SilverStone NT06 Pro Low Profile CPU Cooler Review

SilverStone are a renowned manufacturer of computer cases and we have reviewed a lot of their cases before. However, we've never really delved into any SilverStone CPU coolers despite the fact SilverStone have been making these for a very long time and they produce some of the best CPU coolers in the industry. SilverStone are very well known for their HTPC cases, such as the Grandia series, and as a result they also make low profile CPU coolers that can be used with these cases. Today we have the SilverStone NT06 Pro Low Profile CPU cooler with us on the test bench (Specifications can be found here). On the face of things this is a very interesting CPU cooler. You've got 6 heat pipes, a low profile heat sink design that accepts a 120mm fan both above and below, a very nice supplied 120mm fan and a flexible mounting kit supporting all major sockets. As usual we will be giving the SilverStone NT06 Pr0 the eTeknix heat treatment so read on to see how this product from SilverStone performs. It is nice to see SilverStone keeping things very simple. Simple packaging means lower costs which means better prices. The front of the box points out all the key features you need to know. On the back we have got a detailed specification table as well a support email address in case you have any problems you need to contact SilverStone for. The SilverStone NT06 Pro measures in at just 82mm high if you have the fan below the heatsink, and about 102mm if you have it above. It is pictured below as being above the heatsink but we will test it both above and below to see if there is any difference. The heatsink is very dense which would explain why such a compact unit actually weighs quite a lot - 0.7kg. The base is entirely flat but not smooth. However, all the copper is nickel plated which means we won't see any visible degradation over time because nickel degrades very slowly compared to copper. The six 6mm heat pipes look really good, for such a HTPC-orientated product I am excited to see how this will perform. The mounting kit was very simple. It reminded me very much of the NZXT mounting system where you affix the universal backplate with correct mounting brackets to the motherboard first. Then after, you attach the heatsink to those fixed-in-place mounting brackets. The mounting kit stays well within the allotted LGA 1155 socket area so you won't have any issues with capacitors or heatsinks even on mini-ITX motherboards. SilverStone have also provided a second set of mounting clips should you wish to acquire a second fan for mounting on top of the cooler (or below depending on where you put the provided fan). As you can see the SilverStone NT06 Pro covers the first two RAM slots meaning no high profile RAM at all. However, this is designed for HTPCs so most people with common sense would buy normal height RAM. The SilverStone can mount in 2 directions with either the heat pipes facing the 8 pin EPS connector (as shown above) or the PCI lanes. Either way should fit most cases or motherboards although I'd recommend the way shown above/below that way you won't have any issues with the heatsink getting close to the top of the motherboard - which could be a problem if your case is small. We always use the same test system and tests with CPU coolers that we compare against each other. The full specifications of our test system are as follows: Test system: ASUS P8Z77-V, LGA 1155 socket, Z77 chipset Intel Core i5 3570K with Gelid GC Extreme under the IHS 16GB Kingston HyperX 1866MHz DDR3 AMD Radeon HD 5870 1GB 128GB Kingston SSDnow V100 (Boot Drive) and Samsung F3 1TB (storage) Antec High Current Gamer 620W Cooler Master Test Bench v1.0 We’d like to say a big thank you to ASUS, Antec, Kingston, Cooler Master and Intel for providing components that makes this testing possible. Testing Methodology: We always use Gelid GC Extreme thermal paste to make sure testing reveals the efficiency of the tested coolers not the efficiency of the bundled thermal paste. Prime 95 is run for 10 minutes and then the average maximum temperatures as recorded by CPUID HWMonitor are noted The system is left in idle for 10 minutes on the desktop with as few applications and processes running as possible with Intel SpeedStep enabled and then the average minimum temperatures as recorded by CPUID HWMonitor are noted The average temperature across the four cores is taken on our quad core processor Fans are always left to operate at default PWM profile speeds, if this is not supported then 100% fan speed is used and a low noise adapter if appropriate/provided (if this is used it will be clearly labelled within the test results) Delta temperatures are always used (Observed temperature minus ambient temperature) and we keep the ambient at 22 (+/- 1) degrees for all testing . Delta temperatures should correct for any marginal