News Alpenföhn Atlas mini twin tower cooler rated @ 200W TDP

I just saw this today - the Alpenföhn Atlas might be the best cooler yet for SFF cases with a maximum cooler height in the 130mm range, like the M1 and Nova. It's 125mm tall with a twin tower design, dual 92mm PWM fans, and a pretty amazing 200W TDP rating. Unfortunately, Alpenföhn products don't seem to be available outside of Europe. But for those of you in the EU, this looks like a pretty great option.

 

esplin2966

Cable-Tie Ninja
Mar 2, 2015
169
113
I am actually building a PC for my brother that would make great use of this cooler. Too bad it's not available in the US :(
 

veryrarium

Cable-Tie Ninja
Jun 6, 2015
144
44
the Alpenföhn Atlas might be the best cooler yet for SFF cases with a maximum cooler height in the 130mm range, like the M1 and Nova
Could you clarify what you mean by the "best"? :)
I read your comment in the M1 thread on [H] a few days ago in response to someone asking what the best air cooler for M1 would be, where you said you'd choose NH-U9S for components compatibility and ease of working inside the case but C14 or Dark Rock TF for the highest performance. Do you think that Atlas is "better" than those thick top-down coolers with a bigger than 120mm fan with six heatpipes inside M1 in the same sense, or this time in terms of cooling performance as well?

My intuition is 92mm fan tower coolers (Atlas, U9S, D9L, Macho90, etc) even with 5 or 6 U-shaped heatpipes, won't perform as well as C14/C14S/TC14CS/Dark Rock TF in a case where ventilation and component layout are designed to work to the advantage of the latter group (i.e., side panel vents, short distance between the fan and the side panel, and top vents) and to the disadvantage of the former group (i.e., there is no front intake/exhaust, and the front side of the cooler is partially or entirely blocked by the PSU placement) but this is just mere speculation.

ETA: I wish every product that comes out from Alpenfoehn also comes out from Deepcool and vice versa, as there is a distributor for Deepcool in my country but not for Alpenfoehn. I wanted to buy their Peter2.
 
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Necere

Shrink Ray Wielder
Original poster
NCASE
Feb 22, 2015
1,719
3,281
Could you clarify what you mean by the "best"? :)
I read your comment in the M1 thread on [H] a few days ago in response to someone asking what the best air cooler for M1 would be, where you said you'd choose NH-U9S for components compatibility and ease of working inside the case but C14 or Dark Rock TF for the highest performance. Do you think that Atlas is "better" than those thick top-down coolers with a bigger than 120mm fan with six heatpipes inside M1 in the same sense, or this time in terms of cooling performance as well?
Well, yeah - we can't really know how cooling performance compares with something like the NH-C14 or Dark Rock TF without actual tests. We can make some observations about relative strengths and weaknesses though:

  • Top-down coolers have larger fans, covering a larger frontal area. All else being equal, this will result in greater performance with less noise.
  • Top-downs have direct access to outside air for the intake in some cases (e.g., M1, Nova).
On the negative side:
  • Top-downs exhaust against the motherboard, forcing air to change direction to escape and producing turbulent airflow. This results in more backpressure and potentially lower performance.
  • Top-downs have longer and (effectively) fewer heatpipes. Heatpipe performance negatively correlates to length, while having heatpipes exit from only one side of the CPU plate reduces the total amount of heat transfer capacity available.
  • Top-downs take up more space and may not reach their maximum performance potential due to component conflicts (e.g., bottom fan on the NH-C14 interfering with the SFX mount in the M1).

In comparison, small tower coolers like the Atlas have theoretically better heat transfer to the fin stack(s), due to their shorter and (effectively) larger number of heatpipes. They also have a more or less straight-through air pathway, usually directly to an exhaust vent, which produces less backpressure and therefore requires less work by the fans. Whether that's enough to offset the theoretically worse performance:noise ratio of the smaller fans is hard to say. A lot of it comes down to how good the fans are as well.

In a case like the M1, while it doesn't have a front intake, a tower cooler can still work quite well if its used in conjunction with a 120mm fan mounted as intake at the front of the fan bracket. That it works with a greater number of motherboards and has fewer potential issues with other components makes a strong case for a tower cooler, IMO.
 

Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,828
4,902
It does look like a nice, beefy CPU cooler that fits the Ncase M1 and Kimera Nova well. Considering it's 200W TDP and Socket 2011-3 support, this might be a good cooling solution for the Nova with a front-mounted PSU. Alpenföhn is a respectable company too, with some very nice products.
 

Vittra

Airflow Optimizer
May 11, 2015
359
90
Mounting system appears thoughtful and intuitive. Pretty heavy cooler for it's diminutive size, the U9S and D9L are significantly lighter.

On the negative side - proprietary fans. I don't see them available for purchase separately, which, like the Dark Rock TF, irks me when thinking long term compatibility.

I suspect the cooler may also interfere with daughterboards that Asus like to use, and possibly the M.2 section of the Z97 Impact.