Titan Tower TTC-NK32TZ CPU Cooler Review

CPU Cooling by jmke @ 2006-08-24

Titan offers a compact and competitive priced tower cooler with 92mm fan for S775 and Athlon 64 platforms; we take it for a spin on our test setup to find out if it can silently cool an overclocked CPU.

Introduction, Specifications and Up Close

Titan TTC-NK32TZ:
Supplied by: Titan

Titan has been supplying the retail channel and OEM channel with reliable cooling solutions for several years now. They?ve been catering to the enthusiasts more and more each year; the TTC-NK32TZ (what?s in a name?) is the latest fruit from their labor. It?s a rather compact Tower Cooler sporting heat pipes, copper base and aluminum fins.

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Specifications:

Compatibility:
  • AMD: Athlon64/64+ Socket754/940/939/AM2

    Madshrimps (c)
    A small tube of thermal paste and a mounting clip are the extra?s you get. No manual.


    Heatsink Dimensions: 90 x 90 x 130mm
    Fan Specs: 92 x 92 x 25mm / 26.9dBA/37CFM/2200RPM

    Madshrimps (c)
    Open frame custom design, it snaps onto the heatsink easily


    Weight (with fan): xxx gram

    Up close :

    A cost effective design combines cheap aluminum fins with 3 heat pipes which are joined in a copper base. A 92mm fan clips on to the side. Finishing is excellent on the unit, there are no visible flaws

    Madshrimps (c)


    ->

    • Closer & Installation

    The aluminum fins are tightly packed together, making this a cooler which relies on higher airflow to perform adequately. The included 92mm fan spins at ~2100rpm and is not extremely silent, nor very loud.

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    The fan is mounted to the heatsink through the use of 4 ? push pins ? at the side. Swapping out the fan with a different 92mm model was extremely easy.

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    The base has visible traces of machine lapping but not unsmooth. Additional manual lapping will likely improve thermal performance slightly.

    Installation

    Installation takes up very little time, the included clip works well with either S939 or AM2 bracket. Orientation of the heatsink is fixed to the orientation of your CPU socket.

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    On our motherboard the fan was pointing towards the rear, which is the ideal configuration.

    Madshrimps (c)


    Onto our test setup ->

    Test Setup

    Test Setups and Methodology

    JMke's Test Setup
    CPU A64 3200+
    Mainboard DFI NF3 Lanparty
    Memory 1 * 256Mb PC3700 OCZ
    Other
  • ATI R9000 Passive Cooling
  • Silverstone EFN-300 300W Passive Cooled PSU
  • Maxtor 120GB IDE HDD


  • in-take temperature was measured at 22?C for all tests, but temp fluctuations, different mounting and user error can account up to 1-3?C of inaccuracy in the obtained results. Please keep this in mind when looking at the results. Each heatsink was tested repeatedly; if we got questionable results the test was restarted.
  • Noise level of each HSF combo was recorded with SmartSensor SL4001A, the sensor was placed ~50cm away from the case. The lowest dBA reading in the test room was 32.5dBA with everything turned off!
  • System was stressed by running K7 CPU Burn for 30min (after Thermal Compound?s burn-in); this application pushes the temperature higher then any other application or game we?ve yet encountered. Speedfan was used to log maximum obtained temperatures.
  • Arctic Silver kindly send us their ?Lumi?re? thermal testing compound which has the same colour as Ceramique, but only a break in time of 30min!
  • Arctic Silver?s ArctiClean was used to clean off thermal paste of the CPU and heatsink between tests

    Fans used for comparison

    To eliminate as much variables in the tests I test each heatsink with a ?reference? fan if I can mount them. If the HSF comes with its own fan, I will compare the performance of that fan to the reference one I use.

  • Delta NFB0912L 92mm: 42CFM
  • Papst 120mm 4412 F/2GLL: 40CFM


    The Case

    Since I?m only using an Athlon 3200+ for my tests, it would be interesting to overclock the CPU so its maximum heat output increases and it can simulate a higher clocked Athlon 64.

