NCU-2000
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NCU-2000
Scythe has updated its NCU-1000 fanless CPU cooler supposedly increasing performance by 25%. The updated model is called the NCU-2000:
http://www.scythe.co.jp/en/cooler/ncu2000.htm
Also, here's a review (in terrible English) of the Thermaltake Fanless 103:
http://www.teschke.de/heatpipes/News/co ... s_103.html
http://www.scythe.co.jp/en/cooler/ncu2000.htm
Also, here's a review (in terrible English) of the Thermaltake Fanless 103:
http://www.teschke.de/heatpipes/News/co ... s_103.html
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Those are some interesting system photos at the end.. what case is this?
http://www.teschke.de/heatpipes/Fanless ... -gr-ss.jpg
http://www.teschke.de/heatpipes/Fanless ... -gr-ss.jpg
Note that the heatsink is installed in the wrong orientation; the large side should face the exhaust fan (back) not the top! I certainly hope this design can be rotated, otherwise like with the Hyper 6 you're at the mercy of the engineers who designed your motherboard's CPU socket.. the orientation seems totally random from vendor to vendor.
http://www.teschke.de/heatpipes/Fanless ... -gr-ss.jpg
http://www.teschke.de/heatpipes/Fanless ... -gr-ss.jpg
Note that the heatsink is installed in the wrong orientation; the large side should face the exhaust fan (back) not the top! I certainly hope this design can be rotated, otherwise like with the Hyper 6 you're at the mercy of the engineers who designed your motherboard's CPU socket.. the orientation seems totally random from vendor to vendor.
Last edited by wumpus on Sat Jul 31, 2004 11:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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The case is a Mercury Midi-Tower Aero One. It is aluminium with lots and lots of holes. The idea of the case is too use it with a passive CPU heatsink and a fanless PSU. Natural convection is the only "driver" for airflow in this case.wumpus wrote:Those are some interesting system photos at the end.. what case is this?
A quick Google search results in a long list of online shops selling it, but all of them are located in Germany.
To get back on topic. Teschke's review of the NCU 2000 in German.
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The Thermaltake Fanless 103 performed almost as well as the NCU-2000 in that review. Which means it must be a bit better than the NCU-1000. So maybe Thermaltake has come up with a decent product here, afterall?MikeC wrote:An NCU2000 sample is in hand; review should be up w/in a couple weeks. It looks impressive.
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Whatever. It's performance is on a par with the NCU-2000, it's a bit cheaper than the NCU-2000, and it works with both P4 and Athlon 64. I've read three reiews of this product so far--each of them flattering. Are you going to let your "brand snobbery" deprive you of a decent product? That would be sad, IMO.PhilgB wrote:Thermaltake didn't really come up with anything.. it looks just like the Shuttle ICE cooler with a few more HPs and fins.
Installation is apparently "a breeze" (according to the reviews I have read). With P4 setups, the standard retention mechanism is used.PhilgB wrote:It also seems to have some installation issues.
Two more Thermaltake Fanless 103 reviews:
http://www.techniz.co.uk/modules.php?na ... tent&id=78
http://sepherum.cybiker.com/html/index. ... =19&page=1
Of course not. Sorry if it sounded like thats what I was implying. Just meant that it wasn't some great innovation, but I'm more than glad that someone has brought the 'ICE cooler' to the desktop.aidanjm2004 wrote:Are you going to let your "brand snobbery" deprive you of a decent product?
The installation comment I made was just about one of the pictures. The heatpipes look extremely close to the capacitors.
SilentHardWare Review: Scythe NCU-2000 vs TT Fanless 103 I can't get Babel Fish to translate entire pages. You could try paragragh by paragrapgh... http://world.altavista.com/ ...I've not enough time right now.
Could you mount a 92/120mm fan to the NCU-2000?
Could you mount a 92/120mm fan to the NCU-2000?
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That case is very interesting. I wonder what the balance would be between increased noise from the lack of acoustic blocking (due to the holes) and reduced noise due to reduced cooling requirements (due to holes)?Tibors wrote:The case is a Mercury Midi-Tower Aero One. It is aluminium with lots and lots of holes. The idea of the case is too use it with a passive CPU heatsink and a fanless PSU. Natural convection is the only "driver" for airflow in this case.wumpus wrote:Those are some interesting system photos at the end.. what case is this?
A quick Google search results in a long list of online shops selling it, but all of them are located in Germany.
Here's the link to the www.teschke.de review that is now in fractured but intelligible english.
http://www.teschke.de/heatpipes/News/co ... _2000.html
I've been using the NCU-1000 with an Intel Northwood 2.0GHz processor with great success since October 2003. The NCU-2000 with an AMD Athlon 64 with the "Cool 'n Quiet" feature has definitely got me thinking about a possible future upgrade. Hopefully, the upcoming SPCR review will address this combination of CPU and the NCU-2000? It would seem to be an ideal match.
http://www.teschke.de/heatpipes/News/co ... _2000.html
I've been using the NCU-1000 with an Intel Northwood 2.0GHz processor with great success since October 2003. The NCU-2000 with an AMD Athlon 64 with the "Cool 'n Quiet" feature has definitely got me thinking about a possible future upgrade. Hopefully, the upcoming SPCR review will address this combination of CPU and the NCU-2000? It would seem to be an ideal match.
