Thermaltake Fanless 103

Conclusion

The Thermaltake Fanless 103 creates life in the market of passiv CPU coolers. Although the manufactor recommends a case fan , the clever choice of specific components makes a fanless office system possible. With minimum air circulation a gaming PC is possible which many people not even can hear. The clever construction permits the usage in a tower and desktop case. Although the fanless 103s cooling power is a litlle behind the NCU2000 , it shows his strenght with easy assembling, installing , handlingand the good quality. Only the retailprice is still not available.
 

What du you get:

The Thermaltake Fanless 103 comes in a nice blister package which includes:

manual
thermal grease
the heatpipe cooler
screws
plastic frame

Product Introduction:

Now after waiting for a long time a second passive CPU Cooler appears in the market. We found him on 13.05.2004 at COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2004 and obe hour latter we postet already first pictures on our webside. Then we where waiting for the first testsample which we received on 20.July.2004.

Last year we had big hopes in many developments on passive CPU coolers butr only one passive cooler reached the market. This was the NCU1000 where already the newer and much better version of NCU 2000 is now allready available. Of course on our german pages we have had allready testet this one so we like to compare this both very interresting 0 dB cooler.

Technical Information:

The Thermaltake Fanless 103 works with 6 heatpipes where as 3 Heatpipes provides a coolerblock with fins. The construction is made very cleaver so that however you like to use this cooler in a desktop or tower case alltimes 3 Pipes show to up and therefor the pipes could work at there maximum performance.

Usually people say that those superconductor Pipes should work in every position but this is not true . The superconductor ones have less power loss than normal heatpipes , but they still cannot work against pysical laws. So here the engeneers from Thermaltake did a good job and created a intresting solution.

Construction and processing:

The construction is like sayed very clever, because ,both in the desktop use and in the tower always at least three pipes can work in their maximum performance. Also the mounted heatsinks always permits natural air convection. The socket is dual layer and the three heatpipes with the big heatsink is mounted close to the cpu , and the smaller ones mounted on the layer above. My impression of the quality of all parts is very good

Assembling and Installation:

Theinstallation on the mainboard works with the normal cpu plastic frame. For those which doens´t have this frame , can use the which comes with this cooler. The installation is one of the most user friendly , which i saw in the last years , very easy. Thanks you thermatake.

A clamp goes on the heat socket , and two in the the plastic frame  below the big heatsink . On the other below the small heatsink is now much space , and there are to clamps which you can grap very easy even with thick fingers like the ones i have. I know exactly what i´m talking about , because i already destroyed two CPUs because i had problems during installing. You also can install the clamps one by one , so very smooth the installing process without any need of tools.

Many of you probably know those CPU coolers there you had to use a screwdriver to install the Cooler , where you had to push the clamps down. Not only one time the screwdriver slipped away on the mainboard surface and it was a case for the trashman.

So thermaltake did here a very good job , and some other manufactors can learn from them.

Air circualtion ???:

Well , the fanless 103 is a fanless CPU cooler , but Thermatke recommend (like the NCU1000) a case fan , to protect the case against heat obstruction. Unfortunalty you can´t turn the cooler around like the NCU 2000. The means that the position of the big heatsink , depends on the mainboard , shows to the case backside or to the PSU.

Mainboard with Nforce 3 chipset the big heatsink shows to the case backside and with other chipsets usually to the PSU , like like in our case with the MSI Board and VIA chipset in a tower case. If you use a PSU with ground fan you can get here the optimal cooling performance. In Systems with NVIDIA chipset a small spinning Casefan is a good solution to avoind heatproblems in the case.

If a complete fanless system is wanted , where all the components like cpu , graphic board and PSU should work wothout any fan  , a case is necessary witch supports natural air convection. Although we saw many of those cases on the Cebit 2004 in Hannover/Germany , only the Mercury Air Design which we got from www.Caseking.de is available on the market at the moment.

Testrequirements:

Like during the test of the NCU2000 we wanted optimal enviroment for testing the two fanless CPU coolers. We used a open mainboard in horizontal positions which should be no problems for the Fanless 103 , because it can be installed in a desktop and in a tower case. Again we used the Athlon 64 3400+. Actually the NCU is permitted by manufactor up to the 3200+ , but Thermaltake with the Fanless 103 doesent give any limits from the manufactor.

Practical test:

The computer runs without any problem. The air design case offers all the passiv cooled components a good natural convection. But without a the case it wasn´t possible , because during Performance Benchmarks the CPU and the graphic card showed here and there a few instabillitys.
The Noiseblocker S2 Fan caused in Idleuse between 11 and 19 dB, because of the very efficient MSI  CorelCell Technology and you could call this system “silent”

That with this compnents a Power gaming system is possible , proofed our 3D Mark 2001 score of 20284. This test ran with a closed air design case at 23,8°C roomtemperatur and a maximum CPU temps of 45°C and 57°C at the graphic board. With a 120mm Papst fan you can get even better temps. But a few modifications a necessary because the case doesn´t support with kind of fans. The case originally is made for 80mm fans , which primary cools the cpu , but a 120mm fan  would also cool the graphic card . This combination offers a stable and silent gaming system.

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