- There's a point where you can't make a cooler bigger
because you can't move heat
to the outermost fins, fast enough for them to be helpful.
So then how the F does this work?
I remember Noctua explaining to me that limitations
of heat pipe cooling technology, are the reason
that they still have not updated the NHD15,
a design from over six years ago.
So then, does IceGiant, who claims that this air cooler
is competitive with custom water cooling,
know something that Noctua doesn't?
Actually, yes, but to explain,
we're gonna need to have a look at the test results.
Just like the test results I just got from my doctor.
Looks like I've got a bad case of Segway-itis.
Our sponsor GlassWire is the tool that shows you
which apps are slowing down your connection.
Used by security pros to monitor for malware,
block bandwidth wasters
and detect suspicious activity.
You can get 25% off today,
using offer code Linus, at the link below.
(upbeat music)
When we showed off the IceGiant ProSiphon prototype,
it reached a level of insane cooling performance
that we had never seen from an air cooler,
but it did leave us with a couple of questions.
One, was it good because of IceGiant's
thermosiphon technology, or was it good
because it had two high high-speed delta fans
strapped to a heat sink big enough to bend the motherboard.
Compared to their proof of concept,
the production unit is much more reasonable.
The ProSiphon Elite, is equipped
with much quieter fans and well, it's still huge,
but it is considerably smaller than the old version.
The best part, is that true to their promises,
which we didn't quite believe at the time,
this new version delivers
the same performance as the prototype.
Actually, it ended up being about half a degree cooler,
while being smaller and much quieter.
Apparently this improvement in efficiency,
is thanks to the third condenser unit that they added
which actually, we should back up for a second
and talk about the heart of the ProSiphon, the thermosiphon.
Now we'll have more detail in our original video
on the prototype, but here's the TLDR.
Most modern air coolers work using heat pipes,
which are super good at moving heat
from one place to another, like thousands of times
more conductive than copper.
But heat pipes have a problem, dry out.
Inside every heat pipe, is a fluid that heats up
and evaporates, flowing away from the heat source.
Then condenses that the fins of the heat sink
where the cooling is happening and returns
to the heat source, using a wick.
Heat pipe dry out occurs, when the fluid starts boiling
inside the wick, that's supposed to be
returning it to the heat source.
This greatly increases the thermal resistance
of the heat pipe and makes it really bad at it's one job.
Now for years, this didn't matter,
since you need a lot of heat to cause dry out.
Problem is, nowadays AMD's thread ripper 3000 series chips,
are rated at up to 280 watts
and consume much more than that when you overclock them.
So taming these beasts has been a challenge,
unless you want to move into custom water cooling.
Now the way a thermosiphon works,
is somewhere in between a heat pipe and water cooling.
Like a heat pipe, it boils a fluid at the heat source,
but unlike a heat pipe, it uses some fancy engineering
to turn the boiling fluid into a pump
that circulates itself through the cooler.
So you can kind of think of this thing
as a wholly self-contained AIO, but way more reliable
because there's no moving parts in here.
The actual thermosiphon is expected to have a lifetime
of decades and that's backed up by a 10 year warranty.
And unlike an AIO, where the pump is expected
to be the first thing to fail,
the ProSiphon Elite's weakest link, is its fans.
The biggest quirk about thermosiphons though,
is that because they use gravity to work,
you can mount it like this or like this
but if you mount it like this,
you're gonna have a really bad time.
We're here for a good time though, so let's flip it around.
(upbeat music)
Now normally, the flow of air
inside a case is pretty simple.
Cold air comes in the front and then
warm air is exhausted out the back.
But in this case, pun intended,
the rear fan is probably not doing a whole lot
because of the way the IceGiant exhausts its air upward.
So in our testing, with a Threadripper 3970X
running at four gigahertz all core, our CPU temps
dropped by four degrees, by adding two fans
to the top of the case.
And we also found that having no rear fan at all,
didn't really change things.
Taking the rear case fan out and chucking it
in the top of your case, could net you
as much as three degrees with this cooler.
One fun observation, is that with
Nvidia founder's edition cards
also moving to a more bottom to top air flow scheme,
a ProSiphon Elite would probably pair well
with one of those, that is if you could find one.
For our tests, our case fans were set to 1200 RPM
and the CPU fans were set to maximum speed.
We also monitored our room temperature
and adjusted our results to 22 degrees ambient.
Out of the gate on our Threadripper 3970X 32 core,
this thing is shockingly good.
It even handled our first overclock stage easily,
with all 32 cores going at four gigahertz,
The ProSiphon Elite reached a maximum temperature
of 80.1 degrees and flew through our Blender Classroom
render benchmark, which we had to run
at 10 times the samples, so that it would
take 22 minutes instead of just two.
Man, isn't Threadripper amazing?
We then decided to give it all the beans
and see just how far we could take this chip
on the ProSiphon Elite.
And it turns out, the weak link ended
up being the silicon, not the cooling.
The ProSiphon was able to narrowly
avoid thermal throttling, even when we pushed all 32 cores
to 4.3 gigahertz at 1.37 volts.
