Published: July 31, 2006 | Source: Specialtech | Author: Matt Kemp

Silverstone Cooler: Nitrogen NT03

Meet the Silverstone NT03

Silverstone are targeting the NT03 at the smaller form factor market, with its compact design capable of fitting in to most HTPC/Media cases that fit mATX/ATX form factor motherboards. The cooler supports Intel Socket 478, LGA775, and AMD Socket 754, 939, 940. However, Silverstone state: “Due to an increasing number of Pentium M desktop motherboards featuring proprietary CPU cooler mounting holes, the NT03 will no longer be listed as having support for Socket 479”. This is a bit of a shame but if you picked a board that does not have proprietary mounting holes your in luck.

The look of the cooler is very minimal with a shiny black top and silver lettering. This is the part of the cooler you are most likely to see and the embossed silver and white Silverstone logo make it look very professional.

As you can see the NT03 boards copper fins to dissipate the heat that is generated by the CPU. With 4 copper heatpipes containing sintered powder, the NT03 can work in almost any orientation. This makes it an ideal choice for a HTPC case that has an upside down motherboard such as some of the Silverstone Lascala range.

The contact area of the cooler is copper, with the heatpipes running off of it from there. The contact area is not hugely shiny, but is very flat meaning that you will get a good contact between the base and the CPU core or IHS. The machining marks are still on the base but they are pretty fine, showing that the base has been lapped down to a pretty decent finish.

Specification

Taken from Silverstone’s Site

NT03 heatsink

Material Copper base, fins, heat pipes Heat Pipe Type Powder Color Copper, black Application Intel Socket 478, LGA775, AMD Socket 754, 939, 940 Net Weight

608 g

Dimension 90 mm (W) x 72 mm (H) x 64 mm (D)

60mm cooling fan x 2 Fan speed 3600rpm Max airflow 17.89CFM Max air pressure 2.31mmH2O Noise 26.9dBA Fan blade size 60 x 60 x 15mm Fan blade 11 Bearing ball

The specifications aren’t bad for the NT03. The airflow is a little low even with the two 60mm fans, but this cooler is more focused on a smaller case so the smaller fans would obviously not be able to pull as much airflow through.

The Fans and Noise

The fans are Evercool R126015DL rated at 12v – 0.14A. Together the two fans make up 26.9dBA according to Silverstone. I think that this is probably about right. When placed under full load by our test setup, there was a definite whirring noise coming from the cooler. Although not loud enough to be overly bothering, this would probably annoy you during something like watching a DVD. This probably wouldn’t be too much of an issue, as watching a DVD should not stress out the CPU too much.

Silverstone have designed the fan brackets so that they blow through the cooler in one direction in a push-pull configuration. This is pretty good although I was not sure exactly how effective the low-flow of these fans were. The top of the cooler got very hot during testing and I think that the low CFM certainly contributed to this.