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AMD & Intel Cooling Devices
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Monday, 05 June 2006 |
| What's that you say? Another CPU cooler? Yes, indeed - however this one sports a few things not often seen in todays "performance" coolers. Something that's often accepted as a consequence of high cooling performance. Noise! | | | | | | Introduction |
| | | Many of todays high end air cooling products have one of two common problems, now these problems affect people differently and some people don't even see them as problems. One of them is noise, while some people can hide their computer away under a desk many of us actually sit within 5-6 feet of our machine. Some people don't mind the constant humming of a high speed fan, others simply cannot stand it. I for one am the latter.
Now, the second problem many of todays high end air cooling products have is weight, if they're not noisy, they're heavy, usually built with a substantial amount of copper and sometimes even requiring an additional support plate being placed behind your motherboard.
Fortunately, Scythe have an answer to both those problems in a single product. The Mine. At first glance a large and what looks like heavy heatsink/fan combination. But looks can be and are in this case, deceiving! | | | |
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| | | Product Details & Specifications |
| | | Product Name: "Mine"
Product Manufacturer: Scythe (Scythe Homepage)
Manufacturers Description: Unlike the Nnja or Ninja Plus , that is designed for fanless or minimal fan requirements, the Mine 3 Cooler is designed with 3 heatpipes and more fins to increase surface area to maximize cooling abilities by utilizing a high performance 100mm fan with high capacity airflow.
Dimensions: 100 x 100 x 25mm
Weight: 500G
Noise Level: 22.0dBa | | | |
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| | | | | Lab Test System Specifications |
| | | CPU: Intel Pentium D 920 2.8Ghz
Motherboard: ASUS P5WD2 Premium
Memory: 2GB Corsair XMS2-Pro DDR2-5400
Video Card: ATI Radeon X1900XT
Power Supply: Seasonic 500W | | |
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| | | | | Initial Testing & Results |
| | | For our first test, we have not overclocked any internal components of the system. We did however opt to use Arctic Silver as opposed to the included thermal solution, however for those that do not have Arctic Silver at hand the solution provided with the Scythe Mine is more than sufficient.
As you can see, these are fairly impressive results for an air cooling solution that's not completely built of copper, doesn't weigh a ton and makes little to no noise. Not to mention this is an Intel D 920 chip. | | | | | |
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| | Overclocking Results |
| | | We are fortunate here at Overclockers Canada to have an Intel D 920 chip that has prove stable at over 4.4 Ghz, so we can throw some pretty hefty overclocks onto the cooling devices that we are sent to review. We decided to take the chip up to 3.6Ghz for this particular experiment, however we started at 3.2Ghz.
For some result our graphing software did a few qwerky things with the graphs, it made the differences in temperature look bigger than they are - so for now, just pay attention to the numbers. As you can see, both the idle and load temperature increased from it's stock speeds, which is to be expected, however the temperatures are still pretty impressive for a product of this kind. Next, 3.6Ghz!
 Again our graphing software went funky, but the numbers are still accurate! The temperatures again rose from the previous speed, which is again expected. However they are still well within safe limits and the Scythe Mine continues to be noiseless. With a heft overclock of 800Mhz the Scythe Mine still manages to keep noise level at a minimum and the Intel D 920 cool and well within it's limits. | | | | | |
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| | | The Conclusion |
| | | I'll be the first to admit that my initial impressions on the Scythe Mine were "Holy #!^$ that thing is huge and must weigh a ton!". However I was pleasantly suprised when I received my sample that it did not and it was, as promised almost silent. Not only that, but it still provided impressive cooling results with our Intel D 920 chip overclocked to 3.6Ghz.
I will give out a small warning however, to those that have smaller cases - some might have trouble fitting the side of your case back on once this silent bad boy is installed. Fortunately, mine and many others managed to fit back on, but it was a close one.
Besides that minor gripe, i'd recommend this cooler for anyone that wants high air cooling performance that doesn't weigh a whole lot and doesn't sound like a vacuum cleaner!
Overclockers Canada would like to thank Scythe USA for providing the product sample that made this review possible and we look forward to seeing what other cooling products they come out with in the future. |
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