And for those of you who don't speak turbo nerd,
these are the kinds of speeds that I would expect
to need sub ambient cooling to achieve.
Not some roided out air cooler.
This seems to be a limit
of either our CPU or our motherboard.
And I doubt additional cooling would make much
of a difference, unless we went really exotic.
I mean the poor motherboard VRMs were delivering
over 250 amps during our 4.3 gigahertz run.
What we don't know yet though,
is if this great result is due
to IceGiant's engineering or AMD's.
So how do other thread ripper coolers stack up?
To find out, we dusted off
our trustee Noctua NH-U14S TR4.
There are other options, notably
the Cooler Master Wraith Ripper
and the Thermalright Silver Arrow TR4.
But other reviews have shown the U14S,
to be both cooler and quieter.
There's also the Arctic Freezer 50 TR,
which does slightly outperform the U14S,
but RAM compatibility on that thing is atrocious,
so it's off the table.
NHU14S then, well all I can say is,
it might need some sexy sweat bands, lttstore.com,
because this thing got hot,
13 degrees hotter to be exact, dang.
We also tested out the NZXT Kracken Z73,
which predictably wasn't able to keep up.
But, really any cooler that's not specifically designed
for Threadripper, isn't going to be able to compete
with one that is properly able to cover the entire IHS.
And the reason, is that the dis
underneath, are so spread out.
Now we did have the Enermax Liqtech TR4,
but the pump died in our unit
which is apparently a common issue with these,
so probably just avoid them.
leaving us with only one other option,
full custom water cooling, now.
(banging)
It's not exactly a fair fight, when you consider the cost.
$170 for a ProSiphon Elite,
that is really expensive for a cooler,
but it's still less than half of this $440
of raw, PC cooling goodness.
And get this, the ProSiphon only lost by two degrees.
What, one thing we haven't talked
about yet though, is noise.
And with four fans, you might expect it to be pretty bad.
In practice though, it's not.
Even at full blast, they were barely able to crack
the 42 decibel noise floor of our office.
And there's no high-pitched whining,
so it's pretty easy to tune out, even though it is louder
than Noctua's solution, which I would
still recommend for stock operation.
Bottom line then, if you've got a Threadripper computer,
buy this just buy it now.
So I mean, you can find anywhere to buy it.
Who's carrying it?
Okay then, but wait, Linus, there's like
four minutes left in this video.
Ah, let's talk about the problem for IceGiant.
Most of you aren't made of fat stacks of cash
and you don't have a Threadripper system.
And on any other platform, the U14S,
isn't Noctua's biggest, baddest cooler, the NHD15 is.
So, for our Intel cooling comparison,
this is the only cooler we're going to test against
because frankly, if you want performance
without going full custom liquid cooling,
this is what you're buying.
If you still need some convincing
that it's better than an AIO, go watch this video.
Installation on LGA 1200, is actually
a little bit easier than Threadripper.
IceGiant appears to have taken our advice
and basically just ripped off
Noctua's secufirm mounting system.
Now, since the point of this cooler
is its ability to handle big, heavy loads,
we overclocked our core I7 10875K,
to 4.9 gigahertz all core,
so that it would consume a tasty 230 watts,
which the NHD15 was able to handle without much issue.
As for the ProSiphon Elite,
well it handled it, but worse,
five degrees worse to be exact.
Now it's still a solid result.
The ProSiphon was able to take all 10 cores
to the reasonable limit of our silicon
but there are a few things holding it back here.
First and foremost, the ProSiphon Elite was optimized
for multi-di designs, like Threadripper
and AM4, where the heat generation
is spread out across the IHS.
Intel consumer chips instead,
have a small heat generating di
right in the center and conventional heat pipe coolers
and AIO's for that matter, are designed to deal
with this specific scenario.
In the future, IceGiant thinks there'll be able
to take on other coolers on more conventional chips,
maybe by switching to a copper cold plate.
But honestly, I doubt it would make a ton
of sense to buy anyway.
Most consumer chips are generating much less
than 200 watts under normal circumstances.
And that's where heat pipe coolers like the NHU14
or D15, are still very efficient at scooting away heat.
If you're using an Intel extreme edition,
sure the ProSiphon Elite Intel edition,
could be a good buy.
Can certainly generate enough heat for it,
but we didn't bother testing that because frankly,
no one should be buying an intel extreme edition right now.
Just get a 5900X or if you really
need the threads, a Threadripper, with one of these.
Thank you to Ting Mobile for sponsoring today's video.
Ting has new rates that make it easier to see
how much you can save by switching to Ting.
They've got unlimited talk and text for $10,
data plans starting at just $15 and unlimited data for $45.
So if you liked their previous pay what you use plans,
don't worry, those are still there.
They're just called Ting Flex plans,
charging just $5 per gig.
Data can also be shared if you have a family plan
so you can connect more phones, to save even more.
You'll still get the same nationwide coverage
and pretty much any phone will work with Ting.
Just check them out at linus.ting.com,
and receive a $25 credit.
If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out,
you know what, go check out the video on the prototype,
'cause it gets into a little bit more
of the science-y stuff and it's worth a watch.