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The Cooler
When it comes to overclocking, you should be safe in the knowledge that your heatsink is up for the job. Moreover, you want something to shout out loud and look the part for what is becoming a glossy scene with your LN2 and sub-zero cooling. For the common home owner, you are stuck with air or water, and what Titan have done well in the past is providing something with bags of cooling performance, but costing half the price of the more expensive coolers from the likes of Prolimatech and Thermalright for example (and in some cases beating them still).
Titan ships the cooler in the usual vacuum plastic casing with specifications and text all over the shop as per usual. Personally, although to them it may save on packing costs, this vacuum packing method is loathed by some and is a pain to get into. Once you tear and break into it, you are left searching for a spare box to keep safe the left over bits and bobs rather than the original box.
Once broken free from its casing, we see the cooler in all its glory. At first it did take a bit of getting used to (colour scheme wise), but it does grow on you even if you do feel like a bit of a “townee” owning something like this.
The cooler itself isn’t much different from its predecessor. Complying to the same U-Shape design and fin density, the Fenrir EVO has just had a wardrobe change. The anodized coating has been done pretty well. With a few pokes and scratches from screwdriver, the paintwork still remained intact and doesn’t give off a cheap feel. Titan stated that one of the measures taken when it comes to anodising the aluminium plates was to make sure that the coating isn’t thick as this will affect the temperatures and heat dissipation from the fins.
Like the past Fenrir’s that lie before it, Titan state that this cooler is optimized to handle up to 160W with its four 8mm copper direct touch heatpipes. The base is machines very smooth and will efficiently conduct the heat away from the CPU to the 50 aluminium anodized fins.
These fifty aluminium cooling fins are somewhat densely packed together with small dimples in the centre area of each fin to alleviate the “dead zone” of the fan and airflow which will (with a high static pressure fan) aid further in dispersing the heat. Since the new KUKRI fan is more optimized for static pressure, we should see a reduction of temperatures at low speeds compared to the older fan at the same RPM.
Titan’s new fan is called the KUKRI fan, TFD-12025SL12Z/W1. Its name originates from a symbolic weapon for Gurkha regiments and the Nepali Army which represents the courage of the bearer in the battlefield. The nine curved blades are designed to produce stronger air pressure, speeding up the heat dissipation, and maintain a lower noise level. While we couldn’t dig out the specifics in time, one of the changes that been made is the actual motor used by the new fan. According to a Titan representative, he states that the motor is the same but the the design of it is different. While testing the fan on full throttle, you can tell by the tone of the motor compared to the previous fan as it seems to have a low pitch, gentle hum very common to Scythe’ Gentle Typhoons.
This fan is rated to spin between 800 to 2200RPM producing a max CFM of 66.62 and a noise range from a super quiet 15dBa to 35dBa. Without any equipment to test the rated figures, we can’t test Titan’s claims but concerning the noise, the range given seems spot on to us. Comparing specifications from the old to the new, what’s interesting to note is that the CFM is up to 15% less on the new KUKRI than the older fan. What’s lost in CFM is made up for in plentiful amounts with static pressure being up to 22% higher than the old fan. It would be interesting to see how this effects the results.
Another tweak that’s been made to the fan is the bearings used. Sleeve bearing fans have a much lower life expectancy than most other ball bearing fans at higher operating temperatures. Moreover, another issue with “sleeve” fans is they tend to not like being orientated in a horizontal nature. Over time, the bearing is worn away quicker and defects can be heard from the bearing itself as the thin lubrication is centred in one location while the other side is left bare. Remove this and there is nothing to prevent metal-to-metal contact when the mechanism inside rotates within the sleeve – its advised to keep sleeve bearing fans vertical to maintain its life expectancy as nobody likes to hear the vibrational noise of the rod inside rubbing away without an lubrication causing unwanted noise and (in some cases) slower RPM. Titan informed me that they now use Z-Bearings which can last up to 60,000 hours that equates to roughly 6.8 Years if you were to continually run the fan without stopping. Pretty impressive!
