Antec Kuhler Box Performance Dual Tower 120mm Heatsink Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,236 words · ~6 min read
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This is the Anttech cooler box. It's part of their new line of coolers. Okay,
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this is a high performance CPU cooler. It's compatible with Intel and AMD. They
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say it is an easy install kit, which we will find out in not too long from now.
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The heat sink material is aluminum. It has eight 6 millm heat pipes, and I
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think uh they're describing the way that it has four heat pipes going through the
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base, and then each side uh goes up four
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times. So, it's a total of eight effective heat pipes by using this dual
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tower design. It uses a 120 mm PWM fan capable of
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spinning from 700 to 2,000 RPM. And it
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uses a four pin connector to power the fan. CPU support is everything. So, AM2,
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AM2 Plus, AM3, LG75, LG 1156, and LGA
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1366. With a lot of these coolers, performance is so close these days. It
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really does come down to ease of installation, uh, the weight uh, that's
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being put on your CPU socket
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and aesthetic factors, other things like that, the intangibles. So, overall, I
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like the look of it already. Let's go ahead and get this out of the box. I
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like that they've got a bit of a darker finish on the aluminum that I'm
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accustomed to seeing. Okay, so Wow, this
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is a lot bigger than I had thought it was based on the box. I thought that the
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box was going to be sort of more packing material and less cooler, but there's a
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whole lot of cooler in there. So, the first thing we find inside is an
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installation guide, which is zero text.
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It is all picture. I love it. It must be
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simple if they don't need to describe anything. Oh, and it's not even as many steps as I thought. The back is only two
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steps. So, we're going to go ahead and figure out the installation a little bit
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uh later. Not in this video. So, I'll be doing an installation video of it uh
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hopefully sometime this week. Let's have a look at the mounting hardware that we
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have included. So, first of all, we have a back plate. Then, we have a 1366 uh
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back plate, an 1156 back plate. And these back plates are kind of unique in
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that it looks like you actually just take an adhesive off, you put those
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through the holes in the back of the motherboard, and there you go. So,
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Anttech saves on materials. Um, and
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everybody wins. You save on the cost of this particular heat sink and you don't
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actually lose any structural integrity here. These should be just fine. These
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are quite thick pieces of metal even though you're just using two strips on
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either side of the back. Very in innovative. Here's an AM2 bracket.
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Here's 775. Oh, what is this for then?
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Now, just a minute.
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How does this work?
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Okay. Well, we'll figure that out in the installation guide. Oh, these must be the top pieces. So, some of these are
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back plates, some of them are top pieces, and we'll have to sort of sort
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that out later. Here's a little wrench. It's very adorable.
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Some Dinatron uh thermal compound.
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And then we have two sets of uh thumb
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screws, one for AMD and one for Intel. So, I'm going to go ahead and assume the
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AMD one just uses the stock AMD back plate and these Intel ones are threaded
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for the Anttech back plates that are included. Now, let's have a look at the
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cooler box itself. You can see right here, it does use a direct touch
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mechanism for the bottom. So, you're not going to be able to demonstrate that
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it's completely flat because that's not really the point of these, but I'll do
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the obligatory finger shot thing anyway that everyone always complains about.
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You know what? Too bad. Uh, it seems to be machined quite flat. There are some
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slight ridges between the heat pipes and the aluminum bits in between, but that
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is to be expected. They're quite shiny heat pipes.
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I've seen shiny ones and not shiny ones. I don't know that it makes any
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difference to cooling performance whatsoever. In fact, I suspect it
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doesn't, but h that doesn't really matter. They've kindly labeled the
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airflow for you on this one. So, here we go. Let's have a look at the fins. First
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of all, the fins are what I would consider about a medium density. So,
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they're not super tight, but they're also not super wide. So, that means that
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you're going to have you're going to have to have a fan that finds a good
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balance of static pressure to uh pure
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CFM in between. Now, Anttech is using what appears to be a custom fan, and I
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don't know if you're going to be able to replace it. So, that could be uh a
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slight problem for people who like to replace the stock fans that are included
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with their heat sinks. Although, I mean, depending how well this one performs,
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there may be no need to replace it. The top uses the uh the tower heat sinks on
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either side and then it uses a metal. And I love to see that this is made
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actually I think it's metal. That's metal, right? Yeah, it's metal.
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I think yeah, it's metal. It uses a metal plate on top with an antec logo.
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I'm so I don't I'm not a big fan of seeing like
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uh plastic bits all over. And while they do use plastic for the fan shroud, that
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doesn't matter to me nearly as much because when this is installed in my case, it looks like this. I don't really
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see this part, but I do see the nice brushed finish that they have on that
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Anttech logo on the top.
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And I guess there's not really too much else to say about it at this point. You
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can see that the fan blades do stick down a little bit below where the fins
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of the heat sink actually reach. And so I'm guessing what you're going to get is
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a little bit of incidental air flow that's going to cool these little heatsink fins down here that sit
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directly over the CPU. And it's also going to do a fair bit of cooling for
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the motherboard components that are around the CPU socket. So, a good
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example of that would be uh these PWM
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heat sinks that you'll find on or VRM, PWM, whatever you want to call them. The
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voltage regulator heat sinks you find on many motherboards should receive a
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little bit of incidental air flow from that. Something that you don't get with
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a lot of tower heat sinks. So, thank you for checking out my unboxing of the
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Anttech cooler box. I'll be hoping to bring you some cooling results as well
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as an installation video in the next little