We recall from last year a question that many pondered – just how far can air cooling go? Air cooling can only go so far and it won’t be long until we hit the limit. We’ve already seen some companies take to water cooling solutions with all-in-one kits – some more successful than others. It won’t be long until some of the bigger names start to find new ways to adapt air cooling for the masses and take it to a new level. There are already rumours of vapour chambers and TEC’s in the future. However, one such company that we are reviewing today has taken a step ahead of the big rivals and taken air cooling to a whole new level – liquid metal.
About
Many people will be unfamiliar with Danamics and wouldn’t have known they produce CPU coolers. Founded on the principle of providing manufacturers of electronic hot spots the very best in cooling, Danamics started in 2005. Since then, Danamics has worked on developing, manufacturing and commercializing their core technology, which centres around the principle of using liquid metal as a heat remover. Danamics were keen to improve on their earlier cooler; the LM10. Much hyped and talked about, it proved to be only average and couldn’t keep up with the very best standard air coolers, let alone justify such a high price tag! They redesigned the whole cooler from the ground up but have kept the same Sodium Potassium Alloy used for cooling.
Liquid Metal you say?
Sodium Potassium Alloy (aka NaK) is a top substance for heat transfer. However, reading through the nice detailed warning booklet, it is highly reactive to air and water. Something that puts many people off due to the fact that if the substance were to leak, well, watch out for an explosion! This NaK is pumped around the cooler’s nickel plated heatpipes via the electromagnetic pump which is silent and features no moving parts. This pump is a REV.2 (PowerBooster 2) over the previous LMX Pump, which Danamics has told me is smaller, cheaper and more effective. Note – this does get very hot so be careful! Moving parts are totally eliminated as the magnetic force is created within the particles of the liquid metal causing it to flow.
See the image below for the step-by-step of how this electromagnetic flow works:
Step-by-step
Specification
Product Name: Danamics LMX Superleggera
RoHS Compliant: Yes
Dimensions: (LxHxD) 158.2mm x 170.5mm x 90mm (heatsink only)
Motherboard Clearance Height: 30mm
Fan Comparability: 2x 120x25mm
Weight: 1180g (heatsink only!)
Sockets Supported: (Intel) 775, 1156, 1366 & (AMD) AM2/AM2+/AM3
The Cooler
The cooler features a striking ‘fanbox’ that looks great! This makes the job of fitting 2 120x25mm fans in push/pull configuration a breeze. You simply side the fan down the gaps on either side and slot them into place with the provided clips. The mounting is nice and secure. Note – the cooler can accommodate 120x38mm fans. The clips will not fit to secure the fan in place, but the fan still remains in place once tipped on it’s side inside the case.
The fins are evenly spaced out and secure. Danamics fixed the previous issue whereby the top two or three fins were loose, but this has now been rectified. The cooler features a nice smooth, slightly convex base for great heat transfer.
The cooler features a thick wire extending from the top of the cooler down one side to slot into the PowerBooster 2 pump.
This wire then leads to the new and improved pump. Only a 4-pin molex from the PSU is needed to power it and fits into a 3.5 inch drive bay for compact use. This pump only consumes <1W. Note – Do not turn the PowerBooster on without it connected to the cooler!
Included in the well presented and packed box are either a full Intel or AMD mounting kit with full detailed installation manuals for each platform.
Danamics provides steel plates to be placed on top and fitted onto the top plastic mounting brackets. This is to provide extra mounting pressure as they are quite weighty. Danamics say this is optional.
A warning leaflet, a nice information booklet with a CD-ROM, & some TIM are also provided.
Setup
As the Superleggera is supplied with no fans, we were going to test its passive ability with the pump. Unfortunately, when overclocked, the system crashed due to high temperatures sadly. We opted for a single 120mmx38mm San Ace 9G1212H1011 fan that we have used on our previous setup of testing coolers. We will use the same settings and ambient used in the previous AM3 review shootout to compare against the other top coolers. We opted to skip the stock CPU temps as one would only buy such a cooler for aggressive overclocks and serious cooling ability, thus only an overclocked system was used.
Load testing gives the real indication of performance levels. For this we used OCCT and set each test to run for 30 minutes. The maximum temperature was taken from CPUID Monitor. We also took into account RPM levels of the fan. We tested the fan on the cooler for idle and load at its lowest and highest RPM to see the difference in cooling performance (using a fan controller).
