Scythe Andy Samurai: a wakeup call

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:11 am

I like reading the Hartware.de heatsink reviews. No HSF review is worth it's salt unless the noise level is taken into strict account (temp levels are easy to measure, esp. on a standard test mobo). Hartware takes care of the noise problem by using a standard 120mm fan (Papst) at standard RPMs on all HSFs that will accept the 120mm fans. Voila! The noise variance problem goes away!

Today they review the "Scythe Andy Samurai master", which is apparently the full name. Other contestents were the Infinity, Ninja, and Thermalright SI-128. At 840RPM, the Infinity was best at 25+C, Andy 2C higher, Ninja 2C yet higher, and Si-128 3C yet even higher. With 1140RPM, Andy caught the Infinity (only those two tested). The test load was a ridiculously hot Intel "flaming brick of death" CPU.

Andy weighs 685g with fan, and is 130mm high. But Andy, like the SI-128, needs air space above the fan, so needs a lot more than 130mm to actually be useful.

Uh, that last paragraph is right, isn't it?

The light dawns and hits the fan

You don't like that headline, write your own. I've been playing with some remarkably cheap and even more remarkably quiet computer cases with 220mm fans. Turns out the PowerUp 2559, Xclio 3060, and PSI Solo 604 are all the same case with different bezels, and the Xclio is only $35 with the big fan. I've discovered they work great and extremely quietly with only a little modding. Their one problem is, I can't use my Ninjas (I have 3 excellent original Ninjas and one lousy RevB) because there's only .2 or .25 inches to spare above a Freezer 64 Pro that measures 128mm.

So Andy (and perhaps other, similar blow-down HSFs) could fit, but there'd be no air space left above its fan. That's because there's another, larger, fan immediately above Andy's fan! Wait! That's not a problem!

In fact, Andy's 120mm fan might well be simply dispensed with. Or run at greatly reduced RPM, and hence greatly reduced noise. Two immediately adjacent fans will produce additive pressure gradients, so the needed pressure to force air thru Andy's closely spaced lamellas, uh, cooling fins can come half from the one fan and half from the other. And if a cool CPU is used (like my Sempron64 2800+) very little cooling air is needed - and Andy's 120mm fan can be dispensed with. Hello, passively cooled Andy! Sure it's got a 220mm fan blowing directly at the fins - but the fan isn't mounted on Andy, so Andy (using Ninja rules) is passively cooled.

Huh! The problem of not being able to fit a humongous passively cooled HS into the new cases just went away! Say, who flogs Andy?

[flog is Brit for sell]

spookmineer · Post by **spookmineer** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:28 pm

Page 5 with temp results

I'm looking forward to the results!

(flog is Brit for sell?!)

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 1:15 pm

Out of idle curiosity, I pulled my TT Sonic Tower HS off its high storage shelf. The lamellas are just press-fitted on, so I removed 4 of them:

Then I cut away the material from two of those 4, leaving me with six "spacers". I reassembled the unit, first with 3 spacers (1 layer), then a whole lamella, another spacer layer, and finally the top lamella.

Instead of the conventional spacing of 2mm, with 1.5mm air gap if the aluminum was .5mm, I now had 3.5mm of air gap for the top two fins - 2.33 times the air gap, with half the aluminum cooling area. A lot like the Ninja, with its 4.38mm spacing and ~3.88mm air gap.

I discovered the AC Freezer 64 Pro also had 2mm spacing and ~1.5mm air gaps, exactly like the Sonic Tower. The fins wouldn't pop off easily, though. The spacing on the Thermaltake XP-90 is 1.9mm, with ~1.4mm air gaps but its fin wouldn't pop off easily either.

Actually, the Sonic Tower's lamellae didn't come off all that easily, but it was expendable so I "used a bigger hammer". I think some adhesive is used on the top layer; once that's off and you carefully scrape the copper heat pipe, the other layers come off more easily.

The Infinity and Andy Samurai share a strange fin layer arrangement, with missing fins every 4th position. I think it would be nice for us SPCR folk if they were missing every second position (much better low-flow cooling). I wonder how hard it is to take an Andy apart?

J. Sparrow · Post by **J. Sparrow** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 6:28 pm

I had a similar idea about the Freezer... actually I was thinking of moving down the fins because the lower ones (supposed to cool the VRM) have wider spacing.

