Does anyone own ThermalTake Schooner ??

They make noise, too.

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Reyn
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Does anyone own ThermalTake Schooner ??

Post by Reyn » Mon May 09, 2005 2:44 am


Albatross
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Post by Albatross » Mon May 09, 2005 5:55 am

I've got one on my Hercules Radeon 9800Pro. I havent had any issues at all, during long gaming sessions and whatnot. I do however have rather good airflow in the case, with a 120mm intake fan blowing over the schooner, so cant say if it'd work any worse in a case with poorer airflow.
I'm also running the card at stock speeds, so cant say if it'd be problems if you're overclocking. The Hercules card is a bit higher clocked than the standard speed tho...

Oh well, bottom line is that it works fine. I just found it a bitch to install.

alglove
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Post by alglove » Mon May 09, 2005 3:15 pm

Well, I just took the plunge and ordered one for my 9800XT. I will let you know how it works once it comes and I install it.

Reyn
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Post by Reyn » Mon May 09, 2005 6:09 pm

cool.. cuz I'm thinking of getting one for my 6600GT

alglove
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Post by alglove » Sat May 14, 2005 6:15 pm

My Thermaltake Schooner finally came in yesterday, so I installed it on the 9800XT last night. After several hours of testing, I can say, so far, so good! Its cooling performance is right on par with the 9800XT stock cooler, maybe even a smidgeon better, but with *none* of the fan sound. My case temps are about the same, and the CPU temperature is actually a couple of degrees lower, most probably due to external heatpipe fins. Yes, that external heatpipe/fin setup does actually get warm.

By the way, the only fans I have in my system right now are the WhisperRock IV HSF for the Athlon XP 3000+, the two fans in my Enermax Noisetaker (set to low), and an 80mm Enermax case exhaust fan in the back of the case (also set to low, but still using the standard 12V connection). This is most probably less airflow than Albatross has in his case, and the Schooner still works. :D

I do agree that the Schooner is a pain to install. I was being careful, so it took me several hours. The instruction booklet that comes with it actually does give good directions, but it would have been nice to have an extra pair of hands. I kept dreading the possiblity that I would screw up the installation, have to disassemble it, and start over. Fortunately, I got it right the first time. :)

One problem I did run into was the the external heatpipe fins did not fit through the PCI slot in the back of the case. It was just a hair too big. It did fit through some of the other slots, but not this one. :x What I ended up having to do was to insert the heatpipe from the outside and then screw the brackets onto the rest of the assembly. Unfortunately, this meant I had to turn the case upside down and remove all the PCI cards above it, just so I could get the screwdriver in place to turn the screws. It was a pain, but I got it done.

By the way, if you have an AGP 6600GT, you may want to make sure that the PCI-E/AGP bridge will fit under the main heatsink along with the GPU itself (if you want to cool the bridge, that is). The main heatsink is about 1"x1" (25mm x 25mm). If you look at the package, you can get a sense of the size by looking at the U-shaped heatpipes... their ends fit over the heatsinks and are about the same size.

The instruction booklet's appendix does mention a couple of extra screws for the 6800GT and 6800 Ultra. You probably will not need these screws, but it does show that Thermaltake feels the Schooner is good enough to cool these GPUs.

Oh, yeah. Be prepared to get covered in thermal grease. :lol: There are many different surfaces you must cover with thermal grease during assembly. Many of them are not flat surfaces, but concave curves, like the grooves where the heatpipes fit. It all makes sense, but don't say I didn't warn you. :wink:

Well, like I said, the Schooner seems to work pretty well for me so far. I hope this helps.

halcyon
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Post by halcyon » Sun May 15, 2005 4:20 am

Thank you very much for your review and comments on installation!

It looks like an interesting product (regardless of the manufacturer), although the installation does indeed seem to leave some room for improvement.

If you gather more experiences about the performance during the next few weeks, please post them here.

Thanks again!

paapaa
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Post by paapaa » Mon May 16, 2005 12:40 am

May I suggest an alternative: be quiet! Polar Freezer. It is a similar product without the heatsink outside the case. In many tests it also seems to be better than the competition, including the Schooner:

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hard ... gleich/13/

I have a Radeon 9800 Pro in Antec Sonata (12cm case fan @6v + 8cm PSU fan @6V) and with Polar Freezer I can overclock my video card to 420MHz. With the noisy/lousy stock cooler I could go only to 400MHz.

