I have quite a bit of experience with Nmedia products, they make excellent HTPC enclosures and other accessories for HTPCs, as well as various computer accessories. Today for review I have their new IceCone CPU cooler made for HTPC systems. The IceCone is made to be quiet to satisfy the needs of an HTPC system by not adding any additional noise but keeping the CPU cool in the process. It not only looks cool but does a very good job of keeping the CPU cool and your system quiet. Read on to learn about the Nmedia IceCone…
Nmedia IceCone CPU Cooler
Reviewed by: Kristofer Brozio AkA Dracos
Sponsor: Nmedia
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
In term of "CPU Cooling", there are three choices in the market. Air Cooling; Heatpipe Cooling and Liquid Cooling. Liquid cooling is not mature enough to be widely adopted, including safety and pricing considerations. So, we focus on the other two choices.
In HTPC world, size does matter. So, our cooler must be living in a compact environment, but performing. We develop two top of the line HTPC Coolers base on the following aspects:
Air Cooling Design & Material: Copper is the #1 material choice in air cooling. Period. So, we used entirely pure copper heatsink on the ICECONE. What differentiates the ICECONE from the competitors is the shape. We know the heatsink bottom base gets all the heat from the CPU, so, we increased the bottom size significantly, that means the heat will be consumed by the heatsink more efficiently. At the mean time, we lowered the heatsink height, so that the heat will be blown out faster by the CPU fan.
Air Cooling Fan: The bottleneck is the noise. If we use 120mm fan for the silent, users may have the interference issue in most of the HTPC cases. If we used 80mm or smaller size fan, the performance will be an issue, and the noise due to the high speed spinning fan is completely unacceptable for HTPC users. So, we, again, went beyond the boundary, developed our own 100mm silent fan to achieve the balance of the silencing and strong performance.
Tooless Installation: We want our customers have no hassle to upgrade their coolers. We developed the easy clip design. No need to totally un-install your entire system to change the motherboard bracket and un-wiring all your cables. Simply use our intelligently designed universal bracket, push it in, and clip on the heatsink. You are able to do it in 5 minutes to upgrade your existing generic noise maker to this efficient and silent cooler.
Model: ICECONE
Support CPU Platform: AMD Socket 754 / 940 / 939 / AM2 and INTEL Socket LGA775 / 478
Dimension: 4.41” (L) x 2.56” (H) x 5” (W)* (112mm x 112mm x 65mm)
Weight: 25.2 oz / 713g
Heatsink Material: Pure copper
Fan: 100mm Dual ball Bearing- 100x100x25mm
Fan Speed: 2600RPM ± 10%
Noise Level: 18-28dBA ± 10%
Air Flow: 35.3-55.3 CFM
Thermal Resistance: 0.24~0.21
Support Processor: Intel 3.8 GHz / AMD 4800+ or higher
Note: * 5” width including the Clip Length. Not the heatsink width
Highlight:
-Innovative easy clip for easy installation
-Pure Copper material ensures excellent heat dissipation
-Enlarged heatsink base that maximum performance
-100mm fan that enables the best balancing performance on air flow/noise/fan speed/size
-Fan Speed Controller is included on a PCI bracket
Price $34.99 from NewEgg at time of Review
A Better Look at Things
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First up we have the packaging, the box is the standard retail type, with a nice window in it so you can see the IceCone. The IceCone was shipped to me in another box that was full of packing peanuts for protection.
On the box we find basic installation instructions and lots of specs and features listed as well.
Upon opening the box my first impression was that this in a really nice looking CPU cooler, it reminds me of the Zalman 'flower' type of CPU cooler.
Getting everything unpacked we find mounting hardware for the various socket installs, along with a PCI slot fan speed controller. Also included is a full instruction manual, installation hardware and generic thermal compound.
As I mentioned it does resemble a Zalman CPU cooler, but it is shorter and fatter. The Nmedia IceCone has an interesting fan shroud around the edges of the fan blade, it creates an interesting look while protecting your fingers and other parts of the computer from harm.
