Diversity is a large part of any company’s ability to sustain longevity. One of the easiest ways to create some diversity within a product line are specialized products. SilverStone, best known for their variety of PC chassis, provided Futurelooks a specialized CPU cooler in the NT01-PRO. We will attempt to answer the question of did they need to sacrifice cooling potential for the unique design.
Features and Specifications
The Silverstone NT01-PRO is a specialized version of their NT01-E cooler from their Nitrogen Series. The NT01-P has a solid copper base with six heatpipes 6 mm in diameter attached to aluminum fins. This is a pretty standard material design, but the NT01-P is a half-height, offset CPU cooler. At 140 mm wide, 120 mm tall (40 mm from base to fins and 100 mm for fins), with the entire assemble offset by 35 mm, this gives the cooler an interesting profile. Each fin is also 50 mm wide for a fairly high surface area.
The NT01-PRO is designed to support a number of cooling configurations. It can be a passive cooler for processors with a 65W TDP or less as recommended by SilverStone. Adding up to two 70 mm or 80 mm fans will allow usage with a processor of up to 150W TDP. The mounting system also works with any currently available CPU socket design and mounts in four different directions. This versatility comes at a price of $54.00 at select e-tailers.
Lets get a better look at what you receive at that price with the NT01-PRO.
What’s in the Box?
The included items with the NT01-PRO are exactly what you would expect. Once you get around the exceptional packaging you will find the NT01-P cooler, user instruction manual, mounting hardware, metal back-plate, and fan mounting hardware. While there is nothing new within the box, there was a lot of mounting and fan hardware.
I was also surprised to find no fans are included, but a dual PWM Y-cable is included for dual fan configuration. This is a little unusual but clearly shows that the focus of the NT01-P is for lower TDP processors. Please keep this in mind if you plan to use this cooler with higher TDP processors as you will need to purchase fans separately.
Now that we have the box open let’s get a more detailed look at the cooler itself.
A Closer Look at the NT01-Pro
The NT01-PRO has a copper base housed within a rather thick aluminum block. Once installed the base acts as a counter weight to keep the entire assembly balanced through evenly distributed tension across the support frame. Upon closer inspection the block is divided into two pieces and the copper directly contacts the 6 mm heatpipes inside.
The aluminum fins are also interesting in their design by having slots cut down either side for fans to be clamped, but clearly cannot be. This is because SilverStone used the same design of the front tower on their HE01 CPU cooler. This in no way detracts from the NT01-PRO, but does create an issue we will address during installation.
Now that we have a better idea of how the cooler is designed, lets look at how testing will be done.
Test System Specifications
I based the selection of components for both consistency and a worst case scenario test. The NT01-P is designed with small form factor PC cases and CPUs with lower TDP (Thermal Power Design), but we want to see how well it would handle a higher powered CPU as specs state it can handle up to 150W TDP. As the cooler did not include fans, I selected two 80 mm Inland fans (1500 to 2500 RPM) for testing.
Hardware:
- CPU Cooler: SilverStone NT01-P
- Cooler Fans: 2x Inland 80 mm Thermal Control Fan
- CPU: AMD FX-8350 (125W TDP) || AMD A10-5800K (100W TDP)
- Motherboard: GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7 || ASUS F2A85-V PRO
- Memory: G.Skill RipjawX 2133 MHz (9-11-10-28) @ 1866 MHz (9-10-9-27)
- Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB Reference Card
- PSU: Antec HCP 850 Watt 80+ Gold
- SSD: Patriot Pyro SATA III MLC 60 GB
- HDD: Western Digital 2 TB Black
- Case: SilverStone TJ04-E Evolution
Software:
- Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
- AIDA64 Extreme Edition
- OCCT
- HyperPI 0.99b
Now let’s move on to installing the Silverstone NT01-PRO and get straight on to testing!
Installation Notes
This is where things are going to get bumpy as the NT01-PRO was determined to not be friendly during installation.
The user manual proved to be a mixed bag as it was designed for several different coolers from the Nitrogen and Heligon series from SilverStone. Often times I would come across descriptions of hardware I did not have such as fan clips. While this was not a problem, it proved to be confusing at times.It should also be noted that the 4-way mounting system is only available for AMD as Intel only has a 2-way mount.
The biggest concern is the lack of instructions for the fan mounting system in the box. You need to go to SilverStone’s page for the NT01-PRO to download the fan mounting instructions here. This is further exacerbated by the fan mounting system being the most complex I have seen for a cooler. Even with the instructions in hand, it took more time mounting the two fans than installing the NT01-PRO which was no picnic either.
