As CPU manufacturers keep pumping out more gigahertz and cores, the heat emitted by the CPU continues to rise, thus increasing the need for quality cooling systems. Today we're looking at one of Thermalright's most popular air-cooling solutions.

When we first became aquainted with the cooler, we could not help being skeptic and we asked ourselves "Does it really perform well enough to justify its $47 price tag"?

Read on to discover the answer!

Dimmensions	L63.5 x W132 x H160.5 mm (heatsink only)
Weight	745g (heatsink only)
Recommended Fan Size	120mm
Motherboard compatibility	Intel: All Intel P4 LGA775 processors AMD: Athlon 64 / FX / X2 / Opteron / AM2 A separate $3.00 backplate is mandatory for motherboards with push-pin stock backplates
Bundled Accessories	2x Installation Manuals (1x 755 and 1x K8) 1x Heat Sink Body 2x Fan Wire Clips 1x K8 Heatsink Clip 2x K8 Sping-loaded Screws 2x Fan Rubber Strips 1x Thermal Paste Syringe 1x 775 Heatsink Clip 1x 775 Backplate 4x 775 Spring-loaded Screws 1x Thermalright Sticker

 

Upon unboxing this bad-boy we were very suprised at the raw girth of this heatsink. By far it is the largest we've dealt with.Above you see the Thermalright Ultra-120 stacked up against the stock Intel Core 2 Duo cooler that comes packaged with an E6400. The stock Intel cannot even compare to the Ultra-120 in size. We were a bit worried about the Ultra-120's height and wether it would fit in the HSPC Tech Station. Now we have an idea of what we're working with so let's see how it installs on a Socket 775 Intel motherboard.

The cross-member hold down bracket with the four legs is placed over the base of the heatsink. Keep the four spring loaded screws nearby, as well as a decent size phillips-head screw driver. This cross-member feels like it's built from steel, and was rather stubborn when trying to position over the base of the heatsink.

Now, get the backplate and postion it on the backside of the mother board and line up the holes. This next part was the most difficult time we ever have had installing a heatsink onto a motherboard.

What we see here is a spring-loaded screw, and four of these are what hold down the heatsink to the motherboard. The most difficult part of the installation was driving the spring loaded screws into the backplate. Start off with one screw, turning it just far enough to bite and catch hold. I then moved diagonal to the opposite screw and again turned just enough to bite. Getting the screws to bite requires a good bit of downward pressure, all while pressing up on the backplate. After all four screw were started, we went around turning each screw one full rotation, then moving to the next and so on untill all four were completely tight.

Aside from its pad lock shape, at a glance the Ultra-120 closely resembles its predecessor, the Ultra-90 (only larger). They both have heat pipes running from the contact plate to the end of the grill and each have bent grills for better airflow. But on closer inspection, the Ultra-120 has one more set of heat pipes, which can only help.

The installation was just how we like it - quick and easy. There aren't a whole lot of loops to jump through, but one major downside is that the motherboard must be removed for many systems, including the Gigabyte board we used for testing. Many new heatsinks are doing away with the motherboard removal dance, and we wish Thermalright would march to the beat of the same drum.

The Ultra-120 comes with two rubber strips that prevent the fan from rattling against the heatsink. It works like a dream, too. While we ran our benchmarks, nary a sound was to be heard from our CPU cooler.

The 120mm fan is held by two retention wires that are held into small holes on the side of the heatsink. After they are attached, they are then snapped onto the corners of the fans.

We were very disappointed that Thermalright chose not to include a 120mm fan. Moreover, many fans (such as the one we used) are not fully supported because the retention wires require an open-cornered fan. We were able to make do with our fan for the benchmarking tests, but we do not recommend using a closed cornered fan with this heat sink.

For our Intel based testing we fitted a 120mm Vantec Stealth fan to the Ultra-120. Vantec Stealth offers a good balance of low noise and decent performmance. The Ultra-120 has a massive surface area so even lower RPM fans are adequate for use on it. Then again, the more CFM of air moving across the heatsink, the lower temperatures are going to be until you reach ambient room temperature.

