Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E Special Edition Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. The Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E SE4. Installing the Silver Arrow5. Testing Methodology and Overclocking6. Thermal Performance7. Acoustic Performance8. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

Today we are going to take a look at a special edition of the Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E, a cooler which was one of the original competitors of the Noctua NH-D14.  This cooler is designed to be as quiet as possible, while still offering excellent acoustic performance.

The market for CPU coolers is more competitive than ever with a wide variety of high-end air heatsinks available from a number of manufacturers as well as the vast numbers increasingly popular all-in-one liquid coolers on sale.  It's therefore difficult for smaller brands to compete, especially the likes of Thermalright who aren't as well known as the likes of Noctua or Corsair.

In this test today we will be comparing the Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E Special Edition with the Noctua NH-D14 and Phanteks PH-TC14PE, as well as the latest all-in-one liquid cooling units from Corsair and NZXT.

Specification

• Cooler Dimension: Length 154mm x Width 103mm x Height 165mm (without fans) 154mm x Width 130mm x 165mm (with both TY-143 fan installed).
• Cooler weight: 750g.
• Heat-pipe: 6mm Sintered Heat-pipe*8 units.
• Cooler Base Material: C1100 Pure Copper with Nickel Plating.

The Thermalright Silver Arrow is supplied in a plain brown cardboard box which gives little away about what lies within.  The front of the box is bare except for a Thermalright logo in the centre.

Turning the box around reveals little else, apart from some basic branding.  The box is fairly substantial, though, and should provide a good deal of protection for the cooler during transit.

There are a number of items bundled alongside the cooler, most of which relate to the mounting mechanism. There is also a detailed installation guide included to facilitate installation.

Despite the rather understated appearance of the packaging, the heatsink itself has quite an unusual design, making it look a bit more exciting than the likes of the Noctua NH-D14.  It takes the form of a dual-tower design with eight U-shaped heatpipes, passing through the CPU block at the bottom.

The CPU block itself is made from nickel-plated copper and has a mirror finish.  It is also slightly bowed which is claimed to help improve performance.

The eight 6mm heatpipes pass through the base at the bottom and extend through the stacks of fins on either side.

The heatsink itself stands 165 mm tall in total, and consists of two stacks of aluminium fins arranged around the eight nickel-plated copper heatpipes.  It measures 130 mm deep with the fans installed and 103 mm on it's own.

All of the heatpipes are capped on the ends, giving the cooler a very tidy appearance.

Thermalright supply two TY-145 140 mm fans with the cooler which can spin up to 1,300 RPM.  This is the differentiating factor between this Special Edition version of the cooler and the Extreme version which has 2,500 RPM fans.

Therefore this model is designed with acoustics in mind.

When the fans are attached, the cooler is very large indeed.  It's even wider than the Noctua NH-D14 and Phanteks PH-TC14PE which makes it huge.

The installation process the simplest we've experienced and care must be taken to get a good mount on your CPU.  There is a comprehensive installation guide, though, which simplifies the different steps.  We will be documenting the installation process on the Intel Socket 2011 platform.

First of all, we are instructed to screw down the four ‘screw pillars' into the CPU socket.

Then, the retention bracket can be screwed down into place on top of these.

Next, the thermal paste must be applied before positioning the cooler.  Then, it can be secured into place by screwing down the mounting plate across the CPU block.  This is by far the most fiddly step of the process. While the installation can theoretically be completed with the motherboard in the case, in reality this would be very difficult.

We would recommend using a magnetic screwdriver to manoeuvre the screws into position as it can be quite difficult to put them in place with your fingers due to the large size of the heatsink and the proximity of surrounding components.

This was further complicated for us as our Mushkin RAM was too tall to install after the heatsink so it had to be installed first.

With this RAM installed, we also had to mount the cooler vertically on the motherboard which restricts access to the top PCI Express x16 lane.  Those who want to run multiple graphics cards with this cooler should consider ultra low-profile memory.

Finally the fans can be attached to the cooler.  We must stick some rubber patches to the heatsink to prevent vibrations, before securing the fans in place using the provided wire clips.

To test the performance of the Thermalright SilverArrow SB-E Special Edition, we built a powerful X79 based system on an open test bench to push the cooler to it's limits.  As we were testing on an open test bench, we directed a Be Quiet! Shadow Wings 120 mm fan at the VRM circuitry to better simulate the airflow generated in a case.

Coolers Tested

• Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E Special Edition
• NZXT Kraken X60 (Silent and Extreme modes)
• NZXT Kraken X40 (Silent and Extreme modes)
• Corsair H110 (fans at 12V)
• Corsair H90 (fan at 12V)
• Phanteks PH-TC14PE (fans at 12V)
• Noctua NH-D14 (fans at 12V)

Overclocking

We manually overclocked the i7-3930K to 4.7 GHz by increasing the multiplier to 47x, leaving the baseclock set at 100 MHz.  We set Load Line Calibration to ‘High', and increased the CPU Current Capability to 120% with a minor voltage increase.  Speed stepping was disabled for both stock and overclocked tests.

See validation here.

For our temperature tests we loaded the system for 10 minutes using Prime 95 and recorded the CPU temperature using CPUID HWMonitor.  We then restarted the system and left it idling at the desktop for 10 minutes before recording temperatures. The temperatures recorded are based on an ambient temperature of 20 degrees C.

The thermal performance of the Silver Arrow falls slightly behind that of the Noctua NH-D14 and Phanteks PH-TC14PE in both the stock and overclocked tests.  However, it's an impressive feat to achieve a stable overclock at this level with any cooler and the temperatures are only a couple of degrees behind.

In our noise level tests we switched off all the case fans and replaced the AMD Radeon HD 7950 graphics card with a HD 5550 passive model so were  just taking into account the noise generated by the cooler fans themselves.

We measured the noise level with a Digital Noise Level meter at a distance of 1 m from the front of the system.

In the acoustic tests, the Silver Arrow offers excellent performance, recording lower than the minimum 30 dBA sensitivity on our noise level meter.  There's not much to choose between the NH-D14 and Silver Arrow in this area as they will both be completely inaudible when used inside a quality case.

We are impressed with what the Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E Special Edition has to offer to the hardcore enthusiast user.

While it can't quite match the performance achieved by the Noctua NH-D14 and Phanteks PH-TC14PE, the acoustic performance is exemplary, making it ideal for use in a quiet, overclocked system.

The build quality of the cooler is very good and easily matches the standard of it's closest rivals from Phanteks and Noctua.  We were a little disappointed with the mounting mechanism, though, as it proved a little tricky to mount the cooler compared to the NH-D14.

The first time we mounted the cooler, the retention plate wasn't quite in the right place, leading to unimpressive cooling performance.  We remounted the cooler before recording final results, however this is something to be mindful of if you purchase it.

When it comes to value, the Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E is around the same price as the Noctua NH-D14 and Phanteks PH-TC14PE at just under £60 inc vat, however we think the Noctua offers a better comprise between acoustics and thermal performance.  We would like to see the Silver Arrow coming down in price to around £49.99 before it would get an ultimate recommendation from us.

Pros:

• Very Quiet.
• excellent choice for overclocked processors.
• Interesting Design.

Cons:

• Thermal performance isn't quite as good as the closest high end rivals.
• A little pricey.

KitGuru says: A good effort from Thermalright, however a little on the expensive side to be a Must Have.

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