PCExtreme.net - Thermaltake Silent Tower Review.

Thermaltake Silent Tower

Review Date: May 18, 2004
Reviewed by: Cory Zerkee
Sponsored by: Thermaltake

Thermaltake is a name well known to the PC market. One mentions Thermaltake and almost everyone has tried at least one of their products, or know someone who has. Their ever increasing product lineup now covers almost everything a PC performance enthusiast could want, from coolers to cases, to lights. I have reviewed their products before on more than one occasion, and have noticed on common theme in their product lineup; looks. They not only make their products to perform, but also add style to suit the modder in all of us. I recently reviewed their Damier case, which definitely stands out, so much so that some might find it over the top.

Today though, I am going to take a look at just one brand new item from their huge selection; the Silent Tower cooler. The Silent Tower is a heat pipe based “4 in 1” cooler that fits Intel P4 Socket 478, Intel Socket T, AMD K7, and K8.

The Silent Tower arrived packed in a clear plastic package so you can see the large beast. The package is adorned with pictures and info on the cooler as well as the ever present Thermaltake logo(s). As you can see, the production date of April 3rd is stamped on the rear of the package showing us how new this cooler really is.

Here is the goods on the Silent Tower courtesy of the Thermaltake website.

Opening up the package, we see what Thermaltake has included along with the cooler. We get a baggie of screws, washers and nuts, adaptor plates and pad for Intel and AMD, a tube of Thermaltake thermal paste, and an installation booklet. As I mentioned earlier, the Silent Tower will fit AMD or Intel CPU’s courtesy of the adaptor plates.

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Pulling the cooler out of the package, which I would like to say was pleasantly easy to open, you can see how monstrous this beast really is. It measures 86x80x138mm and contains a giant aluminum 59 fin radiator style heatsink. The Silent Tower weighs in at a meaty 640g (1.41lbs). The key to the whole setup is the three heat pipes that transfer the heat from the copper base up to the aluminum fins where it is released. Heat pipes are being used in more and more of today’s coolers and I am a fan of them myself.

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Looking it over it appears that the heat pipes are soldered to the aluminum fins for better heat transfer but are only held to the copper base via a screw down retaining plate. How that will affect performance I will have to wait and see. I guess if you were picky you could unscrew the retaining plate and apply some high quality thermal paste to the contact points before you reinstall the plate.

Flipping it over, we can get a closer look at the finish of the copper base. I am not going to lie here, but this cooler has to have flat out the worst base finish I have ever seen. You can see in the pic that it contains not only countless scratches, but also a few gouges to go with them. It almost looks like it was finished using a Dremel tool. This is in start contrast to the almost perfect mirror like micro finish that was found on the Swiftech MXC478-V that I recently reviewed. I would definitely recommend a good lapping before using this heatsink for those of us that are on the pickier side. For this review though, I will not lap the heatsink as the average consumer will not. I will just test it as it comes out of the package with the exception of some decent thermal paste.

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The large aluminum radiator-like cooling fins are shaped in the same Thermaltake X shape that can be found somewhere on 99% of their products. Although it is in an X shape, it is not squared which I found annoying (I will get into that later in the review when I go over installation). The heatsink is surrounded by a blue aluminum shroud that contains one 3 pin, 2500RPM, 90mm, silent fan that can push 52.24CFM at 21dBA and room for either another 90mm exhaust on the opposite side; or you can swap it and the exhaust for 80mm fans if you prefer. The unit will accommodate both sizes.

Now for the fun part; or not so fun part for me at least; installation. I will only be going over installation and testing of the Silent Tower on a Pentium 4 motherboard as that is what I am running. The included instruction manual goes over installation on AMD K7 & K8, and Intel Socket 478 & T fairly clearly. Installing the Silent Tower requires you to remove your motherboard which, to be honest, I was not too excited about. That said, I removed my motherboard and unscrewed the stock Intel retention bracket as per the instructions.

Next, I found the correct adaptor plate and foam pad (to keep the rear metal adaptor plate from shorting out the traces on your motherboard. Fire=BAD! Beer=Good!) After that, I slid the four long screws through the pad and plate and then through the four holes on my motherboard. I then flipped over the entire thing and slid the four small felt washers on the screws before using four nuts to screw them down tight to the motherboard. I snugged them up tight enough for the foam pad on the rear to start to squish.

