My quick Scythe "ULTRA KAZE" Review

fri2219 · Post by **fri2219** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 11:24 am

(Alternate Title: The case of the suffocated Lian-Li A05B)

Introduction:

This is a poorly organized, statistically invalid, mostly subjective, review of the Scythe "ULTRA KAZE" 120 x 38 mm Case Fan - Low fan. (US$9.00 at jab-tech w/o shipping)

I have a Lian-Li A05B, which is nice to look at, compact, lightweight, and is well made. I'll probably have this case for ten years, unlike some of the cases favored here for their acoustic properties which I've purchased in the last 3 years which are primarily made from steel and rarely recycled/recyclable plastic- which began to crumble after six months of use.

The trade-off is that it the case is not silent by any means, and more importantly for the sake of keeping the components out of a landfill in India, China, or Africa, it breathes very poorly and provides below average cooling as a result. I'm still trying to remedy that situation without spending a lot of money, wasting a lot of energy, and going deaf in the process.

The Nexus and Noctua fans I've used for the back exhaust/intake have been quiet enough, but I wanted to see if I could drop my component temperatures more with a new piece of environmentally unfriendly plastic. (While the Ultra-Kaze fan is advertised as RoHS compliant, I couldn't say if it is actually true or if the softners used won't turn out to be worse than phthalates.). Here's what I tried:

Components:
Lian-Li PCA05B Case
Intel DG965SS Motherboard, stock Northbridge/Southbridge cooling
Intel E2140 processor
Zerotherm BTF-95 fanless CPU heatsink
2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA drives (80GB, 1.5GB/s)
4 x 1GB Crucial 5-5-5-15 DDR2 667 memory
MSI NX7300LE-TD128EH GeForce 7300LE Video Card
SeaSonic S12 II SS-430W Power Supply, stock fan

Software:
OpenSuSE 10.3
smartd (HD temp)
lmsensors (CPU temp)
Nvidia 100.14.9 drivers (GPU temp)
gcc (kernel compiles)
vlc (video)

Methodology:
The fan tested was mounted at the rear of the case and blew inward toward the heatsink. The power supply was oriented to draw air into the case with the intent of creating a positively pressured case. The fan was connected to the 3-pin CPU header, with speed controlled via BIOS. (The Intel thermal scheme used was "aggresive") Fan rpm was not recorded. The Noctua and power supply fans were run at stock voltage, while the Scythe fan was run at 12V and 7V.

Wrote a bash script to simultaneously compile the most recent linux kernel, copy 50 1GB files, and play 50 flash files shamelessly stolen from youtube. Temps for CPU and HD were ascertained by the script, GPU temp was recorded from the GTK+ control panel provided in the proprietary driver package.

Measured CPU, GPU, and Disk temps before and after 2 minutes of script runs, using a Noctua NF-S12-1200 and a Scythe DFS123812L-1000. Sound was measured by putting the box under my desk in its normal place, with the use of an ear, some weird little bones and hairs, and a brain. The testing could really use some way of measuring fan speed in real time without having to drop into BIOS setup.

Objective Results:

Noctua NF-S12-1200
Ambient Temp: 20C
Hard Drive Temp: 38C
CPU Temp: 48C
GPU Temp: 63C

Scythe DFS123812L-1000 @ 12V
Ambient Temp: 20C
Hard Drive Temp: 33C
CPU Temp: 37C
GPU Temp: 52C

Scythe DFS123812L-1000 @ 7V
Ambient Temp: 20C
Hard Drive Temp: 38C
CPU Temp: 39C
GPU Temp: 56C

Subjective results:

Noctua NF-S12-1200
Disk seeks only sound heard.

Scythe DFS123812L-1000 @ 12V
Disks seeks heard.
Fan is definitely audible, but mid-low frequency (~1000 Hz, I think) at a constant pitch. I'd estimate the intensity of the fan sound to be be between 20-30 dB, based on subjective scales relating sound intensity to noise sources, like whisper, normal speech, and jackhammer.

Scythe DFS123812L-1000 @ 7V
Disk seeks only sound heard.

Things to like:
Successfully packs air into an area with impedance.
Quiet (but by no means silent).
Undervolting noticeably improves acoustic characteristics in this setup.

Things not to like:
Unusually short, 3 pin only, header cable (does come with an adapter cable, however)
Soft, unusually thin for a 38mm fan, plastic on housing

Conclusions:
The Scythe fan @12V and 7V did indeed help the case temperatures (in this setup at least). At 12V, it is modestly louder, but the noise is at a constant, almost soothing, low frequency and should be easy enough to moderate with voltage manipulation- the noise quality and intensity is similar to an Antec 38 x 120 mm tricool fan at medium setting. It does exactly what it is supposed to do in this application. Although running the Scythe fan @7V still cooled the CPU fairly well, it did increase the temperatures reported for the hard drives (probably because of airflow restrictions). In any scenario, all reported temperatures were within "desirable" limits.

Although run-on sentences were used extensively in this review, no copies of Strunk and White were harmed in the process. Wow, I made a lot of typos.

gmat · Post by **gmat** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 12:53 pm

If you can alter the fan speeds try lowering them down to around 800rpm where their noise characteristic totally disappears. I use two of those (same as yours) for my watercooling radiator and now i'm mostly annoyed by the chipset cooling (upside down mobo in a lian li V2K + asus heatpipe = not a good mix)

CountChoculaBot · Post by **CountChoculaBot** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:58 pm

Wow those temps are pretty amazing. 11C is a huge decrease in temps, and it's doing it with less RPM's than the Noctua, something I never though I would've seen. I could definitely put up with a little noise for 11C

Dephcon · Post by **Dephcon** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 7:14 am

nice review. I actually just ordered an A05 myself and I'm in the process of deciding what fans to get.

