ZEROtherm Nirvana: Designed for Top Performance
by Wesley Fink on January 16, 2008 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Conclusion
Our industry seems to be one filled with superlatives. Each new product name sounds as if it came through a marketing group looking for another name that signifies the top, the best, the super-duper whatever. After a while, you become numb to what names really mean since the performance reality is often quite different from the incredible performance promised by most product names.
Even in that environment, using the name Nirvana takes guts. Fortunately for ZEROtherm, the performance of the Nirvana NV120 is deserving of its name. For silence purists, however, the Nirvana is not as successful. Its best performance is achieved at the expense of noise that will be too high for many, although silence can be achieved by turning down the fan speed with the included fan controller. The problem of course is silent operation still pays a performance price, and there are several other coolers tested that strike a better balance between silence and performance.
That does not change in any way the fact that the ZEROtherm Nirvana belongs on the short list of top performing coolers. It is in the same league as the top Thermalright offerings, the Tuniq Tower, and the Scythe Infinity with push-pull fans. In fact, at a street price of around $45 the Nirvana is also one of the best values in the top-performing air cooler category.
The ZEROtherm Nirvana shines as an incredibly efficient cooler for users who will not overclock to extreme levels. In this environment, users can dial down the fan to low speed and the cooler can still provide some of the best cooling ever measured in our cooler tests.
At the top of the cooler pyramid the Nirvana still competes very well in both performance and silence by running the fan at around 2000RPM. However, performance here is a compromise. The Nirvana at 2000RPM falls slightly behind several top coolers that are as quiet as or quieter than the 2000RPM Nirvana. At the lowest fan speed the Nirvana is effectively silent, but overclocking tops out at around 3.78 GHz, which is quite a compromise from the top performance at high fan speeds.
What all of this is saying is that the ZEROtherm is an incredibly flexible cooler. With the fan cranked up it can compete with the best in cooling performance, and with the fan cranked down it can compete with the quietest solutions you can buy. Unfortunately it can't do both exceptionally well at the same time. With a non-upgradeable fan what we measured is what you get and that is certainly very good performance. However, to really top our performance charts ZEROtherm needs to improve the noise levels of the integrated fan. Output is great and competitive, but noise levels need some improvement.
The ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 belongs in the list of top air coolers. It can compete with anything available and it is a great value. However, it can't do both performance and low noise at the same time as well as some of its competitors. Having said that, the Nirvana is still one of the best air coolers you can buy and it is selling at a very fair price.
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Wesley Fink - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - link
It looks like we are going to have to do an article to educate readers on dBa sound levels. Noise does matter, but some of the fanatic quiet sites have completely distorted the meaning of noise levels so people no longer understand what they mean. 35 dBa is the noise level of a quiet suburban bedroom, away from traffic, at night. 45 dBa is considered a Quiet Room. Our sound floor in the new test environment is around this level. Our super quiet variable-fan-speed power supply is around this level at idle, but not while doing useful work. Unless you are running a fanless power supply measurements below this threshold are meaningless.Below is a chart from an acoustic engineering company. It is to help put in perspective what dBa sound levels actually mean.
190 dBA Heavy weapons, 10 m behind the weapon (maximum level)
180 dBA Toy pistol fired close to ear (maximum level)
170 dBA Slap on the ear, fire cracker explodes on shoulder, small arms
at a distance of 50 cm (maximum level)
160 dBA Hammer stroke on brass tubing or steel plate at 1 m distance,
airbag deployment very close at a distance of 30 cm (maximum level)
150 dBA Hammer stroke in a smithy at 5 m distance (maximum level)
130 dBA Loud hand clapping at 1 m distance (maximum level)
120 dBA Whistle at 1 m distance, test run of a jet at 15 m distance
Threshold of pain, above this fast-acting hearing damage in short action is possible
115 dBA Take-off sound of planes at 10 m distance
110 dBA Siren at 10 m distance, frequent sound level in discotheques and close
to loudspeakers at rock concerts, violin close to the ear of an orchestra
musicians (maximum level)
105 dBA Chain saw at 1 m distance, banging car door at 1 m distance (maximum level),
racing car at 40 m distance, possible level with music head phones
100 dBA Frequent level with music via head phones, jack hammer at 10 m distance
95 dBA Loud crying, hand circular saw at 1 m distance
90 dBA Angle grinder outside at 1 m distance
Over a duration of 40 hours a week hearing damage is possible
85 dBA 2-stroke chain-saw at 10 m distance, loud WC flush at 1 m distance
80 dBA Very loud traffic noise of passing lorries at 7.5 m distance,
high traffic on an expressway at 25 m distance
75 dBA Passing car at 7.5 m distance, un-silenced wood shredder at 10 m distance
70 dBA Level close to a main road by day, quiet hair dryer at 1 m distance to ear
65 dBA Bad risk of heart circulation disease at constant impact
60 dBA Noisy lawn mower at 10 m distance
55 dBA Low volume of radio or TV at 1 m distance, noisy vacuum cleaner at
10 m distance
50 dBA Refrigerator at 1 m distance, bird twitter outside at 15 m distance
45 dBA Noise of normal living; talking, or radio in the background
40 dBA Distraction when learning or concentration possible
35 dBA Very quiet room fan at low speed at 1 m distance
25 dBA Sound of breathing at 1 m distance
0 dBA Auditory threshold
mustardman - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
Doesn't the chart list 35dBa as a "Very quiet room fan at 1m"? That's quite different than a quiet suburban bedroom. Everyone's threshold of annoying noise is different. I know I can not sleep with a fan, even low speed, in my room. So, a computer louder than that is unacceptable. Same reason I had to unplug my TiVo before sleeping. I eventually moved it out of the room.I'll check the other sites in addition to Anand, which I've been an avid reader for 8+ years.
strikeback03 - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - link
I'd guess checking over at Silent PC Review would be more useful for you then, that is the type of testing they do. Anandtech has typically tried to show how it will impact a more typical system, which has fans.The room noise level for the tests was listed as 35dB, so a 25dB system would be probably be considered silent.
mustardman - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
Good point. I didn't see the room noise level. I guess they would be unable to test lower in that case.Cardio - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - link
Have this cooler and improved its performance by 1-3c with a little work. Bottom of heatsink is chrome plated like the rest of the cooler. Chrome is a poor heat transfer material. I removed the chrome by sanding with 200 grit wet/dry @ 100RPM on a varible speed rotating bench sander. Finishing with jewelers rouge on a sheeps wool buffer. Bottom plate is also much smoother as it was quite shiny before but showed some machine marks. Very pleased with cooler as it now achieves great results at even lower fan speed.can - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
It's nickel, not chrome.DukeN - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - link
Why not included in any comparisons guys - this one is incredibly popular (and seems like a great bargain at ~ $25 or less)?Thanks.
aussiestilgar - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - link
I've been waiting for AnandTech to review this cooler. I like that the test setup is very consistent which makes it easy to compare different coolers. I own this cooler and I must say its fantastic. It cools like the best of them and is extremely good value!sotx - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - link
um... just wondering here...the result for the ultra extreme 120 are obtained with or without the fan(s)?
Wesley Fink - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - link
The Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme was tested with the Scythe SFlex SFF21F 120mm fan. You can refer to the full review for test results by clicking on the cooling tab at the top of this page and searching for the 120 eXtreme review.Those results were run with our earlier test bed and the nVidia utility and they are not directly comparable to current test results. As we said in the review we retested the top coolers on our new test bed with CoreTemp and those are the reported results in this review.