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Thermaltake has included a tube of their unidentified thermal paste but I chose to use my trusty Arctic Silver 3 instead. Being the ever so wonderful finish on the base which I mentioned earlier, I slopped the AS3 onto my processor quite a bit thicker than I normally would. Here is where I ran into a problem. I am not sure if it is a design oops on Thermaltake’s part or just my motherboard in particular. That said, owners of the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe such as myself might find this heatsink to be a pain. What I found is that the four mounting holes for the P4 cooler retention are not mounted square, but rectangular, which is fine EXCEPT that means that the Silent Tower can only be mounted in one of two directions.

The instruction booklet clearly states and depicts the Silent Tower being mounted with the fan facing your optical drives (the front of the case), but on my Asus at least, the direction of the mounting holes puts the fan either on the bottom sucking hot air from the stinking hot 9800 Pro below it, or upwards smack against the bottom of the PSU. After some swearing, I figured ok, I would just take off the aluminum shroud and rotate it 90 degrees so the fan would still face the correct direction. No such luck, as I mentioned at the beginning of the review, the aluminum fins are NOT square but rectangular, so you cannot rotate the fan shroud. All they had to do it make it square, and this entire thing would be a non issue.

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Anyways, back to the installation. After placing the Silent Boost over the four long screws I mounted to my motherboard earlier, I screwed it down with four more included nuts. Thermaltake does not supply springs or any other over-tension devices, so you have to be careful when tightening down the heatsink or you may over tighten it and cause damage, but I assume the loud crack would warn you of that. After securing it down firmly I locked the nuts with a second set of four that are also included with the package.

After that is done, I shoved it all back into my Thermaltake Damier case and decided to check clearances because the Silent Tower is extremely tall. This is where I burst out laughing. The Silent Tower is so tall that my side window fan retainer would not close; I had to remove the upper fan before it would close and I could put my side panel back on. You figure that Thermaltake would design it to fit into a THERMALTAKE case, but it appears not.

I had hoped by this point that the performance would undo any headaches I had already experienced, because I would not be too thrilled if I had to take it all apart again to remove it and put my MCX478-V back in. So, let’s find out shall we?

Test Rig:
Intel Pentium 4 Prescott 2.8E @ 3.2GHz
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
ATI 9800 Pro w/Zalman ZM80-C HP Heat pipe cooler
1GB Corsair PC4000
Thermaltake Damier case

The ambient air temp for testing the Silent Tower was 25.5°C. Idle temperatures were taken after 30 minutes idle time and load temps were taken after running Prime95 for 30 minutes. For this review, I will compare the Silent Tower to not only the stock Intel Prescott cooler, but also to the excellent Swiftech MCX478-V I recently reviewed.

As you can see, the Silent Tower creams the stock Intel cooler and also beats the Swiftech by 4°C at idle and a whopping 8°C under load. This honestly surprised me as I have read another review of the Silent Tower and they experienced high temps with it and said it performed poorly. Maybe they had installation issues with it and didn’t know it, but the temps are excellent for me. It kept my PrescHOT nice and cool. Just for the heck of it, I overclocked my Prescott another 3.4GHz to 3.4GHz and raised the VCore to 1.55V and the idle temp went up to 42°C and load 55°C, still very acceptable for this hot processor.

Thermaltake is quite large in the CPU cooler market, and the Silent Tower is quite literally; very large. Although I had several installation issues I had to work out and the base finish on this sample was horrid, the temperatures speak for themselves. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Silent Tower actually works quite well and it was a toss up as to whether the problems I had installing it outweighed the performance. You do have to take into account that each motherboard manufacturer locates and orientates the CPU socket differently, so whether the Silent Tower will install facing the correct direction is literally a gamble, but even facing incorrectly on my motherboard, it performed excellently. I cannot stress enough however that the Silent Tower is EXTREMELY TALL and you will have to take that into consideration when looking at purchasing it. It’s not perfect, but it does work well. I will give it a 3 out of 5.