The Nmdedia IceCone attached to the CPU socket bracket that is supplied, there is also a 3-pin power connector that can be connected to the supplied fan speed controller or directly to the motherboard fan header.
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A Better Look at Things
Continued:
Looking at the Nmedia IceCone from the bottom we can get a better look at the fins, and there are a lot of them. The entire IceCone is copper except for the mounting bracket, being entirely copper it should perform well.
The base of the IceCone is fairly well finished, I have seen worse and I have seen better, It appears to be flat and smooth, overall it is very good. If you look closely you can see the lines of each individual fin going through the base.
One cool thing about the installation is that no screws are used, the Nmedia IceCone uses plastic pins to secure the mounting bracket to the motherboard, I will be installing on my LGA775 mobo.
The Nmedia IceCone seems very well made, it is actually fairly heavy, if you have ever held one of the Zalman CPU Coolers then you know how heavy this is. I really like the look of it, especially the fan shroud, I just think it looks really cool with the shroud on it.
Installation, Testing and Comparison
As I mention earlier I am installing the Nmedia IceCone on my LGA775 motherboard, specifically an Asus PWD5-E Premium with an Intel P4 Cedar Mill at 3.0Ghz. Of course you need to remove the motherboard from the case to do the installation, this is always a pain, but usually worth it. Installing the mounting bracket is very easy just line up the holes on the mobo with the holes on the bracket and stick the pins in place, very easy.
The particular motherboard can be a pain at installing heat sinks onto, I've come across some that won't install at all because of clearance issues. The Nmedia IceCone came close to components but didn't touch anything.
This Asus motherboard features things that make it quieter, like an extra heatsink near the I/O ports on the board, this is where I ran into problems with other CPU coolers, but the IceCone fit there fine.
Installing the fan speed controller is easy, just find a free PCI slot and that's that. The wires for the controller are fairly long, but having no fan guard on the IceCone makes their positioning tricky and some wire management is needed.
Overall the IceCone fits very well in a case with lots of room to spare, if it can fit the Asus PWD5-E motherboard then I'm sure it will fit most any out there.
Ok onto the testing, ambient temp was 27C, I used SpeedFan to get the temps from the CPU sensor. I let the system sit with nothing running except basic Windows services for 30Minutes to get the Idle Temps, temps are recorded with fan on low and on high. To achieve load I used Prime95, and let it run for 30 minutes as well, again recording temps with fan on high and on low. Comparisons with other cooling solutions are included as well.
From the chart data we can see that there really isn't much of a difference between the fan being on high or low speeds in the temperatures. I do have to say that the Nmeida IceCone even on high speed is virtually silent, I couldn't hear it over the other case fans. The IceCone would be great for any HTPC system where silence is demanded. The Thermalright SI-128 is about three times the size of the IceCone and of course it fairs better as expected. The Intel stock cooler is just overly loud and just barely keeps the CPU cool under specs. Of course the ThermalTake Rhythm liquid cooling setup is the best, but then again that is expected as well.
The Thermalright SI-128 is not really made for an HTPC, as it won't fit in most of them, but I threw it in for a comparison to give you an idea of the performance of the Nmedia IceCone.
On a side note, I believe we could shave off quite a few more degrees just by using some other thermal paste such as Arctic Silver or Zalman STG paste, the generic paste is just not that great, and everyone knows it.
Summary:
Well there is always a trade off for silence, and with the Nmedia IceCone there is one, but it is not that great as could be expected. The IceCone is made very well, and being all copper I believe this helped its cooling performance. The IceCone is relatively a small CPU cooler in comparison to the stock cooling solution and exponentially quieter, the IceCone would make an excellent addition to anyones HTPC system.
DragonSteelMods gives the Nmedia IceCone CPU Cooler a 5 out of 5 score and our Recommended Award as well.
Pros:
-Looks great
-Well made
-Very quiet
-Good performance
-Low price
Cons:
-Generic Thermal Compound
I would like to thank Nmedia for the chance to review the IceCone CPU Cooler.