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Home » Titan Skalli CPU Cooler Review

Titan Skalli CPU Cooler Review

[nextpage title=”Introduction”]

This time we tested Titan Skalli, a tower design CPU cooler with two 8 mm heatpipes and a 100 mm fan. Let’s see if it performs better than other similar coolers.

Skalli box is made of thin cardboard paper, with a window in the front that allows you to see the fan.

Titan SkalliFigure 1: Box.

Inside the box we found the cooler with the fan, user manual, installation hardware and a tube of white thermal compound.

Titan SkalliFigure 2: Box contents.

Figure 3 gives you an idea of what the Skalli looks like.

Titan SkalliFigure 3: Titan Skalli.

[nextpage title=”Titan Skalli”]

In a front view we see Skalli’s classic design, with "U" heat pipes, a small aluminum base and also aluminum fins. The fan is protected by a plastic cage.

Titan SkalliFigure 4: Front view.

In Figure 4 we can see the two 8 mm heatpipes. It looks a lot like the Evercool Buffalo we reviewed recently.
Titan SkalliFigure 5: Side view.

 

In Figure 6 we can see Skalli’s rear side.
Titan SkalliFigure 6: Rear view.

[nextpage title=”Titan Skalli (Cont’d)”]

In Figure 7 we see the top side of the cooler. The four heatpipes tips are covered by metallic caps.

Titan SkalliFigure 7: Top view.

In Figure 8 we can see the fan details. It is made of plastic, painted to achieve a metallic look. It has a four pin connector, which shows it has PWM speed control. The fan is attached to the heatsink with two metal clips.
Titan SkalliFigure 8: Fan detail.

On the base, the heatpipes made direct contact to the CPU. This system has proven to be very efficient, eliminating one extra thermal resistance layer. The base is very smooth, almost mirror-finished, as you can check in Figure 9.

Titan SkalliFigure 9: Base.

[nextpage title=”Installation”]

The Titan Skalli comes with three holding clip sets. The first clip set comes screwed to the cooler base and fits sockets 1156 and 1366. Second set, shown in Figure 10, fits socket LGA775 CPUs. There is also a third clip for use with AMD processors.

Titan SkalliFigure 10: Clips.

Installation is very simple, it took almost no strength to attach it to the motherboard. The access to the press holders is easy. It did not inferferd with any motherboard component. In Figure 11, you can see how it looks installed into our case.
Titan SkalliFigure 11: Installed into case.

[nextpage title=”How We Tested”]

We are adopting the following methodology for our CPU cooler reviews.

First, we chose the CPU with the highest TDP (Thermal Design Power) we had available, a Core 2 Extreme QX6850, which has a 130 W TDP. The choice for a CPU with a high TDP is obvious. To measure the efficiency of the tested cooler, we need a processor that gets very hot. This CPU works by default at 3.0 GHz, but we overclocked it to 3.33 GHz, in order to heat it as much as possible.

We took noise and temperature measurements with the CPU idle and under full load. In order to achieve 100% CPU load on the four processing cores we ran Prime95 with the "In-place Large FFTs" option, and three instances of the StressCPU program, all at the same time.

We also compared the reviewed cooler to the Intel stock cooler (with copper base), which comes with the processor we used, and also with some other coolers we have tested using the same methodology.

Temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermometer, with the sensor touching the base of the cooler, and also with the core temperature reading (given by the CPU thermal sensor) from the from the SpeedFan program, using an arithmetic average of the four core temperature readings.

The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed 4" (10 cm) from the fan. We turned off the video board cooler so it wouldn’t interfere with the results, but this measurement is only for comparative purposes, because a precise SPL measurement needs to be made inside an acoustically insulated room with no other noise sources, which is not the case here.

