Cooling ID-Cooling IS-47K 47mm 6-heatpipe cooler with 92x15mm fan - Black Ridge alternative?

[Tazpr]

Impressions so far are concerning... Just installed it and did some light gaming with a max temp of 91. I don't think the stock cooler got this high so I'm not sure what's going on. This is with the fan oriented to exhaust air through the cooler.

UPDATE: It's getting dangerously hot... Hitting 97 degree after 20 minutes in a game, gonna uninstall and check if it's making proper contact.

UPDATE 2: Swapped back to stock cooler - the cooler was definitely correctly installed and making full contact with the CPU but was idling around 50 degrees and topping out at close to 100.

 

[Tazpr]

Back on the stock cooler and tempts don't even reach 90 degrees.. So 10C cooler on what is widely considered the worst cooler available is a clear fail (whether that be a fail on my part or the particular unit I have received)

Very disappointing and not entirely sure what to do with this one now..

 

[tinyitx]

Back on the stock cooler and tempts don't even reach 90 degrees.. So 10C cooler on what is widely considered the worst cooler available is a clear fail and I would highly advise against buying this cooler if you have not already.

Very disappointing and not entirely sure what to do with this one now..

I have a hard time to believe that. It simply cannot be a design flaw. If so, this would be an epic failure.
As it seems some other people reporting OK thermals, the chance of a design flaw is slim.

Manufacturing flaw? Have you inspected to see any defects (eg cracks on the heatpipes)?

How about the fan? Did you monitor the fan speed to see if it was spinning in good higher rpm when the CPU was at 97C? Custom fan curve OK?

Another possibility could be a combination of your specific mobo layout + tall ram modules + messy cables form a 'choking' area where the fan would need to breathe air in. I mean, the fan is installed underneath and is so close to the mobo that the surrounding 4 sides must be good clearance for air to be sucked into the fan.

Just my wild guesses.

 

[Tazpr]

I have a hard time to believe that. It simply cannot be a design flaw. If so, this would be an epic failure.
As it seems some other people reporting OK thermals, the chance of a design flaw is slim.

Manufacturing flaw? Have you inspected to see any defects (eg cracks on the heatpipes)?

How about the fan? Did you monitor the fan speed to see if it was spinning in good higher rpm when the CPU was at 97C? Custom fan curve OK?

Another possibility could be a combination of your specific mobo layout + tall ram modules + messy cables form a 'choking' area where the fan would need to breathe air in. I mean, the fan is installed underneath and is so close to the mobo that the surrounding 4 sides must be good clearance for air to be sucked into the fan.

Just my wild guesses.

So I can rule a number of those out:
How about the fan? Did you monitor the fan speed to see if it was spinning in good higher rpm when the CPU was at 97C? Custom fan curve OK?

- Was locked to 100% while gaming.

Another possibility could be a combination of your specific mobo layout + tall ram modules + messy cables form a 'choking' area where the fan would need to breathe air in. I mean, the fan is installed underneath and is so close to the mobo that the surrounding 4 sides must be good clearance for air to be sucked into the fan.

- I have a pretty standard board without much obstructionsand custom cables that run the edge of the board so they don't abstruct - I do somehow feel though that the fan's proximity to the motherboard is a main cause.

Manufacturing flaw? Have you inspected to see any defects (eg cracks on the heatpipes)?

- Potentially - what I'm thinking it could be, one other person reported equally as high temps which I didn't believe so maybe there's some bad units in the first batch?

 

[Valantar]

How flat is the base of the cooler? That was the main culprit in GamersNexus' test of that recent Corsair air cooler - its base was so uneven as to render it pretty much useless.

 

[tinyitx]

50C idling temp is just not right. Assume your room temp is 25C, this means it is idling at 25C above ambient temp. Very fishy!

 

[Thehack]

Impressions so far are concerning... Just installed it and did some light gaming with a max temp of 91. I don't think the stock cooler got this high

Impressions so far are concerning... Just installed it and did some light gaming with a max temp of 91. I don't think the stock cooler got this high so I'm not sure what's going on. This is with the fan oriented to exhaust air through the cooler.

UPDATE: It's getting dangerously hot... Hitting 97 degree after 20 minutes in a game, gonna uninstall and check if it's making proper contact.

UPDATE 2: Swapped back to stock cooler - the cooler was definitely correctly installed and making full contact with the CPU but was idling around 50 degrees and topping out at close to 100.