NCU-2000 is now available at newegg for $43.99 (and $5.99 for shipping).
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductde ... 6835185109
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductde ... 6835185109
Brilliant Design, Flawed Implementation
I installed an NCU-2000 yesterday in my gaming rig: Asus K8V Deluxe, Athlon 64 3000+, Arctic Silver 5, Nexus NX-3500, Nexus Real Silent 120mm. It was a snug fit with the Corsair XMS3200.
I wanted the noise levels to match my quiet net box (which uses a Celeron 2.4 & NCU-1000, and only has a single fan in it's NX-3500). And they do - when it's ticking over at idle:
Room: 25C
CPU: 38-41C
SYS: 41C
HDD: 29C
Alternately running CPUburn for an hour (and then cooling back to idle) has cured the AS5. CPU max temp started at 55C, but is now constant at 52C under 100% load, with error checking disabled for maximum heat generation. The system temp remains in the low 40's; better than the outgoing CNPS7000A-AlCu (which blew hot air around inside).
An impressive figure, yes? Especially with just the two 120mm fans. But... there is a price to be paid. The normally benign Nexus PSU becomes a raging monster after a short while, ramping up with the heat rising from the NCU-2000. The case fan takes care of the heat from the Northbridge, the 9800XT Ultimate, and what little comes from the SilentMaxx HD enclosure at the bottom of the case.
So, I'm very pleased with the temps from the NCU-2000. If anything, Scythe underplay its abilities. But I'm no better off noise-wise than I was with the previous Enermax 465P/CNPS7000AlCu/Acousti 120mm.
The Mercury passive tower looks promising, but surely it must be like a furnace inside. All the heat from the passive CPU HS will go straight up into the passive PSU!
My only alternative appears to be a TNN500A, but they are heavy and expensive - and could date very quickly (if they can't take X800 XT's for example).
I wanted the noise levels to match my quiet net box (which uses a Celeron 2.4 & NCU-1000, and only has a single fan in it's NX-3500). And they do - when it's ticking over at idle:
Room: 25C
CPU: 38-41C
SYS: 41C
HDD: 29C
Alternately running CPUburn for an hour (and then cooling back to idle) has cured the AS5. CPU max temp started at 55C, but is now constant at 52C under 100% load, with error checking disabled for maximum heat generation. The system temp remains in the low 40's; better than the outgoing CNPS7000A-AlCu (which blew hot air around inside).
An impressive figure, yes? Especially with just the two 120mm fans. But... there is a price to be paid. The normally benign Nexus PSU becomes a raging monster after a short while, ramping up with the heat rising from the NCU-2000. The case fan takes care of the heat from the Northbridge, the 9800XT Ultimate, and what little comes from the SilentMaxx HD enclosure at the bottom of the case.
So, I'm very pleased with the temps from the NCU-2000. If anything, Scythe underplay its abilities. But I'm no better off noise-wise than I was with the previous Enermax 465P/CNPS7000AlCu/Acousti 120mm.
The Mercury passive tower looks promising, but surely it must be like a furnace inside. All the heat from the passive CPU HS will go straight up into the passive PSU!
My only alternative appears to be a TNN500A, but they are heavy and expensive - and could date very quickly (if they can't take X800 XT's for example).
I've been experimenting with the case door open today. The NCU-2000 gets warm (not red hot) to the touch @ 52C, but there isn't a great waft of hot air being sucked into the NX-3500. Not enough to cause the ramp-up.
Curiously, running CPUburn for half an hour didn't seem to make any difference. But as soon as I started playing Thief 3, it did. The majority of the heat exhausting out of the NX-3500 actually comes from the PSU itself, not the NCU-2000.
I can only conclude the culprit is my 9800XT Ultimate Edition drawing power. A recent X-Bit Labs article...
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/ ... rcons.html
...states it demands 60W at load, and even 38W at idle!
The passive heatsink on the 9800XT gets blisteringly hot. Well above the 52C of the CPU heatsink. More like 70-80C.
Interestingly, the X-Bit Labs article also states the idle and load temps for an X800 Pro as 15W and 48W respectively. Unfortunately, nobody has managed to make a passive version yet - they've all got fans.
I'm going to swap my Enermax 465P back in tomorrow, to see how that fares.
Is anyone here running a SilentMaxx fanless PSU, btw? They seem a little weedy; 16A on the 12V rail. As opposed to 18A for the NX-3500, and 33A for the 465P. I was wondering if one of those would be up to the job, perhaps with the 9800XT swapped for a X800 Pro?
