermalright Ultra 120 is capable of performing better without a fan than the stock Intel Retail cooler with its 80mm fan.
Of course the Thermalright HR-01 is the fanless Thermalright design and the Ultra 120, while derived from the HR-01 design, is designed to be most effective with a 120mm cooling fan. After an easy and secure installation, you will find the fan clips for the Ultra 120 will only work with a few fans. Fortunately they will work with Scythe S-Flex and Noctua fans - either of which are a good match to the Ultra 120. The problem here is that the mounted fan cannot have a closed mounting post, which is common on many fans. The Thermalright design will only work with open holes and no posts on the fan
When combined with the Scythe S-Flex SFF21F fan the Ultra 120 is a record setter. Not only does it match or surpass the excellent cooling of the Tuniq Tower 120, it also does so with lower noise at high fan speeds. That is always a winning combination. The Ultra 120 combo also matches the highest overclock seen with the test bed CPU at a stable 3.90 GHz.
The Thermalright Ultra 120 has earned an excellent reputation in the cooling market as one of the most effective heatpipe towers you can buy. Our tests indicate that reputation is fully deserved. While the Ultra 120 is a bit smaller than most of its competitors, it is at least as effective in cooling and in most cases even better. The quality of construction and finish is also impressive.
You don't seem to be risking hand slicing with the Ultra 120 in the way you do with many other heatpipe towers. The layout of the fins and the edge creases make snagging a hand much less likely. The installation is both logical and easy, and the installed Ultra 120 is exceptionally secure. With the Ultra 120 weighing in with fan at a bit over 2 pounds a secure installation becomes very important. We still don't recommend using the Ultra 120 in a system that will be constantly moved, such as a LAN Party PC, but it does appear this heatsink install is more secure and safer than most competing heatsink towers.
The price is also competitive with other top heatpipe tower designs, even when you consider the added cost of a separate 120mm fan purchase. Thermalright has made the Ultra 120 a decent value, and you will definitely be satisfied with the quality of the finished heatsink.
It is not completely fair to attribute all the good results to the Thermalright Ultra 120 heatsink by itself. The Scythe S-Flex fan, which uses the Sony Fluid Dynamic Bearing fan motor, also contributes to the total performance. The S-Flex moves a lot of air with relative quiet. If you want even more quiet, down to 8dB-A, you can choose other models of the S-Flex or Noctua fans. Based on the performance as a fanless cooler, the Ultra 120 will be very effective when combined with any low-noise fan.
We still have a few coolers to test before we start naming names and rewarding the best coolers with our Editors Choice Awards. For now the Thermalright Ultra 120 and Tuniq Tower 120 reside at the top of our air cooling tests. Either unit will do an outstanding job of cooling a Core 2 Duo. If you lean toward the silence camp in cooling, then the recommendation tilts toward the Ultra 120, but you could always replace the excellent Tuniq fan with the even better Scythe S-Flex.
When the Tuniq Tower 120 was reviewed to begin this round of cooler tests we knew from benchmarking that it was an outstanding cooler. We really did not know at that time how good it would prove to be, as it has taken many cooler reviews to find a unit that matches or surpasses the performance of the Tuniq. The Thermalright Ultra 120 is that cooler.
The Ultra 120 is the first cooler tested that can effectively cool a stock Core 2 Duo without a fan. This works best when you use a fanless Ultra 120 in a case with a down-facing power supply cooling fan. You will also get better performance by paying careful attention to airflow and exhaust in the case design. However, this is true with any effective fanless design, and we are still impressed that the Thermalright Ultra 120 is capable of performing better without a fan than the stock Intel Retail cooler with its 80mm fan.
Of course the Thermalright HR-01 is the fanless Thermalright design and the Ultra 120, while derived from the HR-01 design, is designed to be most effective with a 120mm cooling fan. After an easy and secure installation, you will find the fan clips for the Ultra 120 will only work with a few fans. Fortunately they will work with Scythe S-Flex and Noctua fans - either of which are a good match to the Ultra 120. The problem here is that the mounted fan cannot have a closed mounting post, which is common on many fans. The Thermalright design will only work with open holes and no posts on the fan
When combined with the Scythe S-Flex SFF21F fan the Ultra 120 is a record setter. Not only does it match or surpass the excellent cooling of the Tuniq Tower 120, it also does so with lower noise at high fan speeds. That is always a winning combination. The Ultra 120 combo also matches the highest overclock seen with the test bed CPU at a stable 3.90 GHz.