At first glance there are simply too many pieces to the mount system. You will be working with 17 to 25 pieces just to marry the backplate and brace to your motherboard. Following the instructions provided proved very difficult. It will seem counter intuitive, but the best approach is to use all the pieces at once. This goes against how the instruction advise you to install the cooler, but our way will be much easier.
I found what you need to do is go one corner at a time instead of one piece at a time like you normally would. Take the back plate, put one screw through to the other side, slide on one of the spacers, then the base frame, and finish with a thumb nut with just enough tension to secure. Then repeat 3 times before evenly tightening all four thumb nuts into place. This is because the spacer will not hold the backplate in place while you work with the base frame.
Once the frame is in place mounting the cooler is just a single crossbar, but even this managed to frustrate me. The retention clip for the sleeve nut repeatedly come off making it difficult to attach the crossbar. Individually the sub-par instruction manual, fan mount, and complex installation would not be a concern but all three is just too much. In comparison, the company’s cases are much better documented and extremely user friendly so we know they are capable of producing better and more user friendly product.
Eventually I got everything in place so let’s get to some testing and performance figures.
Thermal Performance
We tested the NT01-PRO on both of AMD’s platforms using an FX-8350 and an A10-5800K. We also tested it with the 100W TDP A10-5800K with no fans which is well beyond the 65W TDP limited recommended by SilverStone. Both configurations were overclocked to 4.4 GHz with no voltage increase for the overclocked testing. Lest look at how well the NT01-PRO performs.
The SilverStone NT01-PRO struggles taming the AMD FX-8350 at stock, but does keep it from power throttling which we would have considered a failure. Unfortunately this is the case in two overclocked full load tests where the CPU throttled back its clock speed and voltage as the temperature went over 65°C. On an up note, with both fans in place the NT01-P did keep the 100W TDP A10-5800K well under the temperature warning range while overclocked.
The NT01-P does very well with the 100W TDP processor, failing only under the most extreme condition of overclocked with no active fans. SilverStone recommends using the passive cooling setup with a 65W TDP processor, but we think this is a very conservative estimate. We think this cooler could passively cool a 77W TDP Intel CPU with no trouble at reasonable ambient temperatures.
Acoustic Performance
I am sorry to say we did not do extensive testing of the acoustic performance for the NT01-PRO. This is because the cooler did not come with any fans which makes its native configuration passive and thus silent. It obviously does not contribute any noise to my test system until I added my own fans.
The fans selected were the best performing PWM fans I could find in 80 mm size we believe someone would purchase. The selection for PWM fans in 80 mm is not common and 70 mm is near non-existent in the market place. We are only aware of one other set of 80mm PWM fans made by Noctua (see our article). I did find another choice with a maximum speed of 4000 RPMs, but it was both very expensive and listed as very noisy. We do not believe these high RPM fans will be selected for the NT01-PRO.
My configuration never got loud enough to consider it noisy. While the twin 80 mm fans were louder than the Noctua NH-D14 or Gelid GX-7, it was not by much. Regardless, this is not due to the cooler itself and your acoustic performance will vary based on the fans you elect to use.
Final Thoughts
SilverStone has left us with an unusual dilemma with the NT01-PRO being both a sold performing cooler and frustrating to install. Approaching the NT01-P as a CPU cooler for Small Form Factor or HTPC build, it will perform exceptionally well. If paired with a 77W TDP or lower processor I don’t see temperatures rising beyond 50°C in a passive configuration. It is only when you try to push the cooler well beyond the 100W TDP mark where problems begin to occur.
Even with the right setup and well selected CPU to pair with the NT01-P, getting it installed can be very frustrating. I walked away from installing this cooler on several occasion as everything seemed to be out to irritate me. When I wasn’t confused by the manual, I was hunting for retention clips or other small pieces. It was only when I formulated my own method to the install when things got a lot easier.
Previously in the review of the Node 304 I mentioned an issue with mounting direction for Mini-ITX motherboards. The SilverStone NT01-PRO is a solution to this as you can mount it (with AMD) in four different directions. The $54.00 price tag is a bit high especially considering no fans are included, but this is a cooler you need to consider when building in a size restricted chassis.
Pros:
- Versatile Mounting System
- Great for SFF/HTPC Cases
- Great Passive Cooling on Sub 77W TDP Processors
- Includes dual PWM Y-cable
Cons:
- Complex Fan Installation
- No Fans Included
- Sub Par Instructions
Overall Rating: 7.5 / 10.0
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