Hardware Configuration

  • Processor: Core 2 Extreme QX6850
  • Motherboard: Gigabyte EP45-UD3L
  • Memory: 2 GB Corsair XMS2 DHX TWIN2X2048-6400C4DHX G (DDR2-800/PC2-6400 with timings 4-4-4-12), running at 800 MHz
  • Hard drive: 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (ST3500320AS,
    SATA-300, 7200 rpm, 32 MB buffer)
  • Video card: PNY Verto Geforce 9600 GT
  • Video resolution: 1680×1050
  • Video monitor: Samsung Syncmaster 2232BW Plus
  • Power supply required: Seventeam ST-550P-AM
  • Case: 3RSystem K100

Software Configuration

  • Windows XP Professional installed on FAT32 partition
  • Service Pack 3
  • Intel Inf driver version: 8.3.1.1009
  • NVIDIA video driver version: 182.08

Software Used

  • Prime95
  • StressCPU
  • SpeedFan

Error Margin

We adopted a 2 °C error margin, i.e., temperature differences below 2 °C are considered irrelevant.

[nextpage title=”Our Tests”]

On the tables below you can see our results. We ran the same tests with the coolers shown on below tables. Each test ran with the CPU idle and the with the CPU fully loaded. On BigTyp 14Pro, TMG IA1, NH-U12P and ISGC-300 the tests were done with the fan at full speed and at minimum speed. The other coolers were connected directly to the motherboard and it controls the fan speed based on CPU load level and temperature on PWM models. ISGC-400 and iCEAGE Prima Boss were tested at minimum speed on idle test and at maximum speed on full load test.

CPU Idle

Cooler Room Temp. Noise Fan Speed Base Temp. Core Temp.
Intel stock 14 °C 44 dBA 1000 rpm 31 °C 42 °C
BigTyp 14Pro (min) 17 °C 47 dBA 880 rpm 29 °C 36 °C
BigTyp 14Pro (max) 17 °C 59 dBA 1500 rpm 26 °C 34 °C
Akasa Nero 18 °C 41 dBA 500 rpm 26 °C 35 °C
Cooler Master V10 14 °C 44 dBA 1200 rpm 21 °C 26 °C
TMG IA1 (max) 16 °C 47 dBA 1500 rpm 22 °C 30 °C
TMG IA1 (min) 16 °C 57 dBA 2250 rpm 21 °C 30 °C
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme 16 °C 44 dBA 1200 rpm 21 °C 29 °C
Thermaltake ISGC-100 18 °C 44 dBA 1450 rpm 35 °C 49 °C
Noctua NH-U12P (low) 15 °C 42 dBA 1000 rpm 20 °C 30 °C
Noctua NH-U12P 15 °C 46 dBA 1400 rpm 20 °C 28 °C
Noctua NH-C12P 17 °C 46 dBA 1400 rpm 23 °C 28 °C
Thermaltake ISGC-200 21 °C 43 dBA 1100 rpm 31 °C 35 °C
Schythe Kabuto 22 °C 42 dBA 800 rpm 29 °C 34 °C
Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro 20 °C 43 dBA 1500 rpm 32 °C 39 °C
ISGC-300 (min) 18 °C 42 dBA 800 rpm 26 °C 30 °C
ISGC-300 (max) 18 °C 46 dBA 1400 rpm 24 °C 26 °C
SilverStone NT06-E 21 °C 66 dBA 2600 rpm 30 °C 41 °C
Zalman CNPS9700 NT 22 °C 48 dBA 1700 rpm 28 °C 35 °C
Scythe Mugen-2 17 °C 41 dBA 700 rpm 25 °C 30 °C
ISGC-400 (min) 17 °C 44 dBA 850 rpm 24 °C 30 °C
Cooler Master Vortex 752 20 °C 48 dBA 1700 rpm 32 °C 44 °C
iCEAGE Prima Boss (min) 22 °C 42 dBA 1000 rpm 29 °C 36 °C
Evercool Buffalo 17 °C 51 dBA 1850 rpm 22 °C 29 °C
Scythe Big Shuriken 20 °C 42 dBA 900 rpm 31 °C 39 °C
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 21 °C 44 dBA 1700 rpm 30 °C 39 °C
Titan Skalli 20 °C 43 dBA 1200 rpm 27 °C 34 °C

