Noiseblocker Coolscraper v2.0 CPU Cooler

Noiseblocker Coolscraper Review

Introduction

Noiseblocker make a variety of products, though mainly focus on cooling and sound dampening. Today I will be testing the NB-Coolscraper 120 v2.0 which is designed to be an active cooling solution for your CPU, while combining Noiseblocker’s love of silence. Lets see if we have a cool & quiet CPU cooler on ours hands.

Available version of the Coolscraper

  • available Mounting Kits :
    1. 775 Intel P4 LGA
    2. 478 Intel P4
    3. 754/ 939 /940
    4. AM2
  • Socket A mounting kit in preperation
  • available in active(NB-SX1 incl.) and passive version !
  • The universal system permits you at any time a change from e.g. Intel P4 to AMD Athlon64 or in reverse. We offer
    mounting kits for the assembly for each type of current socket.

Noiseblocker’s Take on the NB-Coolscrape

“The phenomenal cooling performance of this CPU cooler is down of the central Heatpipe which has direct contact with the CPU. An extremely high cooling performance already exists with nearly unhearable slow-turning 12cm fans.”

Bits and Box

The Coolscraper comes in a fairly plain box by today’s standards, but it still maintains a clean and proffessional air. The front and top show the name of the product and a small picture of the cooler itself, while the back has some specifications and a few feature listings.

GNoiseblocker Coolscraper Box

Inside the box there is nothing extra to get too excited about, simply the large heatsink, the 120mm fan, mounting screws, mounting plates and the all faithful manual.

Noiseblocker Coolscraper Bundle

This cooler comes with its own custom front and back mounting plates so unfortunately you’ll have to pop your mobo out to install this one. The screws that are included with the Noiseblocker Coolscraper are small thumbscrews; this should mean that the installation will be toolless.

The Coolscraper

The Coolscreaper itself is built to a similar design as other tower coolers, with one difference. Instead of having several small heatpipes that run from the core up through the fins, this one has one massive heatpipe; and when I say massive, I mean it.

Noiseblocker Coolscraper

The heatpipe runs all the way through the centry of the heatsink and finishes at the top with a small bit of a text and the Noiseblocker logo.

Noiseblocker Coolscraper Top

The fins on the heatsink are huge too, providing a massive surface area for heat to be absorbed from.

Noiseblocker Coolscraper Fins

The top and sides of the heatsink have attatched plastic shrouds to direct any air straight over the large fins therefore taking away more heat than if the air was allowed to flow where it wished. A nice feature with these however, is that if you remove these and the supplied fan, you can run the Coolscraper passively. Removing these side plastic air funnels means that air from anywhere can flow freely over the heatsink increasing its cooling power under passive conditions.

Air Funnels

The Noiseblocker Coolscraper comes with a preattatched 120mm fan designed to run slowly, and quietly. This fan is finished with a clear frame and blue fan blades.

120mm Fan

Moving down to the base of the Coolscraper you can get a look at its contact point/core.

Protected Core
The cooler’s core is covered by a plastic sticker to make sure it stays protected during transit.
Don’t want a scratched contact point now do we?

Popping off the sticker the protective sticker we are greeted with an impressively flat/mirrored surface. Flat core’s usually leads to good cooling performance, lets hope that idea runs true here.

Reflective Core

Reflective Core

When attatched you can see that the topside mounting plate is square in nature. This obviously mirrors the base plate, which means that – Motherboard permitting – you can have this cooler facing any way you want. This is a great feature as it means that you can have the air exhausting into a large exhaust fan at the back of your case, into the PSU’s intake fan or if the air being blown through isn’t very warm then you could exhaust over the back of your graphics card.

Rotating Base

The overall look of the cooler is quite nice. Its silver fins and blue top look quite professional and it emits an air of efficient cooling ability. However, the feel of the product is less satisfying. The fins feel a little flimsy and they bend very easily. Also, the rotating base looks like it is made of tin foil as its chrome like appearance and flimsy structure really make it feel quite poor to the touch.

Installation

As I mentioned before you need to remove the motherboard to install the Coolscraper. A minor annoyance but something that most enthusiasts can expect when buying an aftermarket cooler.

First it was off with the old cooler and out with the white spirit. Having cleaned off my trusty E6600 it was on with some new AS5:

E6600 CPU

Then it was on with the rear and front mounting plates, and finally on with the Coolscraper itself.

Noiseblocker Coolscraper Mounted

The installation was relatively easy, however there were a couple of problems I encountered. The first of these was that the cooler, due to its size, was unable to be mounted in two of the four possible mounting positions. This was because when trying to do so the cooler would rest ontop of some of my motherboards heatsinks. This made the contact between the Coolscraper and the CPU very poor and is obviously unnacceptable. The other problem that I encountered was that although the screws that you use to install the Coolscraper are toolless and simple enough to use, the ones that rest under the fan are very difficult to install as the fan itself gets in the way. It is doable with some nimble handwork, but its not a comfortable exercise. A final and unfortunate problem with the Coolscraper relates to its height. Because it is so tall I was unable to have my side panel mounted 120mm fan in place as well as this cooler. It wasn’t much of a problem to remove, but those with side panel fans may want to take into account which you want more, a large CPU cooler, or that side panel cooling fan as chances are they won’t go together very well; unless you have a very wide case of course.

Testing

Now the part you have all been waiting for, the testing.

Tests for CPU Coolers are relatively simple affairs, we simply take the temperatures of the CPU while it is at idle (Having been so for 30 minutes) and while the CPU is at full load (Having also been so for half an hour).

To load the CPU we use a combination of Orthos Stress Prime – A dual core version of Prime which normally maxes out both cores of any processor – and Folding@Home in the background to pick up any slack.

The rig that this cooler was tested in is as follows:

Core 2 Duo E6600
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
Silverstone Olypia 650w
OCZ 2gb Special Ops PC6400
Spire Blackfin case with Noiseblocker 120mm’s fitted in the front and rear; side panel 120mm fan disabled.

Results

Ambient
Stock
Overclocked
Idle 18 31 41
Load 19 39 53

NB. The “overclocked” setting is with the CPU at 3.24ghz and the Vcore at 1.475v.

With the CPU at stock speeds the cooler performs very well, giving excellent temperatures at both idle and at full load. The overclocked setting is not as impressive and I would not want to keep my processor loading at 53 degrees for too long. Indeed after an hour of gaming my PC locked up and quickly checking the CPU temperature in the bios it was in the low 50s suggesting it had reached higher temperatures during the gaming session. It looks like huge overclocks are out with this cooler, but medium overclocks should be sustainable.

Noise

This is where the Coolscraper really comes into its own. Throughout the testing it was almost completely silent, only emitting a slight, but odd sounding, vibrating noise. To actually hear the noise from the airflow you need to put your ear right next to the cooler, which is obviously not a common practice for PC users.

Cost

This cooler is marked on the Noiseblocker site at 50 euros; this works out to just over £33. This places this cooler in the top end of cooler pricing making it a difficult choice to see if this cooler is worth your hand earned £s.

Conclusion

This cooler has an excellent combination of good cooling ability as well as managing to stay almost completely silent. The slight rattling noise is a little irritating but the reduced air flow noise is a plus. The price for this cooler is a little high when compared to other coolers, but if you want a cooler with good performance and a very low noise output, the Noiseblocker Coolscraper would be a good choice.

Pros Cons
Good cooling performance Slight vibrating noise during operation
Nice and quiet Feels a little flimsy
Looks quite good Quite expensive

XSR Value Award

I’d like to thank our sponsors Noiseblocker for providing us with this Cooler.

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