Introduction

AKASA cooling in many people’s eyes has been a brand associated with decent low cost cooling for a while now. They may not shout about being the best, as they are not and they know it. What AKASA is good at is bringing cheap, bang for buck cooling to the market with their heatsinks and fans. Today though, we see AKASA step up a gear with their newest heatsink; the Nero S which they say is their Premier Cooler

Specifications

Size (HxWxD): 120 x 87 x 160 mm

Weight: 726g without fan

Material: Aluminium fins, copper heatpipes

Fan Size: One 120 x 120 x 25mm

Socket: Intel LGA775, LGA1156, LGA1366 | AMD 939, AM2, AM2+, AM3

The Cooler

The AKASA Nero S looks quite rugged with its 52 high grade aluminium profiled fins which are to ensure optimum heat dissipation. It looks as if AKASA means business this time around.

The cooler also features four 8mm thick heatpipes that are in direct contact with the exposed copper base. Looking at the base further, there appears to be 3 aluminium plates between the four exposed heatpipes to ensure a perfectly flat contact with the CPU base for the best heat dissipation possible. The exposed heatpipes dont ap’pear to be the same between the two further to the right, and two further to the left. Were not entirely sure as to why this is, but perhaps this may be down to making sure that there is adequate cooling contact at all times, and preventing having heatpipes not in direct contact with the base of the CPU. Having heatpipes not in direct contact would lead to some heatpipes conducting too much heat than others and resulting in higher temperatures, which is a problem with some direct touch coolers. It’s nice to see ASAKA thinking out of the box here.

Additionally, the cooler is supplied with an S-FLOW black fan. This fan is actually the AKASA line of Apache Black 120mm fans. If you’re reading this and know what an Apache is, were expecting some very aggressive results. Combined with the combat name of the fan and rough looks on the sides of the heatsink, one could say this cooler just returned from the Gulf War!

This fan is a PWM 4-Pin fan that’s rated to spin between 600-1600RPM dependant on temperature of the CPU. Noise levels are nowhere as loud as an actual Apache mercifully, a much more tolerable 6.9dBA to 25.9dBA. A rather quiet fan indeed. Its said it can produce up to 70CFM, although that seems a bit over-exaggerated in our books as most fan specs tend to be wrong. Added to the quiet specifications of this fan, the bearing used is a HDB  Hydro Dynamic Bearing. Something quite similar to what Noctua use in there quiet line of fans. Continuing this series of quiet cooling and optimal airflow, for mounting the cooler to the actual heatsink, ASAKA provide 4 black rubber anti-vibration fan screws that can fit directly into the heatsinks side fins.

According to Akasa, the fan delivers stronger and more centralised airflow, as well as a more airflow for the same rpm and noise output as a standard fan.

Out of the box, AKASA provides the cooler with the fan, mounting kit for Intel and AMD, some AK-455 thermal compound, and an installation manual.

Test Method

All our coolers follow the same rigorous testing conditions. We strapped on a single 120mmx38mm fan in the shape of the San Ace 9G1212H1011, widely considered one of the best fans on the market due to its under-volting ability (lower RPM) and high static pressure  perfect for heatsinks. This fan can produce up to 99CFM at full speed. If a heatsink is supplied with a fan, we shall be testing that stock fan(s) on full RPM.

We now use LinX Build 0.6.1 for our entire load testing of heatsinks as this stresses the CPU more so than other load tests and really puts strain on the heatsinks. Idle testing was taken after a LinX run had finished. We allowed a cooling off period of 10 minutes for the idle test. Both minimum and maximum temperatures were taken from Real Temp Build 3.58; an average of the cores was taken. Any energy saving features were disabled in the BIOS. OCZ Freeze was the TIM of choice.

All tests were run a minimum of 3 times (each run was followed by a remounting of the heatsink) and only the best results are represented.

Our test system can hit 4.41GHz stable with 1.45v. However, due to the high voltage, not all heatsinks can cope, so we decided on a safe voltage level of 1.35v, and a lower stable clock speed of 4.20GHz for our testing.

Test System

 Intel Core i7 930 @ 4.20GHz w/ 1.35v

  Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7

6GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer @ 1600Mhz 7-7-7-18

  80GB Intel X25-M Gen2

  HIS ATI Radeon HD 5850

 800W Fractal Design Newton R2

The Results

Analysis

When we take into account the results from the stock fan, it can be said that 83C is rather too hot under load. However, considering this result was 1C behind Coolink Corator DS cooler using a high performance fan, its quite good. When we used this fan on the Nero S, we obtained a decent 77C under load; 10C behind the best air cooler on the market using the same setup. It appears that all four direct-contact copper heatpipes were doing a great job of directing heat away from the CPU.

Conclusion

For a cooler costing approximately £35 Inc VAT that supports all major current platforms and older AMD 939, plus is also supplied with a very decent quiet high airflow fan, the results we achieved on Intel’s hottest platform are rather impressive with a topped out temperature of 77C which is only 10C behind the best air cooler!

AKASA have done it again! They have brought a low cost cooler to the market that isn’t the very best, but packs a serious punch and is one of the best bang for buck coolers right now, certainly up there with Titan’s Fenrir. When you take into account its cost, features, platform support, and cooling ability, we can’t recommend this cooler enough!

The AKASA gets our Silver Award and 8/10!

Cons

  Mounting for one fan only

Pros

  Great bang for buck cooling!

  Supplied with one top performance quiet fan!

  Supports all platforms out of the box!

  Easy mounting

  Anti-Vibration properties

Thanks

Overclockers Tech would like to thank Xinyang He at AKASA for supplying the cooler for review.