High idle temps indicate bad thermal contact, usually not enough mounting pressure.

Just about any cooler should have about the same idle temps. I think you should try reinstalling it. For my AM4 install, I fully torqued out the screws. Made sure there was no component that would hinder cold plate to IHS contact. Used noctua paste.

 

[Tazpr]

How flat is the base of the cooler? That was the main culprit in GamersNexus' test of that recent Corsair air cooler - its base was so uneven as to render it pretty much useless.

50C idling temp is just not right. Assume your room temp is 25C, this means it is idling at 25C above ambient temp. Very fishy!

High idle temps indicate bad thermal contact, usually not enough mounting pressure.

Just about any cooler should have about the same idle temps. I think you should try reinstalling it. For my AM4 install, I fully torqued out the screws. Made sure there was no component that would hinder cold plate to IHS contact. Used noctua paste.

The screws were fully tightened - literallly couldn't tighten them anymore and it looked to be making full contact when removed and inspected.
I should maybe correct my wording slightly - light use as in just like browsing forums etc for giving me 50 degree with very little CPU utilisation, if I left the PC and came back the temps dropped to about 30 degrees.

At this stage I just can't be bothered disassembling the PC and reassembling because the Velka5 is a case that wasn't made with frequent tear downs in mind - I hope I'm wrong and I just installed it incorrectly and next time I need to do some maintainance I'll do some open air testing so I can adjust it easily if need be.

For reference @Thehack I also used Noctua paste and fully torqued all screws - I mean something has to be wrong since there's no reason for a 6 heatpipe, densely finned cooler to not at least provide adequate cooling.
I'll update my previous post around advising against purchasing until we get more User feedback.

 

[Thehack]

The screws were fully tightened - literallly couldn't tighten them anymore and it looked to be making full contact when removed and inspected.
I should maybe correct my wording slightly - light use as in just like browsing forums etc for giving me 50 degree with very little CPU utilisation, if I left the PC and came back the temps dropped to about 30 degrees.

At this stage I just can't be bothered disassembling the PC and reassembling because the Velka5 is a case that wasn't made with frequent tear downs in mind - I hope I'm wrong and I just installed it incorrectly and next time I need to do some maintainance I'll do some open air testing so I can adjust it easily if need be.

For reference @Thehack I also used Noctua paste and fully torqued all screws - I mean something has to be wrong since there's no reason for a 6 heatpipe, densely finned cooler to not at least provide adequate cooling.
I'll update my previous post around advising against purchasing until we get more User feedback.

I see. That is concerning.

The only other thing is if it is set to exhaust it would not perform very well if you don't have cool air to feed it. Something like the velka 3 would likely benefit from intake, similar to the Black Ridge, most setups seem to benefit from intake.

I'll do a quick comparison with my cooler when I get a chance to see intake vs exhaust measurement.

 

[Tazpr]

I see. That is concerning.

The only other thing is if it is set to exhaust it would not perform very well if you don't have cool air to feed it. Something like the velka 3 would likely benefit from intake, similar to the Black Ridge, most setups seem to benefit from intake.

I'll do a quick comparison with my cooler when I get a chance to see intake vs exhaust measurement.

Yeah see that's where I ended up - I think without something to move the hot air from around the CPU area it just keeps getting warmer and feeding hotter and hotter air back into the cooler.

I'm gonna try and get in on one of the T1 drops in the near future so if I can secure one of those I'd be able to test with a 120mm fan to assist cooling to see if that improves things at all.

 

[ExtremeSFFPC]

I'm glad to see it wasn't just me who had such a poor experience with this cooler. I too thought there might be a design flaw or manufacturing issue with early batches or something. The results were just awful and unacceptable. The L9A outperforms it by 10-15 degrees. I had full contact, fully torqued the screws, no obstructions, no issues with the fan curve, used noctua nt-h1 paste and it was terrible. Not sure what the issue is, it's very unfortunate because it is a great design but results are very bad.

Curious to see other user's reports. Maybe we got bad units or maybe it truly is a bad cooler?

 

[Thehack]

If you guys don't feel satisfied, feel free to message me for returns. There is a 2 week return window.