Idle temperatures were recorded after an OCCT run had finished. We allowed a ‘cooling off period’ of 15 minutes for the idle test. The minimum temperature was recorded from CPUID Monitor.
The Phenom II 705e chip was not unlocked as doing so would prevent us from monitoring temperatures within the Windows environment.
Cool & Quiet was disabled in the BIOS as well as any other energy saving features. OCZ Freeze was the thermal interface material of choice.
Test System
- AMD Phenom II X3 705e @ OC 4.0Ghz w/ 1.5v
- Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
- Sapphire HD 4670 512MB Ultimate
- 2GB Super Talent Project X @ 1600Mhz 7-6-6-18
- Intel X25-M Gen2 80GB
- 800W Fractal Design Newton R2
- Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit
Results
Idle
Load
Analysis
We were rather worried before testing (not about dying!) given a price tag of 99 EURO, however after seeing the results on an overclocked system, the new revamp of the PowerBooster has done a great job. In the all important load testing, we see the cooler beat the Venomous X from Thermalright by 3°C using the single fan on it”s highest RPM, and 4°C better off on a low RPM. When we compare the results to our cooling king from our previous review, the Noctua NH-D14 lags behind the cooler using the single San Ace fan on full throttle by 2°C. Even when adding a second 140mm fan in the middle of the D14, it’s still 1°C behind.
Conclusion
There you have it. A little known company making its mark on a very competitive industry, stealing the crown from Noctua and becoming king – at least for the AM3 platform. I can confidently say that this cooler has bags of potential and putting it onto a hot LGA 1366 Intel system will only show even further what this cooler is capable of!
However, while staying on the AMD platform, there is a serious issue. The black fins on either side of the cooler look great, but became a problem. Even on a well spaced out ATX mainboard (the Gigabyte 790FXT-UD5P), we were only able to use 1GB of RAM (of the 2x1GB set).
Danamics assures us that this issue will be fixed for AMD users with a new revision mounting bracket soon, and also confirms that this issue (in most cases) isn’t a problem on the Intel platform.
Another issue is the mounting orientation of the cooler. The Superleggera can only be mounted in a horizontal fashion. This means if you have a push/pull configuration of fans, the fans would be pushing air to the roof of the case and pulling air in from the graphics card below, which in turn will be sucking in the heat radiation from the hot PCB of the card(s). Not to mention some cases do not feature a top roof fan exhaust, or the cooler in push/pull may have space issues with the top mounted PSU.
Danamics says that the price will be 99EUROs and it will include either an Intel or AMD kit, no fans and of course the PowerBooster2. That may well put the retail price in UK stores at £80. The question is, would you pay £80 for this cooler? Its proved today to be the best cooler on the market, beating other top coolers like the Venomous X and our previous shootout cooler winner, the Noctua NH-D14, by 3° & 2°C respectively on a single high RPM fan on the overclocked load testing. The D14 retails at approx £70 with 2 fans. With the stock 2 fans, the D14 is 4°C behind the Superleggera. That said, £80 is a lot of money to be paying for an air CPU cooler, even if it is new technology. Add a £10 fan and £90 is pushing it when for an extra £20-30 or so, you can get yourself a decent budget water cooling kit that will beat it as seen in the results.
Danamics has done a lot to chop the price down and our hats go off to them for breaking into the CPU cooler market very well indeed and becoming our new champs & making this new technology accessible to some people more so than the previous coolers costing approx £160+. Danamics should be commended for bringing such an innovative product to market, let alone becoming the new king! It is rather heavy though, so beware when mounting and handling your case. It weighs 1180g without even fan(s) or the optional steel pressure mounting bracket! A quick google search will tell you that the term ‘Superleggera’ means “super light” in Italian – what were they thinking?!
Bottom line is we give LMX Superleggera a 9.0/10. It has the best performance for the AM3 platform at least, and provides the new technology at a much much cheaper price! Issues with the RAM spacing and cooler orientation do knock some points off but we hope this will be sorted out with a new revision in the future. All they need to do is mount the cooler is the vertical fashion and both problems will be solved. All in all, Danamics have given us a glimpse of the future of air cooling, and what a way to start!
Thanks
Thanks go out to Aria PC Technology for providing the contact for samples. Special thanks also goes out to Mads Nissen at Danamics for providing the sample to us and great feedback communication!
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