CPU Fully Loaded

Cooler Room Temp. Noise Fan Speed Base Temp. Core Temp.
Intel stock 14 °C 48 dBA 1740 rpm 42 °C 100 °C
BigTyp 14Pro (min) 17 °C 47 dBA 880 rpm 43 °C 77 °C
BigTyp 14Pro (max) 17 °C 59 dBA 1500 rpm 35 °C 70 °C
Akasa Nero 18 °C 48 dBA 1500 rpm 34 °C 68 °C
Cooler Master V10 14 °C 54 dBA 1900 rpm 24 °C 52 °C
TMG IA1 (max) 16 °C 47 dBA 1500 rpm 27 °C 63 °C
TMG IA1 (min) 16 °C 57 dBA 2250 rpm 25 °C 60 °C
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme 16 °C 51 dBA 1900 rpm 24 °C 50 °C
Thermaltake ISG-100 18 °C 50 dBA 1800 rpm 58 °C 93 °C
Noctua NH-U12P (low) 15 °C 42 dBA 1000 rpm 28 °C 59 °C
Noctua NH-U12P 15 °C 46 dBA 1400 rpm 25 °C 54 °C
Noctua NH-C12P 17 °C 46 dBA 1400 rpm 37 °C 76 °C
Thermaltake ISGC-200 21 °C 48 dBA 1900 rpm 42 °C 68 °C
Scythe Kabuto 22 °C 47 dBA 1200 rpm 38 °C 63 °C
Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro 20 °C 51 dBA 2300 rpm 49 °C 85 °C
ISGC-300 (min) 18 °C 42 dBA 800 rpm 36 °C 64 °C
ISGC-300 (max) 18 °C 46 dBA 1400 rpm 31 °C 56 °C
SilverStone NT06-E 21 °C 66 dBA 2600 rpm 39 °C 96 °C
Zalman CNPS9700 NT 22 °C 56 dBA 2600 rpm 34 °C 63 °C
Scythe Mugen-2 17 °C 46 dBA 1300 rpm 28 °C 54 °C
ISGC-400 (max) 17 °C 47 dBA 1400 rpm 36 °C 69 °C
Cooler Master Vortex 752 20 °C 55 dBA 2300 rpm 48 °C 92 °C
iCEAGE Prima Boss (max) 22 °C 53 dBA 2000 rpm 35 °C 59 °C
Evercool Buffalo 17 °C 51 dBA 1850 rpm 32 °C 67 °C
Scythe Big Shuriken 20 °C 50 dBA 1500 rpm 51 °C 85 °C
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 21 °C 53 dBA 2700 rpm 39 °C 66 °C
Titan Skalli 20 °C 47 dBA 1550 rpm 37 °C 69 °C

The next graph will give you an idea on how many degrees Celsius the CPU core was hotter than room temperature during the tests, in idle.

Titan Skalli 

The next graph will give you an idea on how many degrees Celsius the CPU core was hotter than room temperature during the tests, under full load.

Titan Skalli 

[nextpage title=”Main Specifications”]

Titan Skalli main features are:

  • Application: Sockets 1366, 1156, 775, AM3, AM2+, AM2, 939 and 754 processors.
  • Fins: Aluminum.
  • Base: Aluminum, with heatpipes in direct contact to the CPU.
  • Heat-pipes: Two U-shape 8 mm copper heat-pipes.
  • Fan: 100 mm.
  • Nominal fan speed: 800 to 1,500 rpm.
  • Fan air flow: 46.58 cfm.
  • Maximum power consumption: 1.68 W.
  • Nominal noise level: 29 dBA.
  • Weight: not informed.
  • More information: https://www.titan-cd.com
  • Suggested price in the US*: USD 30.00

[nextpage title=”Conclusions”]

Titan Skalli is a good cooler. Its performance was, by the error margin we adopted, practically the same of Evercool Buffalo and Cooler Master Hyper TX3, two coolers with very similar design.

Its noise level is also good. Skalli is a very quiet cooler even with the CPU under full load. The installation is quite simple and, besides some users hating the Intel standard cooler holding mechanism, it is not a heavy cooler so don’t be worried about it unlocking from the motherboard holes.

The big problem with Skalli is its cost/benefit ratio. There are some cooler with similar design and performance, like Evercool Buffalo and Cooler Master Hyper TX3, with a lower price point. But Skalli price can change in the future, since the market laws of offer and demand are still valid.

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