However I couldn't keep myself from wondering wether the cooling efficiency could be impaired by moving the fins around: the tightness of the fin fittings is affected, and that's responsible for conducting heat away from the heatpipes.

Did you do some testing on the modded HSF ?

aztec · Post by **aztec** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 6:28 am

The Andy is 685grams WITH the fan...correct?

here's another review.

http://pro-clockers.com/reviews.php?id=191

I myself however...still don't have the guts to put anything over 500 grams on the CPU socket.

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:40 pm

I got the Andy in yesterday's mail and waited until I was fully awake this morning to open the box and install it in the #2 computer, which had been using the Verticool III. Everything went well except for one major glitch, which had bit me before:

The passive heatsink on my chipset northbridge is 1/8" too high to work with Scythe's new K8 mounting method. I first encountered this with the Mine, and again earlier today. It's a nasty problem if you have it, but I assume the problem isn't common because I don't hear about it elsewhere. (The problem is with the Asus K8S-MX.) The choice is to cut down some NB heat sink fins or trim the Scythe lever, which is made of hard steel.

Right now the unit is running with the Andy operating passively, so only the big fan cools it. The big fan is operating from the +5 supply via two 1N400x voltage drops, or about 3.7V. I have 5 of the 13-blade fans and they all start between 3 and 3.1V, so 3.7V is safe. It's also very low indeed for a 12V nominal fan... so its very quiet.

The unit is idling, but not using C&Q, with a die temp 21.2C above room ambient. This is ~3C worse than a Ninja using a duct and a 120mm exhaust fan, measured on this mobo which formerly used a Ninja, so there's no mobo calibration difference. The fan is still in place, it's just not connected.

About the fan that came with Andy: like the GW NCB, it doesn't like to blow down (in the direction of gravity). In normal use, it doesn't. When I slowly increase the voltage until the fan starts, it won't start until ~7V! It *may* start lower if the voltage is suddenly applied. I'd be cautious about trying to use this fan at +5V or +7V.

So I've replaced that fan with one that starts at 3.4V, and provides some added cooling if run at 4V. Perhaps this summer I'll connect it and get the extra cooling. It's a SilenX 120mm "11dBA" unit.

A fully SPCR-buzzword-compliant PC

The #2 unit uses a passively cooled humongous Scythe HS on the CPU. The PSU is also cooled passively; its fan has been removed. The two HDDs are suspended with Stretch Magic in a damped enclosure that contains a spot cooling fan. The 220mm fan is suspended. All rotating machinery is suspended. The front panel is sealed with soft 1/8" rubber so no noise can pass out of the front panel/bezel. Only two total fans are used: the big fan for area cooling, and the small 100mm fan used to spot-cool the HDDs. The optical drive and floppy spend 99.9% of the time non-operating, so they don't count as rotating machinery.

Now if I could only cool the two HDDs without the spot-cooling fan! I know how to cook the two HDDs with no fan, but not how to cool them (using my definition of cooling, which is idle at 12C over room ambient).

GamingGod · Post by **GamingGod** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 5:30 pm

with a huge fan like that pressurizing the case wouldnt the hard drives stay cool from the air escaping through the front?

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 7:55 pm

GamingGod wrote:with a huge fan like that pressurizing the case wouldnt the hard drives stay cool from the air escaping through the front?

You apparently didn't actually read my post. To repeat: the front panel is sealed. No air can pass thru and any noise trying to escape that way will be severely attenuated.

kater · Post by **kater** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 6:55 am

Come to daddy, Andy

OK, I'm pretty sure this idea dawned on others, not only me, but since I haven't found it written anywhere else I might as well spit it out. Please, don't spank me if it's already been suggested somewhere else - I don't read all forums, you know. (audience yawns) OK, let's get this going.

If you remove the small aluminum cast heatsink that sits on the "foot" of the cooler (just above the CPU, awww, you know where), you can safely place the fan under the fins, thereby reducing the height of the assembly. I believe the small radiator won't help much anyway, and can be joyfully hacked away. So, what you get is a pretty short (10 cm) non-tower, exceptionally efficient cooler you can put in your HTPC. I'd say the fan should be blowing upwards, mainly to avoid backpressure. On the other hand, if the top panel of the HTPC box is just above the fins, the backpressure will be hard to avoid.

Well, you can actually do the same with Thermalright SI-128, for an even shorter (9 cm) cooler, but I guess Andy will perform significantly better than SI-128.

Well, just my afternoon theorizing...