Remember that case cooling is an important thing with passive video card cooling. Improving case cooling also improves passive VGA cooler performance. I also noticed that cooling performance can be greatly increased by opening up a few PCI slot covers near the video card. This way the case fan pulls fresh air directly to the passive cooler.

alglove
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Post by alglove » Mon May 16, 2005 12:10 pm

paapaa wrote:May I suggest an alternative: be quiet! Polar Freezer. It is a similar product without the heatsink outside the case. In many tests it also seems to be better than the competition, including the Schooner:

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hard ... gleich/13/
Thanks for the input! I actually came across this review myself. Unfortunately, the Polar Freezer is not available in the United States. I guess you Europeans are ahead of us this time!!! :twisted:

paapaa
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Post by paapaa » Mon May 16, 2005 1:16 pm

alglove wrote:Unfortunately, the Polar Freezer is not available in the United States. I guess you Europeans are ahead of us this time!!! :twisted:
Well, let's see: you have the Seasonics, we have the Polar Freezers... so it is a tie! :D

Anyway, I think the difference is quite small between those to models. And who knows, in certain setup Schooner might be even better. With Polar Freezer I have learned how a little difference in case setup (like opening a PCI slot cover) can result a big difference in temperature.

tay
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Post by tay » Mon May 16, 2005 1:16 pm

Considering the Zalman ZM80D and Aerocool VM-101 cool practically the same (within 1-2C as per the link above), why do you want something sticking out the back of the case that could be damaged or damage the videocard?

alglove
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Post by alglove » Mon May 16, 2005 8:12 pm

tay wrote:Considering the Zalman ZM80D and Aerocool VM-101 cool practically the same (within 1-2C as per the link above), why do you want something sticking out the back of the case that could be damaged or damage the videocard?
I totally see your point. Having those heatpipes sticking out the back is certainly not for everyone! If there were some sort of arrangement where the heatpipes were more securely positioned, yet still carried heat outside of the case, that would have been preferable. Because the ventilation in the reviewer's case is better than the ventilation in mine, I did not feel that my results with the other passive coolers would be as good. The external heatpipes also serve to remove some of the heat that would otherwise remain trapped inside my case and cause the PSU fan or case fan to ramp up.

Couldn't I just get a better case with undervolted 120mm fans and move all my components in there? Yes, I suppose I could, but I am too lazy to do so. Maybe when I need a new motherboard. Hey, at least I'm honest! :P

tay
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Post by tay » Mon May 16, 2005 8:18 pm

Yeah I thought about that after I posted :wink: Not for everyone (especially LAN party, kids/cats), but better than the zalman ZM80D for many.

pony-tail
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Post by pony-tail » Mon Jun 06, 2005 1:51 am

They canned thermaltake on these forums for having the cooler stick out of the back of the case but checkout this one from Scythe :-
http://www.tweaktown.com/popImg.php?img ... cythe2.jpg

mongobilly
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Post by mongobilly » Mon Jun 06, 2005 7:42 am

That's a stupid design there from Scythe. While I fully agree that moving the heat outside as soon as possible is good, HTF is this supposed to work with horizontal fins? Build the damn thing with vertical fins and you got a killer heatsink.

Webfire
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Post by Webfire » Mon Jun 06, 2005 7:57 am

Actually I think it's a very intelligent design, at least when you use a back case fan. The case fan is blowing right through the horizontal fins of the Scythe cooler. So you should have a nice cooling.

I think Scythe already presented it on the Cebit, but I'm not sure. And from I've heard it's only a prototype and probably will never go into production.

alglove
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Post by alglove » Mon Jun 06, 2005 2:50 pm

mongobilly wrote:That's a stupid design there from Scythe. While I fully agree that moving the heat outside as soon as possible is good, HTF is this supposed to work with horizontal fins? Build the damn thing with vertical fins and you got a killer heatsink.
Practically speaking, it is probably a lot easier to mount the fins perpendicular to the heatpipe. The only way I can think of to have vertical fins would be to have the heatpipes make a 90 degree angle at the top.

DyJohnnY
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Post by DyJohnnY » Sat Jul 16, 2005 8:03 am

ok, i'm considering getting this for my 6600gt...thing is i have a chaintech, that means... the whole damn thing has one big aluminium plate to cover the agp pci bridge, gpu+ram... does the schooner cover the bridge, or do i have to find a solution for it on my own?
thnx

alglove
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Post by alglove » Sat Jul 16, 2005 9:19 am

DyJohnnY wrote:ok, i'm considering getting this for my 6600gt...thing is i have a chaintech, that means... the whole damn thing has one big aluminium plate to cover the agp pci bridge, gpu+ram... does the schooner cover the bridge, or do i have to find a solution for it on my own?
thnx
I think it may be tricky to get the Schooner to work on the 6600GT AGP for several reasons. One is the AGP bridge that you have already mentioned. The other reason is the way the GPU is mounted toward the top of the card and rotated 45 degrees. The heatsinks on the Schooner come with grooves for the heatpipes, so that means the internal heatsink must sit in the "normal" position, rotated 45 degrees away from the GPU. This would not be the first time heatsink and processor are rotated with respect to each other, though.

The Schooner's internal heatsink is not big enough to include the AGP bridge, to answer your original question. It may be easier to visualize if I include some links to the Schooner and 6600GT AGP:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Ther ... Schooner/1
http://www.zalman.co.kr/product/cooler/ ... T_eng.html
http://www.thermaltake.com/support/inst ... choone.pdf

I have actually sent an e-mail to Thermaltake asking them this question, so I will let you know if I hear anything back.

frostedflakes
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Post by frostedflakes » Sat Jul 16, 2005 12:42 pm

Kind of OT, but I emailed Scythe about the external heatpipe cooler mentioned a few posts back. The rep. I talked to mentioned that it would be available sometime this year.

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