Thermaltake Sonic Tower

adab721 · Post by **adab721** » Mon May 09, 2005 12:40 pm

I have seen many negative comments on SPCR concerning the Thermaltake Sonic Tower but from people NOT using it. I have been using this cooler on my 3.2ghz 478 Prescott for three days now and I works great. Right now I have been running it online browsing and emailing for an hour with the fan shut off and MBM is reporting CPU temp at 39 degrees. I have a nVidia 6800GT with Zalman Cooler under it and Nexus 4090 PSU above it. The Nexus fan drawing heat off the Sonic Tower is the only cooling to this awesome heatsink. Ther are only two fans running on my system...The Nexus PSU fan and the Zalman fan on the VGA card. This system is so quiet I can hear my Maxtor Ultra SATA RAID drives spinning (drive silencers expected to be delivered tomarrow)

alglove · Post by **alglove** » Mon May 09, 2005 2:59 pm

Thank you for the firsthand account of the Sonic Tower in action. What type of cooling did you have before on the CPU, and how does the Silent Tower compare? Warmer, cooler, about the same? How much space does that thing take up in the case? Anything to worry about with installation, like size, weight, difficulty in mounting, etc.?

sionnach · Post by **sionnach** » Mon May 09, 2005 3:54 pm

are you using it in a tower system?

GameManK · Post by **GameManK** » Mon May 09, 2005 6:02 pm

and what about load temps?
the ~idle temp doesn't mean much

mjw21a · Post by **mjw21a** » Mon May 09, 2005 7:18 pm

What you need to understand here is that a lot of people have very lemming like behaviour concerning certain brands. It doesn't matter whether a product is good or not, they'll knock it.

Over at overclockers forums the sentiment is ver much along the lines of if it isn't a Thermalright product, it probably sucks. If it's a ThermalTake product, well it definitely sucks, regardless of how well reviewers have shown it to perform.

There is definitely a strong anti ThermalTake sentiment out there, probably due to them having released a number of products that simply don't live up to the marketing hype. In the case of the cooling products they've released over the past year they've all performed quite well.

The PIPE101 is a great cooler if noise isn't an issue. The Big Typhoon and the Sonic Tower are mean't to be excellent and there's a number of good reviews on the Beetle also.

They seem to have picked up their game somewhat.

As for me, well, I think I'll stick with my nice quiet Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu.

StarfishChris · Post by **StarfishChris** » Tue May 10, 2005 2:32 am

GameManK wrote:and what about load temps?
the ~idle temp doesn't mean much

I don't know 'average' differences between idle and load on Prescott but I expect you'll need a case fan turned up if you do any media encoding. Perhaps you can try that out and report back.

Zorander · Post by **Zorander** » Wed May 11, 2005 2:19 am

adab721 wrote:I have seen many negative comments on SPCR concerning the Thermaltake Sonic Tower but from people NOT using it. I have been using this cooler on my 3.2ghz 478 Prescott for three days now and I works great. Right now I have been running it online browsing and emailing for an hour with the fan shut off and MBM is reporting CPU temp at 39 degrees. I have a nVidia 6800GT with Zalman Cooler under it and Nexus 4090 PSU above it. The Nexus fan drawing heat off the Sonic Tower is the only cooling to this awesome heatsink. Ther are only two fans running on my system...The Nexus PSU fan and the Zalman fan on the VGA card. This system is so quiet I can hear my Maxtor Ultra SATA RAID drives spinning (drive silencers expected to be delivered tomarrow)

Hi,

I just bought the same cooler yesterday while doing some computer shopping. Given the rather troublesome installation procedure, I decided to wait till the weekends to install it and read some reviews on it (never read any prior to buying it). I was quite surprised when I read SPCR's claim that the stock fan is noisy. How noisy is it? Has anyone used this cooler with an AMD Athlon64 and is there any audible reduction in CPU fan noise (or hardly any)?

Thanks in advance!

Zorander · Post by **Zorander** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:10 am

Okay, I have got it installed o my A64 3000+ and first thing I noticed is how noticably louder the stock fan is (to the stock AMD fan). Thankfully it is not noisy in terms of being whiny or screeching, but still making noticable noise in the room nevertheless.

I;ll definitely find a quiet replacement fan. What fans would you recommend? Short of that, how plausible is it to run the Silenttower with the fan off (and relying on the PSU dual-fans alone)?

Cheers!

pony-tail · Post by **pony-tail** » Thu May 12, 2005 9:31 am

Although I have not used their new passive coolerI do use their earlier "Fanless 103" It was unuseable fanless - but is a pretty good quiet cooler with a 90mm fan attached .
I am very wary of TT products , Which are mostly well made -BUT the performance of which come nowhere near their advertised specifications .
So I am one of the "Knockers" the original poster of this thread speaks of -
BUT not without my reasons.
Currently I use two TT products a Golf 325 (on an Athlon XP 3000+ 400fsb)
and a "Fanless" 103.
every other TT product I have ever bought has been unuseable to me - and there have been a few (due to availability).
So excuse me if I do not jump out and sing their praises.

mongobilly · Post by **mongobilly** » Thu May 12, 2005 9:58 am

Zorander wrote:Okay, I have got it installed o my A64 3000+ and first thing I noticed is how noticably louder the stock fan is (to the stock AMD fan). Thankfully it is not noisy in terms of being whiny or screeching, but still making noticable noise in the room nevertheless.

Uuh, the Sonic Tower doesn't come with fans. Silent Tower is a completely different product.

Zorander · Post by **Zorander** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:12 pm

Sorry for the confusion. Yeah, I bought the Silenttower, not the Sonictower. Any ideas on how I can get this mosnter silenced? Cheers!

mongobilly · Post by **mongobilly** » Thu May 12, 2005 8:47 pm

First, try running the fan at a lower speed (i.e. lower voltage). If that doesn't help, get a better fan. In the US, 80mm Panaflo are well regarded. In Europe, Papst and Yate Loon.

Thermaltake Sonic Tower

Thermaltake Sonic Tower

Re: Thermaltake Sonic Tower