The Panther is one of Prolimatech’s “low-end” CPU heatsinks, a US$50 tower cooler with premium build quality, four heatpipes, and a 120 mm red LED fan.

September 2, 2012 by Lawrence Lee

Prolimatech burst onto the scene in 2009 with the Megahalems and quickly made a name for themselves as a top tier CPU cooler manufacturer amongst the likes of Thermalright and Noctua. While many blast the market with as many products as possible, Prolimatech has been very careful not to dilute their brand, focusing their energy on premium, high performance units. One of their more affordable heatsinks is the Prolimatech Panther, a modestly-sized US$50 offering.

The Panther is considerably smaller than the last Prolimatech cooler we reviewed, the monstrous dual 14 cm Genesis. Compared to your typical 12 cm fan heatsink though, it’s a bit of a lightweight. According to the specifications, it measures 130 x 50 x 161 mm (L x W x H) and weighs 570 grams excluding the fan, making it thinner and lighter than most of the big towers we’ve tested over the past couple of years. For reference, it’s comparable in size and weight to the TRUE Spirit, a budget Thermalright tower.

The Panther ships with a 120 mm red LED fan, mounting hardware, four clips for two fans, a tube of thermal interface material and a short instruction guide. For installation, a simple bolt-thru system is utilized and though many manufacturers have moved to a universal backplate, the Panther’s kit has separate gear for AMD and Intel motherboards. It’s also notable that the Intel mounting clips and backplate are for LGA1155/1156. Since it is easy to add say, 1366 support, this is a clear message that Prolimatech does not intend for the Panther to be used with the 125W+ TDP CPUs that come in 1366 (and 2011) packages.

PHYSICAL DETAILS & INSTALLATION

The Prolimatech Panther is composed of a copper base, 4 x 6 mm thick copper heatpipes, and 47 aluminum fins, all nickel-plated. By our measurements, the heatsink is 160 mm tall or 166 mm with a centered 120 mm fan installed. According to our digital scale, it weighs approximately 560 grams bare and 670 grams with the stock fan and clips mounted.

BASE & INSTALLATION

The most critical aspect of installation is that the heatsink be securely
mounted. A firm mating results in good contact between the heatsink’s base and
the CPU heatspreader and more efficient heat conduction. Ideally it should
also be a simple procedure with the user having to handle as few pieces of
hardware as possible.

TESTING

Before thermal testing, we took some basic physical measurements.

Testing on larger heatsinks are done on our
LGA1366 heatsink testing platform, while smaller coolers tackle our LGA1155 heatsink testing platform. A summary of the test system
and procedure follows.

Key Components in LGA1366 Heatsink Test Platform:

• Intel Core i7-965 Extreme
  Nehalem core, LGA1366, 3.2GHz, 45nm, 130W TDP.
• Asus
  P6X58D Premium ATX motherboard. X58 chipset.
• Asus
  EAH3450 Silent graphics card.
• Intel
  X25-M 80GB 2.5" solid-state drive. Chosen for silence.
• 3GB QiMonda
  DDR3 memory. 3 x 1GB DDR3-1066 in triple channel.
• Seasonic X-650 SS-650KM
  650W ATX power supply. This PSU is semi-passively cooled. At the power levels
  of our test platform, its fan does not spin.
• Arctic Silver
  Lumière: Special fast-curing thermal interface material, designed
  specifically for test labs.

Key Components in LGA1155 Heatsink Test Platform:

• Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge core, LGA1155, 3.1 GHz, 45nm, 95W TDP, overclocked/volted to 3.6 GHz and 1.300V.
• Intel DP67BG ATX motherboard.
  P67 chipset.
• Asus
  EAH3450 Silent graphics card.
• Kingston
  SSDNow V 30GB 2.5" solid-state drive. Chosen for silence.
• OCZ Platinum Extreme Low Voltage DDR3 memory. 2 x 2 GB, DDR3-1333 in dual channel.
• Seasonic X-400 SS-400FL
  400W ATX power supply. Passively cooled
• Arctic Silver
  Lumière: Special fast-curing thermal interface material, designed
  specifically for test labs.

The systems are silent under the test conditions, except for the CPU cooling
fan(s).

Normally, our reference fans are used whenever possible, the measured details
of which are shown below.

Measurement and Analysis Tools

• Extech 380803 AC power analyzer / data logger for measuring AC system
  power.
• Custom-built, four-channel variable DC power supply, used to regulate
  the fan speed during the test.
• PC-based spectrum analyzer:
  SpectraPlus with ACO Pacific mic and M-Audio digital
  audio interfaces.
• Anechoic chamber
  with ambient level of 11 dBA or lower
• Various other tools for testing fans, as documented in our
  standard fan testing methodology.
• SpeedFan,
  used to monitor the on-chip thermal sensors. The sensors are not calibrated,
  so results are not universally applicable. The hottest core reading is used.
• Prime95,
  used to stress the LGA1366 CPU heavily, generating more heat than most real applications.
  8 instances are used to ensure that all 4 cores (with Hyper-threading) are
  stressed.
• CPU-Z,

  used to monitor the CPU speed to determine when overheating occurs.

• Thermometers to measure the air temperature around the test platform
  and near the intake of the heatsink fan.

