Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme Review

[rhino56]

Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme Review


When I first ordered the Thermalright ultra 120 extreme heatsink, I didn’t intend to do a review on it. My intentions were to pit it against a water cooling setup and see just how far air cooling has come these days. After actually having it in my hands and inspecting it, I volunteered for the task of reviewing this monster.

I purchased this heatsink at Jab-tech; it wasn’t donated so don’t expect a sugar coated review tap dancing around any flaws it may have. I have no bias on it either way.

I am only comparing this to a stock heatsink since I don’t have any other decent heatsinks to compare it to.

The Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme is an impressive looking heatsink, that’s for sure. Upon inspecting the heatsink, I found some flaws that I felt were lacking in the high quality you might expect from a top-of-the-line heatsink.
The way the heat pipes are attached to the base seemed like it could have been better. As you can see in the picture below, there are gaps between the heat pipes and the base of the cooler.

Full sized photo

While this may only be a minute detail with a marginal difference in performance, if any, I wouldn't think this wouldn’t be there since this is at the top of the heatsink food chain. I thought that maybe just my heatsink that had this flaw, so I checked with another person who recently purchased one from a different store and it seems to have the same gaps. After checking into it and finding more photos of them online, it is definitely not a one or two heatsink accidental problem.





The mounting of the fan clips wasn’t hard to figure out, but the instructions could be a bit better when they instruct you to

insert each end of 12cm fan wire clips into the designated holes.

What holes? They don’t really have a clear picture of where the holes are, so here is a photo of the designated holes.



The instructions should state something like this

Insert the wire into the bottom hole first on the side of the heatsink so that it is all the way in; now insert the other end into the top hole.

it’s the only way you can get the wire in all the way on both sides without excessive force. It does say check their website for the latest instructions which has a much better view of how to mount the clips so that was good to find. Hopefully, in the future, the instructions that they enclose with the heatsink will get better.

The mounting plate design could be improved upon. Once you get everything in place you have to put the 4 screws in. The first one is easy, but then you have to get the opposing side on and it’s under quite a bit of pressure. You have to push down with your screwdriver to get the threads started. If the threads were a bit longer this may not be necessary. I would hate to slip and bust a capacitor off of my motherboard mounting this heatsink; it would be really easy to do pushing that hard on the screws to get them started.


The heatsink is so large that I couldn't mount the fan on the bottom side like I wanted to because of my Northbridge cooler. But it should perform the same in the position it is in.
The only other concern I had was after mounting and removing it, I noticed the thermal material was thin in the center and thicker at the sides.
That told me the base of the heatsink wasn’t very flat. With a little research I found out I wasn’t alone in the problem. The owner of an online store called TankGuys Computer Parts who sells the heatsinks asked Thermalright about the issue and this was what he had found out about it.

Originally Posted by TankGuys

Hey Guys-

I've been reading/hearing a very common complaint on many forums, about how the Ultra-120 Extremes have a base that is not very flat. They tend to be a bit concave.

This fact has been confirmed to me, having checked a few when we had them in stock. Indeed, they all seem to be at least a bit concave. At first glance, this would lead you to believe there were some quality control issues going on, as the prevailing opinion is that flat = good.

I brought up this issue to our Thermalright rep today, and it turns out this is done intentionally, for two main reasons:

1 - As most of you know, the IHS on the chips are rarely perfectly flat, and tend to be slightly convex. Thus, convex IHS + concave HS gives a better contact, in general.

2 - The concave shape helps keep it from "sticking" to the IHS. Some of you may have had problems in the past, when the Heatsink is seated for any length of time. Sometimes it's hard to get it to release, and some have damaged processors this way. The concave shape of the base is supposed to help reduce this.


The actual benefit of shaping the base this way will likely still be debated by people, and you're obviously free to draw your own conclusions - but ultimately, the shape is not due to lack of quality control, it's an intentional design. Hopefully this helps clear up some of the frenzy!

This information was posted at Overclockers Forums - Powered by vBulletin
While myself I feel that if they did design the heatsink to have a convex base to match a concave Processor that it was a mistake to do so.
Flatter is better period.
I measured this convex rise in the center of the heatsink to be approximately
.22MM high from the outside edges. You can see it pretty clearly here


Full sized photo
and here.


Full sized photo

I’m sure there are concave processors out there but i looked carefully at mine and it seemed quite flat in comparison to the heatsink.

Full sized photo


For my test system, I'll be using an Asus P5w Dh deluxe Motherboard with a 3.2 GHz Cedarmill Processor. It’s the hottest CPU I have on hand.

Note: all testing has been performed under ideal conditions. You may not achieve the same results if you have limited airflow within your case.


I first ran a series of tests with my stock heatsink.

Here are the results.