The Thermalright Ultra 120 has earned an excellent reputation in the cooling market as one of the most effective heatpipe towers you can buy. Our tests indicate that reputation is fully deserved. While the Ultra 120 is a bit smaller than most of its competitors, it is at least as effective in cooling and in most cases even better. The quality of construction and finish is also impressive.
You don't seem to be risking hand slicing with the Ultra 120 in the way you do with many other heatpipe towers. The layout of the fins and the edge creases make snagging a hand much less likely. The installation is both logical and easy, and the installed Ultra 120 is exceptionally secure. With the Ultra 120 weighing in with fan at a bit over 2 pounds a secure installation becomes very important. We still don't recommend using the Ultra 120 in a system that will be constantly moved, such as a LAN Party PC, but it does appear this heatsink install is more secure and safer than most competing heatsink towers.
The price is also competitive with other top heatpipe tower designs, even when you consider the added cost of a separate 120mm fan purchase. Thermalright has made the Ultra 120 a decent value, and you will definitely be satisfied with the quality of the finished heatsink.
It is not completely fair to attribute all the good results to the Thermalright Ultra 120 heatsink by itself. The Scythe S-Flex fan, which uses the Sony Fluid Dynamic Bearing fan motor, also contributes to the total performance. The S-Flex moves a lot of air with relative quiet. If you want even more quiet, down to 8dB-A, you can choose other models of the S-Flex or Noctua fans. Based on the performance as a fanless cooler, the Ultra 120 will be very effective when combined with any low-noise fan.
We still have a few coolers to test before we start naming names and rewarding the best coolers with our Editors Choice Awards. For now the Thermalright Ultra 120 and Tuniq Tower 120 reside at the top of our air cooling tests. Either unit will do an outstanding job of cooling a Core 2 Duo. If you lean toward the silence camp in cooling, then the recommendation tilts toward the Ultra 120, but you could always replace the excellent Tuniq fan with the even better Scythe S-Flex.
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Wesley Fink - Monday, March 5, 2007 - link
The Thermalright mounting holes were not designed to hold fan wires for two fans. They are about the diameter of a single wire and two just won't fit. The lower fan clip mount hole opens and breaks if you try to mount two fan wires in the mounting hole. Clearly Thermalright did not design the Ultra 120 for multiple fan mount, though we agree the design looks a natural for a push-pull fan setup. In the end the Thermalright cooled as well or better than anything, even a two-fan Infinity, using just one excellent fan.The mounting surface of the Thermalright was reasonably flat and smooth. The flatness mattered a great deal more when you were dealing with a small surface area mount like the AMD Socket A from the past. With processors today shipping with a large area heatspreader the surface flatness is less important, but it still matters.
The proper application of thermal compound matters a great deal in performance. We usually place a little larger than a BB-sixed glob of thermal in the center of the CPU and mount. When the heatsink is removed that normally has spread on mounting to the edges of the processor with no thermal grease builup around the sides of the processor. THe prurpose of thermal grease is to fill the irregularites of the mounting surfaces and improve contact between the mounting surfaces.
xsilver - Monday, March 5, 2007 - link
would it be easy for a mod job to add the ability to mount 2 fans? screwing them in to the fins directly maybe?JoKeRr - Monday, March 5, 2007 - link
Guess in the end it's not just the # of heatpipes and overall fin surface area. Great review overall. btw, what kind of thermal compound do you guys use? And I thought fluid dynamic bearing was developed by Panasonic instead of sony.Would it be possible in the future to test arctic coolings Freezer 7 Pro? That looks like a decent tower heatsink, and it comes with a fan too. Also it's much cheaper as well. It will be really nice to see how that heatsink compares to the bigger towers. Another question I have concerns with previous generation heatsinks. Currently I have a ThermalRight XP-90 with a 92mm panaflo, my cpu is a socket 478 P4 3.0ghz OCed to 3.6ghz at default v-core (it's a northwood core btw). I know XP-90 is a very good heatsink, and I'm really considering of using it on my future LGA775 setup (with a LGA775 bracket), but it's really hard to compare it with new heatsinks. Thanks again.