Noise measurements are made with the fans powered from the lab’s variable DC
power supply while the rest of the system was off to ensure that system noise
did not skew the measurements.

Load testing was accomplished using Prime95 to stress the processor and the
graph function in SpeedFan was used to ensure that the load temperature is stable
for at least ten minutes. The temperature recorded is the highest single core
reading. The stock fans were tested at various voltages to represent a good
cross-section of airflow and noise performance.

The ambient conditions during testing were 10~11 dBA and 21~23°C.

Stock Fan Measurements

The Panther’s stock fan is a 1600 RPM, sleeve bearing model with a sleeved, 25 cm, 4-pin PWM cable. It has a fairly standard design with straight struts and blades curved to a modest degree. One notable characteristic is its large hub which creates a large dead-spot at the center, making it less efficient.

The stock fan’s acoustics were typical for an average sleeve bearing fan. It was generally smooth but also had a buzzy character at high speeds (1100 RPM and up) that devolved into a low-pitched hum at slower speeds. Some bearing chatter was also noticeable but only at close distances, within about half a meter.

Our sample’s fan ran 200 RPM higher than its specified speed. At 12V it was very loud and didn’t become quiet until it crossed the 1000 RPM mark somewhere between 8V and 7V. As the fan has an unusually high starting voltage of 6.2V, it won’t spin-up when used with 5V adapters/mods. Under 7V, the speed dropped off quickly.

Test Results

Though the Panther has the size to take on a high thermal load, its lack of LGA1366 compatibility forced us to test it on our less demanding LGA1155 test platform featuring a mildly overclocked/overvolted Sandy Bridge Core i5 processor.

The Panther performed very well at all tested fan speeds except the ultra low 6.7V / 560 RPM level. Its thermal sweet spot lay somewhere in the fairly quiet range between 8V and 7V. The stock fan wasn’t particularly impressive as our reference Nexus fan was substantially more efficient. The difference was most dramatic at low speeds; the heatsink paired with stock fan had a thermal rise of 42°C when generating 13 dBA@1m while the Nexus produced a 6°C improvement at 12~13 dBA@1m.

Heatsink Comparison Table

The Panther earns very high marks, landing at the top of our chart when paired with our reference Nexus 120 mm fan, edging out the down-blowing Noctua NH-L12 and Scythe Big Shuriken 2. To be fair, our LGA1155 heatsink test platform is designed for smaller coolers, but it is indicative of what to expect when using the Panther with a typical Sandy/Ivy Bridge processor.

Surprisingly, VRM cooling was actually fairly decent with the Panther, beating out many of the smaller top-down heatsinks we’ve tested. As side-blowing towers coolers don’t provide direct airflow over the CPU socket, VRM temperatures are usually higher than normal.

MP3 SOUND RECORDINGS

These recordings were made with a high
resolution, lab quality, digital recording system inside SPCR’s
own 11 dBA ambient anechoic chamber, then converted to LAME 128kbps
encoded MP3s. We’ve listened long and hard to ensure there is no audible degradation
from the original WAV files to these MP3s. They represent a quick snapshot of
what we heard during the review.

These recordings are intended to give you an idea of how the product sounds
in actual use — one meter is a reasonable typical distance between a computer
or computer component and your ear. The recording contains stretches of ambient
noise that you can use to judge the relative loudness of the subject. Be aware
that very quiet subjects may not be audible — if we couldn’t hear it from
one meter, chances are we couldn’t record it either!

The recording starts with 5~10 second segments of room ambiance, then the fan
at various levels. For the most realistic results, set the volume so that
the starting ambient level is just barely audible, then don’t change the volume
setting again.

• Prolimatech Panther with stock 120mm fan at 1m
  — 7V (15 dBA@1m)
  — 8V (22 dBA@1m)
  — 9V (27 dBA@1m)
  — 12V (34~35 dBA@1m)

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Panther is a smaller offering than usual from Prolimatech. It’s a relatively thin, light heatsink targeted at users with more modest processors. Its performance is well matched for Sandy/Ivy Bridge processors. The mounting system is very secure and easy to install though we would have preferred a universal backplate solution that included broader socket support. The stock fan is nothing special, in both performance and acoustics, but it is nice to see an LED fan that produces less blinding, indirect lighting.

The Panther’s lack of girth obviously limits its capabilities but its US$50 price is a disadvantage as a budget tower. It’s a bit much considering how much heatsink you actually get, making us wonder if it was a good idea to carryover the high build-quality (nickel-plating etc.) from their premium products. It’s also notable that you can purchase the larger Prolimatech Megahalems for just ~$15 more.

Our thanks to Prolimatech for the Panther CPU cooler sample.

* * *

SPCR Articles of Related Interest:

Phanteks PH-TC14PE Dual Fan CPU Heatsink
GELID GX-7 & Tranquillo Rev.2 CPU Coolers
be quiet! Dark Rock 2 Tower Heatsink
Enermax ETS-T40: Direct-Touch Heatpipe Cooler
Thermalright HR-02 Macho Quiet/Fanless Cooler
Reeven Kelveros & Arcziel CPU Coolers

* * *

Discuss
this article in the SPCR forums.