Stock speeds idle usage
CPU 36 C
Motherboard 34 C
Ambient 27 C

Stock speeds CPU usage 100% (measured after 15 minutes of full load)
CPU 54 C
Motherboard 34 C
Ambient 27 C


Overclocked to 4.4 GHz idle usage
CPU 42 C
Motherboard 34 C
Ambient 27 C

Overclocked to 4.4 GHz CPU usage 100%
I was unable to run 15 full minutes at this speed, after 2 minutes my CPU was up to 70 C so I had to abort the test.
CPU 70+ C
Motherboard 34 C
Ambient 27 C

The exact same tests with the Thermalright ultra 120 extreme

Stock speeds idle usage
CPU 30 C
Motherboard 34 C
Ambient 27 C

Stock speeds CPU usage 100% (measured after 15 minutes of full load)
CPU 40 C
Motherboard 34 C
Ambient 27 C

Overclocked to 4.4 GHz idle usage
CPU 32 C
Motherboard 34 C
Ambient 27 C

Overclocked to 4.4 GHz CPU usage 100%
CPU 49 C
Motherboard 34 C
Ambient 27 C




Conclusion

I know I pointed out every little flaw this heatsink has, but the one thing I didn’t mention is price. In the $60.00 to $70.00 price range, you can’t expect perfection, but regarding price vs. performance, I do think it is everything they say it is.

Congrats to Thermalright for producing an excellent heatsink. What can I say? The numbers speak for themselves; I am truly impressed with the performance.

Reviewers rating: 9 out of 10



I plan on filling the gaps on this heatsink with silver solder and testing to see if it improves the performance any. I will also lap the base of this heatsink flat and test for any gains in performance also. So look for the updates to this soon.

[rhino56]

UPDATE:

After filling the gaps with Arctic Silver Adhesive, (I couldn’t get the silver solder to stick well enough onto the nickel plating) I ran the same tests in exactly the same conditions with no improvement at all in temps. That didn’t surprise me as the gaps were quite small anyways.

I got the heatsink lapped


I ran all the tests again and much to my amazement I had no gains at all. It was the same thru every test as it was before lapping. I thought perhaps it was due to me mounting it differently, using too much thermal paste or something, because I really did expect at least a small drop in temps. After remounting it again with just the right amount of thermal paste it was again the same.
I am really impressed that not even 1 degree Celsius could be gained by lapping it.

If the mounting system they use were improved upon I would most definitely rate this heatsink a 10. I have lapped several heatsinks in the past and have seen gains of 6 Celsius in lower temperatures.
I will lap the CPU and test it again, but since that has nothing to do with the heatsink I will post it within the forum and conclude this review on the fact that this heatsink rocks.
The convex surface seems to be no problem for it on this Processor. Thermalright has done their homework on this design and they have proved me wrong. I guess flatter isn’t always better. Congrats Thermalright on a heatsink I can honestly recommend to anyone as an excellent choice for air cooling.
I look forward to pitting this monster against the Apogee GT in my air vs. water cooling comparison coming soon.


UPDATE #2:
i figured i might as well add this information in here to keep it simple and organized.
After lapping my CPU and testing under the same conditions i had 0 gains. every temp was the same. at 4.4 GHz full load it looked like it might be 1c lower but it was too close to tell.

[Jenny]

it was suspenseful there for a while, but I'm glad for them that they got a good review


excellent work

[aronmartin]

Good job on the review.

[aronmartin]

I also have to agree on the installation, it took me a while to figure out where the fan clips went. Installing the spring retention you need to be careful as rhino said, although I personally did not like the stock retention system either.

[aronmartin]

I decided to remove my ultra 120 and change the orentation. I found the install was much easier if the mobo is removed, it is much easier to get the screws in because you can reach in with your other hand and push the retention clip down and start the screws after you started the first one.

[sigs]

Nice review on Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme. It is good to know about that. My friend have one and satisfied with that. He also suggest me to get one but i am still confused about that.

[dunk3r23]

Good job on a review!!! I hope I will get on of those sometimes!

[viciosogb]

Hi,

I recently bought this cooler, well the true black 120 extreme (the same thing just with some color), but I hav a problem with t.

The temps I got are from 64 to 78 C!!! in an Intel E6600 with no OC in a 22-24 ambient temp.

I tried installing the cooler in every form, horizontaly or vertically (this one has the lowest) but with no luck.

Anyone can help me with this?

Thanks in advance

[rhino56]

Originally Posted by viciosogb

Hi,

I recently bought this cooler, well the true black 120 extreme (the same thing just with some color), but I hav a problem with t.

The temps I got are from 64 to 78 C!!! in an Intel E6600 with no OC in a 22-24 ambient temp.

I tried installing the cooler in every form, horizontaly or vertically (this one has the lowest) but with no luck.

Anyone can help me with this?

Thanks in advance

is it making good contact? when you put a dot of thermal paste on the center of the chip does it spread it out all over the chip?