ZEROtherm NV120 Nirvana CPU Heat Sink Review

[Apoptosis]

ZEROtherm NV120 Nirvana CPU Heat Sink Review

Relatively new to the cooling industry ZEROtherm has started to get noticed more and more. Today we get a chance to look at there newest offering to the cooling world, the NV120 Nirvana. The Nirvana NV120 boasts an efficient 8-line, heat-pipe design, an innovative honeycomb structure for optimized airflow and a manual fan speed controller you can place anywhere and a 120mm cooling fan. Read on to see if the ZEROtherm NV120 Nirvana CPU is right for your system.

The design feature that stands out the most on the ZEROtherm NV120 Premium is without a doubt the honeycomb fin design. This honeycomb structure was used to optimize air flow over the cooling fins and to increase the surface area. More than 6,748cm2 of cooling fins are found on the NV120 and this is said to greatly help heat dissipation.

Article Title: ZEROtherm NV120 Nirvana CPU Heat Sink Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/587/1/
ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 Pricing: $41.99 After Rebate at Time of Print

[Zertz]

Temperatures were taken using Coretemp with an ambient room temp of 72 degrees Celsius.

It's quite hot where you live

Pretty good results but it would've been nice to compare it to other coolers and how does it perform when the chip is overclocked

[Apoptosis]

Temperatures were taken using Coretemp with an ambient room temp of 72 degrees Celsius.

It's quite hot where you live

Pretty good results but it would've been nice to compare it to other coolers and how does it perform when the chip is overclocked

typo fixed and you'll see it up against more coolers in the future. Bubba just got that test system together this week and we wanted to get that review out the door before it's old news.

[Zertz]

Cool

Quite an interesting design, wonder how it would do with a 100CFM fan.. Although it doesn't look like fan speed has a huge impact on temps which is a good thing.

[bubba]

Temperatures were taken using Coretemp with an ambient room temp of 72 degrees Celsius.

It's quite hot where you live

Pretty good results but it would've been nice to compare it to other coolers and how does it perform when the chip is overclocked

thanks for the fix Nate, as for the overclocking I have yet to try it. Its on the to do list to learn how.

Cool

Quite an interesting design, wonder how it would do with a 100CFM fan.. Although it doesn't look like fan speed has a huge impact on temps which is a good thing.

Neat idea but I don't have a 100CFM fan though. As soon as I'm done with what I have on there now I was going to put the NV120 cooler back on but with out the fan. I'm curious to see how it will do as a passive cooler.

[stev]

Cool

Quite an interesting design, wonder how it would do with a 100CFM fan.. Although it doesn't look like fan speed has a huge impact on temps which is a good thing.

Neat idea but I don't have a 100CFM fan though. As soon as I'm done with what I have on there now I was going to put the NV120 cooler back on but with out the fan. I'm curious to see how it will do as a passive cooler.

In general, heats-pipes are not air-side limited. So, putting more CFM through them isn't going to buy any more performance.

For a high ended heat-pipe, each pipe would need a unique style of plates and air-centers to increase the performance. Plus a unique shape to overcome the vertical performance hit.

In this review, the heat-pipes were placed in a tower configuration. This allowed gravity to have some bearing on the internal fluid. Thus, only 50% of the heat-pipe was primarily functional overall in this test. The remainder of the heat-pipe lower than the CPU had about 30~40 percent performance hit and more than likely flooded out.

If this test was done on a horizontal PC bench test, the result would have been even better. However, most of the readers here own systems having the CPU in a vertical position.

In time, the next generation of heat-pipes will be U-channel shaped and position orientated. This in turn not only helps the performance, but reduces the overall footprint of the cooler. A win-win of a product. The key is for lower cost production to bring it into the retail market which is extremely competitive for a the amount of DIY'ers or people who venture into opening up their computer cases.

Certainly, this reviewed product should do well having 4 pipes vs. 3 or less. Doing the passive cooling would be neat to add to this review. It will take some careful time ramping from idle up to bearable loads. If the cooler performs well under load in a passive mode compared to the Intel reference cooler, then this would help when the fan dies out in the length of used time.

[Dee]

OK, first of all HELLO!

Second, I'm sorry to dig up an old thread!

Third, I'm also sorry to be really fussy, but I need to ask a question about this cooler.

In the review, it says the cooler stands 150mm high off the board. Is this taking into account the socket (I use a socket 775 Asus P5Q-E board), or just the actual board minus the socket? The reason I ask is because I am having great difficulty finding a good cooler to fit inside a CM Wave Master case. All of the best coolers available today stand a little too high, usually around 160mm tall. If the Nirvana stands exactly 150mm from the board including socket, then I would have about 4mm space between the cooler and the side of the case. This is OK, but if the socket itself isn't included, then I can expect it to stand around 155-160mm off the board, and if that's how it is, I wouldn't be able to fit this cooler because I wouldn't be able to close the side of my case.

Once again, I'm sorry for bringing this thread back from the dead, but those few mm's are totally critical. I would really appreciate a reply, so I hope someone (the reviewer, especially) can answer my question. Cheers.

Dee

PS: Does anyone know exactly how high socket 775 sits above the board? I can't measure because I have a CPU in place already.

[bubba]

from the base of the cooler to the top is 6" (~150mm) so measure from the top of the CPU out the 150mm.

As for the socket height dim? sorry don't know that one.


Take a look at the Zalman CNPS9700 LED or NT, I have the LED version in a Centurion 541 mATX case, its a little more than the Zen but its only 142mm tall, and are very close on to each other in performance.

http://legitreviews.pgpartner.com/searc ... 1/st=query

[Dee]

Thanks very much for your help sir. I was hoping the ZEROtherm would fit but maybe I should start looking into buying a new case seeing as this one is restricting me. I'll take a look at the Zalman you suggested. Thanks again.