    I recently purchased a power meter similar to this. Doing a few basic measurements with the test system gave these results for full system wattage usage.

  • Athlon S754 3200+ @ 2200Mhz - 1.5v: idle: 67Watt / Load: 125Watt
  • Athlon S754 3200+ @ 2420Mhz - 1.7v: idle: 78Watt / Load: 165Watt

    In my days of Athlon XP HSF testing an increase of 0.1v vcore would result in 4-6?C higher CPU temps, so without much surprise the temperature results in this roundup with the 1.7v Athlon 64 will be much higher.

    Noise was recorded approx. 50cm away from the case at an angle, here?s a (very bad) drawing of how the dBA meter was position opposite the case and the test-room.

    Madshrimps (c)
    Green box = Sonata II ? White Dot = dBA meter


    3 different test scenarios were configured as such:

    Madshrimps (c)


  • Test Setup 1: Overclocked and Silent

    - Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2400 ? 1.7v vcore
    - Antec Sonata II + Silverstone Passive PSU
    - AcoustiFan DustPROOF 120mm @ 5v in the rear as outtake (mounted with soft-mounts)
    - nVidia TNT2 Passive cooled video card
    - Noise produced with system running without HSF fan: 34dBA @ 50cm


  • Test Setup 2: Stock speeds and Silent

    - Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2200 ? 1.5v vcore
    - Antec Sonata II + Silverstone Passive PSU
    - AcoustiFan DustPROOF 120mm @ 5v in the rear as outtake (mounted with soft-mounts)
    - nVidia TNT2 Passive cooled video card
    - Noise produced with system running without HSF fan: 34dBA @ 50cm


    What was measured?

  • The CPU temperature was measured with SpeedFan and highest value recorded
  • Temperature of air coming into to the case at the front
  • PWM temperature through SpeedFan, this represent the area around the CPU socket, the power management caps which you see on a motherboard, they are there to make sure the power which is fed into the motherboard coming from the PSU is filtered and delivered the CPU and other components. Too high temperature will cause Vcore fluctuations which in turn causes system instability.

    Onto the test results ->

    • Test Results & Conclusive Thoughts

    Test Results

    For reference the results from the stock aluminum Athlon 64 heatsink and heat pipe version (which comes with higher end X2 models) were included in the charts below.

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    The stock fan is quite loud at full speed when compared with ?low-noise? solutions, yet it manages to drop noise levels ~5dBA over the stock heat piped AMD heatsink. Combining the Titan with the more silent Delta fan allows the performance/noise balance to improve, as there is only a slight drop in thermal performance compared to the noticeable decrease in noise. With the stock fan at 50% the noise level is barely over ambient and performance is still acceptable.

    Let?s turn up the heat:

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    This Athlon 64 overclocked test configuration with high vcore has proven to be quite a challenge for air cooled heatsinks to manage silently. The outcome for the Titan is encouraging; with the stock fan at full speed the CPU temperature result drops it right in between the two stock heatsinks, but looking at noise levels it?s clearly in the lead here (~9dBA difference translates into twice as silent).

    The 92mm Delta fan didn?t provide enough airflow through the aluminum fins to keep the system running stable, confirming our assertion that this heatsink will perform best with medium/higher speed 92mm fans.

    Conclusion

    The TTC-NK32TZ from Titan makes a good impression, although it won?t give you the best noise/performance balance it?s not all that counts, with a retail price close to ?20 and easy installation it will keep all but the hottest system out there running cool at medium to low noise levels.

    We tested it?s S775 brother, TTC-NK34TB , in this roundup and it?s safe to say that on S775 it will do well also.

    PRO
    Okay performance
    Very quiet when fan is slowed down to 50%
    Easy Clip-On Installation
    Very competitively priced

    CON
    Quite noisy with fan at full speed (43dBA @ 50cm)

    We thank Titan for their help in making this review possible.

    Questions/Comments: forum thread
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