CPU	Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 [Allendale] 65nm Intel Pentium D 920 [Presler] 65nm
Motherboard	GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3
Memory	TwinMOS TwiSTER 6400 CL5 2x512MB
Videocard	PowerColor X1600XT 256MB GDDR3
HDD	2x Western Digital 80GB Cavair SE SATAII in RAID-0
Power Supply	Antec Neo HE 550 [550w continuous @ 50C]
Case	HSPC Tech Station
Test Methods	Idle temps was measured at Windows XP Desktop after machine was powered on for 20 minutes Load temps were measured after running approximetly 1 1/2hrs of Dual prime95. Ambient room temp: 26.5C

 

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 [65nm Allendale 65w TDP]

We started our testing with the Ultra-120 fitted on top of an Intel Core 2 Duo with Arctic Ceramique. The E6400 was run at default clocks and default voltage.

We skipped the mild overclocking and took the E6400 up to a burning 400FSB * 8 = 3.2GHz, which took 1.385V to be dual-Prime95 stable. The Ultra-120 allowed us to operate the Core 2 Duo E6400 at a frequency of 3.2GHz at a reasonably cool 44C load.

Intel Pentium D 920 [65nm Presler 95w TDP]

For a quick background, Intel Presler 65nm core processors are the final step in Intel's netburt architecture and have the highest TDP (Thermal Design Power) of any recent Desktop CPU. We started off with the 920 at its default 2.8GHz, so it's operating relatively cool, as you see above in the graph. The Ultra-120 is clearly superior to the stock Intel heatsink and offers much headroom until the max rated temperature of 63.4C for Pressler cores.

The Ultra-120 allowed our overclocked 3.73GHz Presler core to operate at 51C. During testing the stock Intel heatsink began thermal throttling shortly after being loaded with dual instances of Prime 95. It's safe to say the Ultra-120 definitely has more headroom in terms of overclocking past 3.73GHz, but we like to run my processors at reasonable temperatures.

For our K8 tests, we used a toasty Athlon 64-based system outfitted with the stock cooler. And despite its name, cold cathode lights do produce a minute amount of heat. For this reason, all of our thermal tests were run with the cold cathode switched off.

Case	NZXT Trinity
Processor:	AMD Athlon 64 3700+ clocked at 2.3Ghz, 1.450V (0.1Ghz and 0.05V above stock of 2.2Ghz and 1.40V, respectively)
RAM:	2x 512MB Corsair XMS DDR400
Hard Disk	Western Digital Raptor 74GB 8MB cache 10,000 RPM
Motherboard	GIGABYTE GA-K8N Pro-SLI
Graphics Card	ASUS ATI Radeon x550 w/ 256MB Frame Buffer
PSU	NZXT 400 Watts
Operating System	Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition SP2 2003

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ [90nm San Diego Core Processor]

The Ultra-120 performed reasonably well, lowering our temperatures by as much as six degrees Centigrade.

Segment	Score	Comments
Thermal Performance	19/20	The Ultra-120 comes just about as close to liquid cooling as a traditional heat sink and fan solution can. It lowered our temperatures by as much as 10 degrees
Installation	7/10	Apart from the motherboard removal, the installation is really quick Socket 775 installation was tedious and required more than usual physical force to screw down the heatsink
Accessories	7/10	Almost everything we needed was included, but Thermalright should have included a compatible fan. We also don't like the fact that the fan retention wires don't work very well with many fans. The case sticker was a nice touch.
Accoustics	20/20	During our tests, the only sounds we could here came from our case fans. The heat sink seemed to swallow the sound of the 120mm CPU fan.
Overclocking	19/20	The Ultra-120 provided plenty of headroom for overclocking BOTH the Pentium D 920 and Core 2 Duo E6400, and fared reasonably well with our A64 testbed
Price/Value	8/10	$47 is a bit on the high side for a heatsink without a fan or fan controller bundled in, but about on par with competitive high end solutions
Warranty/Support	7/10	We were unable to find any hard facts about Thermalright's warranty information in the Ultra-120's box and on their website, so we went straight to the source. According to Customer Service representative Hank Peng, "All of Thermalright products are under warranty for one year, provided that you purchased your unit from an authorized Thermalright dealer and have a legitimate proof of purchase." We can vouch for Thermalright's support personally. They respond to all inquiries professionally and quickly.

Overall Recommendation

Overall, we absolutely love this heatsink. It outpaced AMD's stock offering by a reasonable margin, and on our Intel testbed, the Ultra-120 demolished the stock offering by as much as 20C under load!� Overclockers have a lot to be excited about in the Ultra-120, and pardon the pun, but it looks really cool to boot!