Curiously, running CPUburn for half an hour didn't seem to make any difference. But as soon as I started playing Thief 3, it did. The majority of the heat exhausting out of the NX-3500 actually comes from the PSU itself, not the NCU-2000.
I can only conclude the culprit is my 9800XT Ultimate Edition drawing power. A recent X-Bit Labs article...
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/ ... rcons.html
...states it demands 60W at load, and even 38W at idle!
The passive heatsink on the 9800XT gets blisteringly hot. Well above the 52C of the CPU heatsink. More like 70-80C.
Interestingly, the X-Bit Labs article also states the idle and load temps for an X800 Pro as 15W and 48W respectively. Unfortunately, nobody has managed to make a passive version yet - they've all got fans.
I'm going to swap my Enermax 465P back in tomorrow, to see how that fares.
Is anyone here running a SilentMaxx fanless PSU, btw? They seem a little weedy; 16A on the 12V rail. As opposed to 18A for the NX-3500, and 33A for the 465P. I was wondering if one of those would be up to the job, perhaps with the 9800XT swapped for a X800 Pro?
Yesterday I tried running the NCU-2000 with a single Nexus case fan, and a Yesico FL-420ATX (T) fanless PSU. Temps were fine at idle, but load temps shot up to 66C. AMD's max. limit for an A64 is 70C, and an AMD spokesman has said you should aim to keep it under 60C.
Today I swapped the PSU for my Enermax 465P, which has an internal 92mm fan, and an external (manually adjustable) 80mm. It doesn't add much more noise to the Nexus case fan, and best of all it doesn't ramp up playing games like the NX-3500 did. It must be because it's got more grunt; 33A on the 12V line, as opposed to the NX-3500's 18A. Temps are up slightly @ 57C running CPUburn at max. heat - which is more than with the NX-3500 @ 52C, but a lot less than the 66C with the FL-420ATX!
So I now have a reasonably quiet games machine. Swapping the Zalman CNPS7000AlCu out for the NCU-2000, and the Acousti 120mm for the Nexus 120mm has improved things.
I intend to put the fantastic FL-420ATX in my net box. As it's got thermal management, I'm hoping it will only start up its 120mm case fan on rare occasions. 99% of the time it should run completely fanless and silent, as the NCU-1000 keeps the Celeron 2.4 hovering around 31C - the blades are cold!
Something else I've noticed with the NCU-2000; it cools down slowly, a bit like the Zalman Reserator. Temps take a few minutes to come down, unlike virtually instantly with a regular HSF.
Both Heatlane Zens perform magnificently; they transmit no vibration and don't circulate hot air around the case like all other HSF's.
The best combination would be for two fans; one 120mm on the case, the other 120mm in the PSU - but only if you can find one with higher than average ampage on the 12V line, as 18A obviously isn't enough for the A64 combined with a greedy 9800XT Ultimate.
Today I swapped the PSU for my Enermax 465P, which has an internal 92mm fan, and an external (manually adjustable) 80mm. It doesn't add much more noise to the Nexus case fan, and best of all it doesn't ramp up playing games like the NX-3500 did. It must be because it's got more grunt; 33A on the 12V line, as opposed to the NX-3500's 18A. Temps are up slightly @ 57C running CPUburn at max. heat - which is more than with the NX-3500 @ 52C, but a lot less than the 66C with the FL-420ATX!
So I now have a reasonably quiet games machine. Swapping the Zalman CNPS7000AlCu out for the NCU-2000, and the Acousti 120mm for the Nexus 120mm has improved things.
I intend to put the fantastic FL-420ATX in my net box. As it's got thermal management, I'm hoping it will only start up its 120mm case fan on rare occasions. 99% of the time it should run completely fanless and silent, as the NCU-1000 keeps the Celeron 2.4 hovering around 31C - the blades are cold!
Something else I've noticed with the NCU-2000; it cools down slowly, a bit like the Zalman Reserator. Temps take a few minutes to come down, unlike virtually instantly with a regular HSF.
Both Heatlane Zens perform magnificently; they transmit no vibration and don't circulate hot air around the case like all other HSF's.
The best combination would be for two fans; one 120mm on the case, the other 120mm in the PSU - but only if you can find one with higher than average ampage on the 12V line, as 18A obviously isn't enough for the A64 combined with a greedy 9800XT Ultimate.
PSU's w/ 140mm fans
There are (at least) two new PSU's just coming out, with huge 140mm fans inside them.
1) Superflower SF-450TS (27A, 12V)
http://www.techangel.co.uk/reviews/sf450ts/
2) Coolmax CR500B (28A, 12V)
http://hi-techreviews.com/modules.php?n ... le&sid=754
They will probably be the best PSU's to get if you want an NCU-2000.
1) Superflower SF-450TS (27A, 12V)
http://www.techangel.co.uk/reviews/sf450ts/
2) Coolmax CR500B (28A, 12V)
http://hi-techreviews.com/modules.php?n ... le&sid=754
They will probably be the best PSU's to get if you want an NCU-2000.