SilenX Effizio Low Profile Slim Silent HTPC CPU Heatsink Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,449 words · ~7 min read
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and finally I'm having a look at the last in the new silen X aphysio series
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of heat sinks this is their low profile it is designed for use with htpc cases
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and other lowprofile cases it's compatible with a wide variety of
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sockets just like the rest of the aphysio lineup here we can see that it
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uses Three 6 mm heat pipes so even though it comes in a small box like the
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compact it's actually going to be more similar to the performance in terms of
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well heat pipes okay it uses a silen x
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fin H fin fan with optimized fan blades
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and it has a universal mounting system compatible with all these different
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kinds of CPUs including uh K8 am2 am3
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am2 plus lga775 LGA 1156 LGA 1366 and if
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you want to read all that on your own you could do it here and here are the
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specs fairly lightweight which is what you'd expect from an htpc optimized
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cooler so let's have a look at the accessory package which comes in a much
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smaller box than the others already I'll tell you that much
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okay so where's my oh okay it's in there
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that explains it Okay so we've got a fan speed controller these are quite
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effective I've used them before they're excellent it also includes a double-sided velcro thing here you've
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got all metal fan mounting gear I love that I hate plastic and for AMD you've
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got the same more of the same more metal excellent it all feels relatively sturdy
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as well I don't think you have to worry about these going flying off
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your socket or anything like that okay so here is a fan this is a Slim So This
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is a low profile 100 mm fan this only
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looks how thick is this thing hold on a minute 24 D 54 CFM is what it's rated
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for this is an aphysio series quiet fan
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and uh I wish I could think of how thin this is I mean
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it looks like 10 mm would be my guess
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but I would have to be 15 wouldn't it hold on let's have a look here yeah
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that's got to be 15 MS there it is next to a 25 mm silent X fan so yeah it's got
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to be a 15 mil you know what why don't we plug this in I'm kind of curious as
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to how loud it
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is that's not too bad it has a bit of an airflow noise to
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it but it's not uh it's not a distracting noise here I'll turn it off
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and turn it back on again see it takes a while to ramp up I guess because of the
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small motor on it but here have a listen to it ramping up
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yeah not bad at all considering that it's a low profile fan and you can use
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the fan speed controller on it of course so that'll take it down to a much slower
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speed all right here is the low profile cooler that is low
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profile wow that's really short okay not
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that I would you know call anyone out on being short anyway here's your Universal
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back plate with its insulating cover on it so it doesn't short out the back of
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your motherboard and there is the heat sink itself so it uses the preferred
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mounting system out of the aphysio series heat sinks I've seen so I'm going
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to go ahead and pull out these rubber grommets
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here uh unlike all of the others from
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this series this particular heat sink is not push pull compatible although I
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can't imagine any reason why you would be trying to uh mount a pushpull cooling
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system in uh htpc I mean yeah you get
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more static pressure but the whole point of this thing is low profile you don't
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want to go and throw two fans on it because you'd be far better off to put
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more metal on it at that point the whole purpose is just to uh to get it as small
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as possible so one thing that I mention or didn't mention before is that this is
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a 100 mm fan and this is kind of cool so
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check this out okay hold on I'm going to pull all these through did that go
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through already yeah okay so two
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there we go number three oh hold on having a little bit of
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trouble getting my fingers on that one there we are and the last one I am a
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little bit on the OCD side I will need to put all of these through in order to
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proceed with the video and it is done so
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this is kind of cool it also has mounting holes for what I'll presume are 92 mm so it's 100 mm fan it has 100 mm
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holes which you can use to mount on this particular heat sink but then you've
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also got the 92 mil holes if you wanted to use it as a case fan for whatever
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reason although I wouldn't recommend that so you've got three heat pipes
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these are 6 mm heat pipes got a nice flat base here with machine heat pipes
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into it for a slightly better thermal performance versus having a metal cover
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and then the heat pipes embedded in that I'll do the obligatory finger shot you
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got your Universal mounting plate and like all of the other fysio series heat
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SNS you have a little heat sink right above the CPU core right here and unlike
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all of the other ones this one will improve performance in a way that is Meaningful because it actually has a
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downward blowing fan the other ones are going to get some incidental air flow
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but they are Tower heat sink so they're not going to get a whole lot you can see
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this is a tower heat sink and it has a little uh cooler under it whereas this
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one is actually going to get direct air flow right from the fan like all of the
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other fysio heat sinks this one does Focus all of its heat pipe cooling power
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right under where the fan blades are going to spin so I'm going to go ahead
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and spin that so you can see the heat pipes are 1 2 three on that side and 1 2
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3 on that side so they're lined up there we go right under where most of the air
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flow from this heat sink is going to happen now unlike the other fysio Series
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this one does use a uh quite a loose fin
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structure but I'm not going to fault it for that because I think in this
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particular application where you've got a slim fan you're not going to be able
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to generate a lot of static pressure so it's going to be all about using uh a
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free flowing air flow as efficiently as
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possible and as quietly as possible so you're not going to go ahead and put
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like a dense fin Arrangement on this and you're not going to throw like a beefy
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huge fan on it this is about efficiency this isn't about raw performance like
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the other physios I okay you're having trouble hearing that I bit there you go
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you've got that slight ripplin to the aluminum fins so that's going to give it
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slightly better cooling performance than just a flat Fin and you've also got a
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bit of a wave shape to it which I think looks cool maybe it does something for
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performance maybe it doesn't I don't really care and I think that pretty much
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C everything I wanted to say about this low profile cooler and uh let's see if I
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can find something to compare the overall height
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to H just for fun Why Don't We compare it to a uh to a noct TOA
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NH um
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D4 there we go so here's a height
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comparison for you there's that cooler
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and there is the low profile episio the cooler is like done before
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before the fins even start thank you for checking out my unboxing of the aphysio
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low profile from Silent X