ambient differences between 21-23 degrees. Acoustic measurements are taken 10cm horizontally away from the CPU cooler with the VGA fan disabled, hard drive in idle and power supply isolated. The cooling performance tests are run at stock 3.4GHz (with Intel Turbo up to 3.8GHz) and overclocked 4.5GHz settings All other coolers in the graphs have been tested under identical settings Each test is repeated 3 times with 3 remounts for consistency of results There is approximately a 1 degree celsius margin of error in our temperature recording software There is approximately a 1dBA margin of error with our decibel meter Software Used CPUID HWMonitor Prime 95 All I can say is wow. For a HTPC cooler, we are seeing temperatures that compete with high end tower heatsinks. What is also incredibly pleasing to see is that the bottom up fan combination actually works better than the top down. This mean HTPC users will get better performance with a smaller height cooler - something that makes no logical sense to me but is great news for the consumer. Overclocking saw the cooler drop a few places down but nothing drastic. We are seeing temperatures just 1 degree behind Sapphire's Vapor-X CPU cooler and 2 degrees ahead of Spire's TME III dual fan cooler. The six 6mm heat pipes on the SilverStone NT06 are clearly doing a fantastic job and the fact the bottom up fan combination works better than the top down would suggest SilverStone have optimised the design of this product for HTPC cases that require low profile CPU coolers. The SilverStone NT06 blitzes its main competitors in terms of performance, the Noctua NH-L12 and the Shadow Rock TopFlow, but can it win on the acoustic performance as well? At stock we have no complaints at all. It is not as quiet as the Noctua NH-L12 or the Be Quiet! Shadow Rock TopFlow but it still offers competitive acoustic performance thanks to a healthy PWM range on the provided fan. Unfortunately overclocking led to the SilverStone NT06 getting very noisy indeed. The additional airflow which creates the noise is probably why it can generate a lot of extra cooling performance over some other coolers. I expect even if you throttled the fan to a lower RPM you would only lose 3-5 degrees at the very maximum - which still leaves the performance in a very competitive region. The SilverStone NT06 Pro costs £45 in the UK. At that price it would be batting above the average if it was a tower heatsink. Yet this excellent level of performance has been crammed into a product measuring in at just 82mm in height. So we've got the excellence of a high performance tower heatsink and the innovation of an incredibly small form factor cooler, all rolled into one awesome product. The NT06 Pr0 is priced very competitively for what you are getting. The performance as we have seen is excellent and you'll certainly be able to have a serious overclock in a HTPC or Small Form Factor system if that is your kind of thing. The mounting kit is excellent, it stays well within all socket specifications and will mount any modern socket, but no doubt the favourite sockets for most people will be either FM1/FM2 or LGA 1155 as most HTPC systems run these sockets. Aesthetically the SilverStone NT06 is a good looking product, being entirely nickel plated or aluminium it has a quality feel and finish to it. The provided fan is also well produced as it comes with a black braided cable, PWM support and a slightly thinner-than-standard design which helps keep the form factor of the product so small. Another thing that I really liked, which many may see as a minor thing, is that SilverStone provided extra fan clips if you want to buy another fan for push-pull. This would be useful if you have enough room and want extra cooling performance or two low RPM fans instead of one high RPM fan. It is little touches like this that set companies apart and SilverStone have ticked all the right boxes with this product. Finding negatives is tough with this product. If I were to be really pedantic I would say the fan is on the noisy side when you put the system under overclocked-stress. This 100% Prime 95 stress situation is unlikely to ever occur within a HTPC, but if you consider HTPC cases tend to be enclosed and starved of airflow then it is possible that this noise could be reproduced so including a fan speed reducer cable is something SilverStone could have included to be really generous to the consumer - especially considering HTPC systems need to be silent at all times. As a HTPC cooler the SilverStone NT06 Pr0 is verging on being perfect. It has excellent looks, top notch build quality, tower heatsink-equivalent performance, an innovative form factor, a flexible and simple mounting system and a competitive price. Consequently, the SilverStone NT06 joins the ranks of some of the most highly regarded products here at eTeknix as we award it the Editor's Choice award.