Wesley Fink - Monday, March 5, 2007 - link
I have referenced the review showing toothpaste and Kraft Vegemite superior to a well-known siver compound several times in past review comments. As we have stated several times, in our experience the thermal compound doen't matter. The Thermalright comes with a white soupy themermal compound in a tube, and that is what we used. As we have said before, if the cooler manufacturer cares enough to include a tube or jar of thermal grease that is what we use. If it is just a packet or no thermal grease included, we use our standard silver-colred (no silver content) tube thermal compound.In our tests of various thermal compounds in the past, we found the thermal compound made used made no difference at all. That is particularly true now that all the current CPUs use heatspreaders. On past small surface area processors like the AMD Socket A, The thinner compounds were sometimes more effective short term, but even there the thermal grease used made no difference in cooling after a few days pf seating - all else being the same.
Souka - Monday, March 5, 2007 - link
Hmm...I seem to recall a number of reviews that clearly demonstrate the differing effects of compounds on coolers....
DrMrLordX - Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - link
I believe you mean reviews like this?http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/DaClan-Rev...">http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware...-Interfa...
Shin-Etsu x23 = winnar
goinginstyle - Monday, March 5, 2007 - link
What were the results of this fan in the Tuniq 120 and did you try it on the Scythe that was reviewed last week? It looks like a fan review is in order after seeing these results.Wesley Fink - Monday, March 5, 2007 - link
The Tuniq and Scythe are supplied with 120mm fans, and we tested the heatsinks with those fans. The Thermalright does not come with a fan, so we used the best fan we had in the lab that balanced quiet and cfm, in this case the Scythe S-Flex, for testing.With the Scythe Infinity, we also tested the 2-fan push-pull configuration using two Scythe stock fans that are like those shippied with the Infinity. These are NOT the same fan as the Scythe S-Flex. We tested this configuration because Scythe claimed the multi-fan setup was best for demanding cooling situations and the Infinity heatsink can mount up to 4 fans.
Introducing the fan as another variable in standard heatsink reviews changes the scope of these reviews. You can always replace the fan with a better one if it is removable, as we say in almost every review. Most fans can be replaced, but the Zalman coolers, for example, use non-removable embedded fans. We will take a closer look at 120mm fans in the future, but for now we will test with the fan supplied with the heatsink. This is how users will buy the heatsink.
It is likely the Tuniq fan noise at full speed could be reduced by using the Scythe S-Flex instead of the supplied Tuniq fan. However, sooling effieciency of the Tuniq and Thermalright Ultra 120 are already virtually the same, and we seriously doubt the Tuniq would coold more effectively than it already does by changing to a Scythe S-Flex fan. We did try a high-output Silverstone fan on the Infinity in that review, and it did marginally improve cooling a degree C, however a high-output fan on the Infinity doid not bring the single fan Infinity even close to the cooling performance of the Tuniq Tower 120 or the Thermalright Ultra 120. THe overclocking still topped out at 3.83GHz with a single fan on the Infinity and 3.90GHz with the dual fan push-pull.
PICBoy - Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - link
Hi Wesley. That was a GREAT review with totally unbelievable results and you have clarified things like the thermal compound influence on these reviews.Do you think the Scythe Infinity would be closer to the Tuniq 120 (like 54-55ºC) if it was mounted with the dual fan push-pull configuration usign 2 Scythe S-Flex or something stronger like 2 Scythe Minebea NMB Silent IC Series (75.9 CFM - 31.0 dBA)?
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, March 6, 2007 - link
The Scythe Infinity stock fans are considerably lower output than the Scythe S-Flex fan, but they are very quiet. I suspect two S-Flex SFF21F fans in push pull would definitely improve the cooling efficientcy of the Infinity.However you may want to wait a few days to see a review of a new cooler from Thermaltake. It will post this week and is definitely worth waiting for.