I was just wondering if you were using the mesh fan grill that came with the case or not. I'd assume not but I'd like to be sure.

I'm on the fence between Ultra Kaze and Slip Stream for the rear fan/cpu(ultra 120 extreme). I'm also considering getting 2x 500 or 800 rpm slipstream and installing them in the top panel with a RadGrillz for intake or exhaust.

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 8:04 am

Dephcon wrote:I'm on the fence between Ultra Kaze and Slip Stream for the rear fan...

One of each will set you back $20; you could experiment and let us know your results.

We all know the difference between the two fans is their pressure. IMHO, the number and size of the intake areas will determine which fan works best. I had a low-power system with the normal exhaust fan and the PSU exhaust (2 exhausts), with the left-side CAG and the very limited intake air permitted by the bezel. Counting the PSU as half an exhaust (120mm fan but small hole), I had 1.5 exhausts and about 1.2 intakes (counting the bezel as 0.2). I had slipstream fans in the PSU and on the normal exhaust port. The performance wasn't bad but it was nothing to write home about, either.

So I disconnected the fan in the PSU. The PSU exhaust became an intake! I now had 1.7 intake-equivalents for 1 exhaust (still a slipstream). The system worked fabulously well all of a sudden! Only one fan and a very quiet one at that, and lotsa air being pumped out (only a 5.2C rise over room ambient for the exhuast!).

The Slipstream seems to work OK under difficult airflow conditions, but with adequate intake area, it can show what it's capable of. Very quiet, very good cooling.

Dephcon · Post by **Dephcon** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 8:29 am

hmm... if i do add the 2x120 intake on the top then the psu+front fan exhaust should be work pretty good.

luckily i can get the ultras and slipstreams for 7.02 and 6.21ea

fri2219 · Post by **fri2219** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 10:14 pm

Dephcon wrote: I was just wondering if you were using the mesh fan grill that came with the case or not. I'd assume not but I'd like to be sure.

I should have included that detail, sorry.

Other "mods" I've made for sound include:
1) Removed both Lian-Li Grills and have one cheap wire grill on the outside of the case
2) Added perforated pci-slot covers in ease air flow out the rear
3) Cut sound diffusing foam blocks to the size of the unused 3.5 and 5 inch external bays
4) Added strips of Nexus DampTek to the center of the side panels, covering roughly 1/2 of their area

The latter two seem to have modestly reduced the cavity resonance and higher pitched ringing the case makes. The cavity resonance wasn't a huge issue for my hearing, I just had the materials lying around in my garage from purchases I made a few years ago before reviews like the ones available here were widely available. (i.e. don't expect it to do much in comparison with using quiet components)

I originally used a 2.5 inch Fujitsu drive in a Scythe box for a while and it worked well in terms of noise and heat. However, it wasn't adequate for doing software development, and were replaced with the two 7200.7's, which are going to be replaced this week with a single 7200.11.

The 7200.7's have been great, but they've seen a lot of use and the smart reported counters are starting to creep up- I'm going to migrate them to another use. Hopefully a single drive will create less heat and noise than 2 drives, as well. In that respect, I'll also be replacing the 430W Seasonic for a 330W Seasonic modified by a ADDA/Noctua fanswap.

Jeff Cutsinger · Post by **Jeff Cutsinger** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:00 am

I got my three ultra kazes yesterday. I got the 2000 RPM variant, which I now think was a bad choice since they are pretty noisy. I know this is an unfair comparison, but my low speed YL is much much much much quieter. I don't know what possessed me to get the 2000 RPM variant. Plus I don't have any way to turn the voltage down, so I'm kind of stuck with the noise for now.

Lesson learned: get the low speed variety!

Shaman · Post by **Shaman** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 7:55 am

fri2219 looks like you do not use an exhaust fan at the front of the case? How is the PSU drawing air into the case? Did you reverse the fan in the PSU? If you're not using the front exhaust fan, did you cover the 120mm hole so that hot air doesn't get recirculated through the PSU?

Lastly, is there a reason why you want a positive air pressure case when you're not using dust filters?

fri2219 · Post by **fri2219** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 2:36 pm

Shaman wrote:fri2219 looks like you do not use an exhaust fan at the front of the case? How is the PSU drawing air into the case? Did you reverse the fan in the PSU? If you're not using the front exhaust fan, did you cover the 120mm hole so that hot air doesn't get recirculated through the PSU?

Lastly, is there a reason why you want a positive air pressure case when you're not using dust filters?

Oops, sorry for the slow response.

The swapped PSU fan acts as a very modest exhaust. A low speed scythe slipstream is used to pull air from the bottom surface of the case and push it through over the PSU components out the front of the case.

The front 120 mm fan hole is covered by a chunk of acoustic foam that fills the unused slots of the drive cage.

The 7200.11 HD is suspended in the upper 5.25 external bay. smartd reports temperatures around 38C at ambient.

I'm using positive pressure because it seems to work the best in this instance for cooling the case. The case is used in a extremely low dust environment, so filtering is not an issue.

Almost all the air in the case exists through the vented unused PCI slot covers.

Jeff Cutsinger · Post by **Jeff Cutsinger** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 4:18 am

Jeff Cutsinger wrote:Plus I don't have any way to turn the voltage down, so I'm kind of stuck with the noise for now.

Lesson learned: get the low speed variety!

I got a new motherboard and can turn the voltage down, now. I've been getting them down to around 500rpm which is pretty much inaudible, so it isn't all bad. Still think you should get the low speed variant.