 

[Ajestic]

I'm glad to see it wasn't just me who had such a poor experience with this cooler. I too thought there might be a design flaw or manufacturing issue with early batches or something. The results were just awful and unacceptable. The L9A outperforms it by 10-15 degrees. I had full contact, fully torqued the screws, no obstructions, no issues with the fan curve, used noctua nt-h1 paste and it was terrible. Not sure what the issue is, it's very unfortunate because it is a great design but results are very bad.

Curious to see other user's reports. Maybe we got bad units or maybe it truly is a bad cooler?

Like another pointed out, you probably had the fan set to exhaust and not intake. I've seen so many reports in different forums, on reddit etc.
Evidence seems to point to it getting overheated when fan is used as exhaust. Most likely it's manufactured in a way the fan is getting chocked, especially in small itx cases with not a lot of room to move air around.

Try rotate the fan and set it as INTAKE. We need more data on INTAKE rather then exhaust. Cause it shouldn't differ so much from Black Ridge in that regard which we all are hoping for.

 

[Ajestic]

choked*

 

[ExtremeSFFPC]

Like another pointed out, you probably had the fan set to exhaust and not intake. I've seen so many reports in different forums, on reddit etc.
Evidence seems to point to it getting overheated when fan is used as exhaust. Most likely it's manufactured in a way the fan is getting chocked, especially in small itx cases with not a lot of room to move air around.

Try rotate the fan and set it as INTAKE. We need more data on INTAKE rather then exhaust. Cause it shouldn't differ so much from Black Ridge in that regard which we all are hoping for.

I had the fan set as intake. Check a couple pages back and you'll see my detailed posted with pictures and my results. The L9A outperformed the is-47k by 10+ degrees.

Edit: Post #76 on page 4

 

[Tazpr]

If you guys don't feel satisfied, feel free to message me for returns. There is a 2 week return window.

I don't want to return because I'm confident there are scenarios where this cooler performs well - it's just not in the case I use!

 

[kioffies]

Hey guys, I received the cooler in mail this morning and did some testing. Compared to my AXP-90 full copper, it's almost 10 degrees higher. (Running 9600k in Velka 5, used stock fan pulling air towards motherboard). It does take a longer time to reach its thermal capacity (due to more heat pipes?). I will try it out with a Geeek A50 later with 3 exhaust fans to see if the extra 92mm fans will be able to help more air over it will help. Also, the stock fan that came with IS-47K was pretty nice, putting it on my AXP-90 got me better temps by a few degrees.

 

[Thehack]

Hey guys, I received the cooler in mail this morning and did some testing. Compared to my AXP-90 full copper, it's almost 10 degrees higher. (Running 9600k in Velka 5, used stock fan pulling air towards motherboard). It does take a longer time to reach its thermal capacity (due to more heat pipes?). I will try it out with a Geeek A50 later with 3 exhaust fans to see if the extra 92mm fans will be able to help more air over it will help. Also, the stock fan that came with IS-47K was pretty nice, putting it on my AXP-90 got me better temps by a few degrees.

If it is taking longer to reach max thermals, to a noticeable degree, it means that there is not enough exhaust in the case. These small coolers have very little heat capacity so they saturate very quickly. Usually means the CPU cooler has good performance but seems to cause heat pockets that warm up over time. Aluminum does have more heat capacity, but these coolers are really small so it shouldn't be noticeable.

I would test it outside of the case to get a baseline performance, and compare it to your AXP-90.

 

[Ajestic]

Guess it's safe to say this cooler is simply not efficient enough, since we now have people here who reportedly set it as both intake/exhaust, and we are still seeing numbers as high as 10*C more than AXP-90/L9A. Something about the design makes the fan choke, the number of heat pipes and overall similarity to Black Ridge should at least put this cooler above average but there is not enough air being shuffled so it heats up in time.

 

[Tazpr]

Guess it's safe to say this cooler is simply not efficient enough, since we now have people here who reportedly set it as both intake/exhaust, and we are still seeing numbers as high as 10*C more than AXP-90/L9A. Something about the design makes the fan choke, the number of heat pipes and overall similarity to Black Ridge should at least put this cooler above average but there is not enough air being shuffled so it heats up in time.

I just think it's a more niche product than we anticipated. I'd be curious to see temps from a Dan A4 with the 92mm fan under the motherboard since it's a case with the same cooler height restrictions. Or a T1 not using an AIO.

But cases with no assisted airflow are not good matches with this cooler.