Thermalright Silver Arrow Extreme Performance CPU Heatsink Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,750 words · ~8 min read
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today I have a huge box and I want you
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to take a couple seconds and don't cheat don't look at the title of the video
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because I always do this and everyone always looks at the title of the video
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and they're like oh lus I didn't have to guess cuz I just looked at the title of the video hahaa okay try to actually
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guess what it is without looking at the title of the video it's a heat sink it's
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a heat sink and the box is like the size of my head look at
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this had I turned it like this yet cameraman screwed up he pressed the
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wrong button so this is the Silver Arrow it is compatible with LGA 1366 1156
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775 as well as AMD socket am2 am3 so
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it's compatible with every socket on the market that matters and it is huge
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according to the Box anyway I haven't actually got it open yet so I'm not 100%
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sure the first thing I find inside is just a listing of everything that comes
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in the package so it shows you all the different mounting hardware you get it
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actually comes with a little wrench it comes with some little uh vibration
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dampening triangles it comes with some thermal compound all right then we have
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a little explod mated view exploded view
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oh and a sticker so this is an exploded view of how to operate
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the Intel mounting hardware okay so
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there's step-by-step instructions on the back they show you how to line up all the different holes for 775 1156 and
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1366 and then here we have the AMD mounting Hardware which is actually way
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simpler it's just a little bracket that uh clamps down on top of the cooler and
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then goes right into the stock back plate from your am2 or am3 socket so you
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can see it's only a six St process including like plugging in the fans and
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stuff so that's a very very straightforward on the AMD side here we
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have a thermal right sticker and here we have all of the
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included goodies so this okay the first
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thing that comes to mind besides the
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fact that um the fans are kind of an unattractive color is the fact that this
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has the thickest heat pipes on it out of
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any cooler I have ever seen so let's
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have a quick look at these fans these look like uh 140 mm fans but they
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actually use a circular frame and 120 mm
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mounting holes so that means that you should have better compatibility with um
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with most cases on the market or with most coolers on the market Market
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although these are obviously designed to be used with this particular cooler but
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you do get that additional uh fan blade
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size and you do get a little bit more air flow out of it and in theory a 140
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mm fan spinning at the same RPM as a 120 mm fan is going to net you more air flow
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and better cooling so okay here we'll have a look at the accessories that are
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included first and then I'll show you the cooler I know if you want you can
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just skip ahead and see the cooler but if you want to see the accessories then
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this is the time to see
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them okay lots and lots and lots of stuff
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included here so the first thing we see
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these are some mounting clips for the fan so we have four because this is a
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dual fan cooler so you can hook up two fans then we have the included wrench as
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well as some included cf3 thermal
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compound okay next we have the AMD
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mounting hardware so the way this one works oh no this is a universal piece
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okay so this is the hold down for the cooler in general as far as I can tell
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okay this is the AMD specific
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piece and then this is the Intel um hold
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down as well as the Intel back plate so you can see it's got the slidable uh
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posts so you can go through 775 1156 or
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1366 without any difficulties all right
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we've got some thumb screws here that are actually not just thumb screws
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they're ones that you can actually uh screw something into the top of as well
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all okay so mounting system all looks very very solid every single piece of it
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is made out of like thick steel look how thick the steel is so you don't have to
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worry about anything getting broken if you're shipping your system like NC the
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uh the store I work at we actually build systems and you can buy a system with an
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aftermarket cooler on it but if you buy one that has a cheap mounting system
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that's made out of some kind of a brittle plastic or anything like that
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then the cooler can actually I mean look how big this thing is it could snap off
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in shipping but as long as you include like a huge steel uh back plate and
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mounting bracket for it it's not going anywhere so that's uh that's something
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that you might not think about if you're just your average end user but is very
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important to a system builder uh who's considering using a heat sink like this
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in a system so this is the Silver Arrow
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okay okay the heat pipes are not as big as I had orig Al thought I thought the
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heat pipes were actually this big but these look like they're just 8 mm heat
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pipes which are still huge so I'm going
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to just go ahead and say this this reminds me already a lot of the co gaug
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Arrow so this is the Silver Arrow which is released under the thermal right
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branding as you may or may not already be aware coage is owned by thermal right
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so it's uh not like we're seeing thermal right knock somebody off I want to make
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sure nobody thinks that there's our obligatory finger shot where you can see
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how shiny and typically how flat thermal
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right bases are so this is not them ripping it off this is them taking the
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uh the coau Branded design making it more blingy so unlike the coau one which
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uses a flat finish on all of the fins
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this one actually uses a very very shiny finish so I can I can see myself in this
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no problem and see if I can look at the camera there y so uh you can see my
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glasses in the top of it so that means if you have a lit case like if you have
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any cathodes or anything like that in your computer case you will be able to
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see the light shining off this really nicely the overall design of it looks
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quite similar uh the arrow uses huge
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thick heat pipes as well and uh you know what since I'm you know not really
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talking about anything else for now why don't I just sort of have a quick look
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at how to mount the fans so if it works
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the same way is the arrow which I'm going to go ahead and assume it probably
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does we're going to use the little
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okay well we'll use the fan glips
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then ah there they are we'll use the little triangles which I have found
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now as a vibration dampening
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thing okay I sure hope I'm right about this
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yeah I'm right okay good I hate it when I make assumptions and I end up not
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being right so we just go ahead and throw those on the corners now that's
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not going to have a negative impact on performance because not a whole lot of airow air
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flow goes through the corner anyway so then all you do is you position your fan
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in the right place so you can actually use 120 mm fans but I'm using the
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included thermal right ones here and then you use
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your flips to put them through the hole here ah
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they use quite a flexible clip with this one that's really nice makes it a lot
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easier to thread it through the hole in the top and the bottom of the heat
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sink so just like
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that just being careful to drive it through Straight because it actually has
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to go through quite a good number of these fins and then all you do is
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position the fan in the right
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place and go like that then you do that
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on both sides and you have mounted the fan now it's got a ton of fan mounting
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options you can mount it with one fan here one fan in the middle one fan on
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the other side so you can do up to three fans or you could even just do one in
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the middle so you can see you got mounting holes here here here and here
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so while there's not enough room for two fans in the middle for obvious reasons
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you can use either of these two to mount the middle fan and then you can mount
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two fans on the outside as well so it's very very flexible in terms of mounting
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on options and one thing that I have noticed about the coage arrow which I'm
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going to assume is the same for the Silver Arrow is that the motherboard
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compatibility is a little bit better than some of the competing huge dual
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Tower coolers such as the Noctua NHD 14
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uh the reason for that is just the way they've positioned the heat pipes here
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keeps them a little bit more out of the way of your uh of your motherboard MOS
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fat cooler so I actually was able to mount the coage arrow on a motherboard
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that I wasn't able to mount any other huge High performance coolers on so
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thank you for checking out my unboxing of the thermal right Silver Arrow and I
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hope you have enjoyed it