SilenX Effizio Extreme 5x 8mm Heatpipe Silent CPU Heatsink Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,926 words · ~9 min read
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my next unboxing from the silence physio series is going to be the extreme which
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as you may guess based on the size of the box and the name is the highest end
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product in the physio lineup it's also classified as a less than 18 decibel
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cooler and it is geared to be a silent
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CPU cooler so they've got logos on here for every processor under the sun
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including anything on socket am2 am3 775
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lga 1156 as well as lga 1366 in fact
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they've even got a core i9 logo on there that's kind of funny considering that
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Intel scrapped that branding a little while back i guess they designed this
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back when it looked like Intel was going to make a core i9 brand the heatsink
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requires a case with adequate space to fit properly check to ensure you have oh
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this is important okay so if you're thinking of installing this one check
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these numbers to make sure it will fit in your system here's the overall
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specifications as well as the compatibility like i said pretty much
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everything so core i9 is what they were going to call the core i7 extreme six
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core but then they did not end up doing that all right oh i was i had the box
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backwards look at that you can actually see into the box and you can see the
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overall shape of this cooler it's got the quietest noise levels greatest
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efficiency and superior performance designed for gamers and overclockers and
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those seeking extreme performance or just those who are hit by this heat wave
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that seems to be hitting the entire continent this summer so we've got five
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effective eight millimeter heat pipes wow those are big and those all directly
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interface with the CPU core so those are going right on the CPU heat spreader you
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can expect cylindex heatsinks to offer maximum thermal efficiency at all times
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they've got optimized fan blades so it means it is using a solid x fan which
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you would expect and it has a universal mounting system which i had a look at in
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much closer detail on the compact unboxing so i probably won't look at it
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quite as closely on this one let's go ahead and get this open and see
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what we have inside so the first thing we find inside is a box very exciting
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box it's white and inside the box we will find likely
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a bunch of mounting gear okay nothing else this is it okay
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so it's pretty much exactly the same accessory package that we found with the
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compact so yeah i probably really won't look all that closely at this but i will
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have a quick look so we've got a fan speed controller okay very high quality
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one i've actually used these before they're really good then we have a universal back plate
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so it's for am2 am3 775 1156 1366 we
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have the AMD mounting hardware and then we have the Intel mounting hardware
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they've also included some extra fan mounting grommets involves some thermal
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compound so the fan mounting grommets are so you can install an additional fan
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in a push-pull configuration on this particular heat sink all right so uh
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once again we see are greeted with a non-silvery fan
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so this is a silence fan but not from their ixtreme a series
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and they've actually oh i hope they've got two sets oh
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maybe they do yes yes well there are two sets of fan
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grommets in this one in the compact it was actually the fan was mounted for me
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already so i'm gonna have to go ahead and uh figure out how to mount the fan
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on camera here for you that should be quite an ordeal oh here's
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a little um a double-sided velcro thing to mount your fan controller somewhere in your
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case okay so what we do is first let's take the heat sink oh that's a heavy
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sucker all right so we go ahead and slide that in there
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okay there we go it's in there and then we go ahead and slide
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this in the bottom i actually like the look of this
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heatsink overall it looks uh looks very very sharp it's got nice shiny heat
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pipes it's got a nice finish to the top of it
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you can see that the the metal um
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the aluminum fins actually have a bit of a bumpy texture to them and i'll show
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you that a little bit more closely once i'm finished mounting the fan here as
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far as fan mounting systems go this is actually pretty clever because it
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doesn't involve any um clips which can be extremely unwieldy
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and are difficult to you know this is something that you never consider either
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it's like yeah what if i do want to mount a second fan and push pull but i
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want to do it later so you have to actually like keep those clips somewhere
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and not lose them whereas if it's just a couple little rubber grommets it's no
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big deal so you just line up the rubber grommets
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in there and in there i'm not paying attention to where the
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camera is looking right now because i'm actually paying attention to where the
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heatsink is positioned right now and then i'm going to go ahead and line
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up the very last one
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so okay so this isn't the easiest thing in the world but i think most of the
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difficulty is the fact that i'm trying to operate a camera at the same
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time i think if i had a cameraman today
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that would make my life a lot easier maybe might not my life a lot easier but
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certainly this video okay so you go ahead and pull these
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through just give them a good tug and then i
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guess if you want to you can uh run them through the second hole
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oh hold on let me see if i can figure this out okay hold on maybe i just have
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to pull harder remember when in doubt force it
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yes there we go so then if you want to you can run it
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through the second hole but that's not entirely necessary you just want to
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heave on it ah until it comes through there we go
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that was pretty easy and i'm sorry you'll have to bear with me because i am
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ocd and i do need to put
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those through or else my day will be ruined yes i said it ruined
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three come on go through
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thank you and the last one it's only i had a cat here to help me oh yeah this
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is a lot easier if you just actually pull them through one at a time because
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there's quite a bit of give in the one that's in the ones that you've already put on so you can actually pull this
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away to uh to line up the last one even when three are already in so go ahead and
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pull that through and bring it through the second hole
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and there we go that didn't take so long
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it might have taken longer if you're just sitting watching me do it okay so
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we've got a little bit of a gap not as much of a gap as we saw on the compact
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cooler but there's a slight gap on the side there's a bit more of a gap on the
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top and the bottom so we're going to see a little bit of airflow leakage there in all likelihood
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but it shouldn't impact performance too much most of the coolers on the market do
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have a similar sort of configuration now this is one thing that i really like
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about this cooler right off the bat and that's the fact that all of the heat
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pipes line up with the part of the cooling tower that is going to see the
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most airflow so you can see through here okay so you see where the blades of the
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fan actually start around here that's where the dead zone is in the middle
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where there's no airflow because that's where the hub of the fan is and then the
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blades of the fan actually blow air through an area kind of this shape so
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they position most of the heat pipe cooling where it's actually going to
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take advantage of the blades of the fan now it's quite a dense heap
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fin arrangement so that means that you would benefit for sure from putting an
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additional fan on here but it's not
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too too too dense i've seen worse in fact i think the compact one was even a
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little bit more dense than this one though i could be mistaken now something
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that i said i'd look at in more close detail later is the slightly
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hear that slightly textured finish on each of
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these aluminum fins and the reason for that is it gives them just a little bit
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more surface area when the air is blowing through and you're gonna
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sacrifice a little bit of noise performance although you probably
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wouldn't even be able to measure it because these are such small dimples but
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you'll get a little bit more air turbulence in there and you will get a little bit more surface area and
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therefore a little bit more cooling performance out of a design like that
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last thing i want to have a look at now i suspect this would perform really well
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on an AMD CPU because they have those nice big heat spreaders same with an lga
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1366 because it's the same thing nice big heat spreaders but we've got five
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huge eight millimeter heat pipes you really can't ask for more than that i
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mean some guys have more heat pipes on the cooler but
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they're not using eight mils these things are enormous so you're going here
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look at how thick that is so when you actually put a CPU on here you're going
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to be completely covering the CPU in heat pipe and they've machined the
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bottom of it very flat i'll do the obligatory finger shot thing although it
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really doesn't mean a whole lot i really like the shape of the blades
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and i can't or of the fins and i can't even really tell you why i just think it
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looks kind of cool here's your universal hold down as well as a little bit of
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additional heatsink cooling directly on the CPU you know it's funny it wasn't
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that long ago you could cool a CPU with just one of those and a little tiny loud
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fan on it then that turned into a chipset fan and now it's like a
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supplementary cooler on a on a real heatsink
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anyway thank you for checking out my unboxing and uh first look at the
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ephysio extreme CPU cooler from
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silence