SilverStone Nitrogon NT06-Lite
SilverStone is a company familiar to most. Founded in 2003, they are very popular for their PC cases (especially HTPC cases) and power supplies.
SilverStone has taken the road less traveled with the NT06-Lite and has opted to stick with a large suspended 120mm downdraft design. Although the popular tower designs are very effective at dissipating heat, they do not provide much cooling to the motherboard components, nor do they cool the system memory. The opposing argument is that tower type heatsinks allow warm air to be directed towards rear exhaust fans where it is quickly expelled from the case.
The SilverStone NT06 employs three large 8mm heatpipes. You may be wondering why a heavy-duty heatsink like this is named the “Lite”. This simply implies that there is no included fan and fan controller like the regular NT06. It is up to the buyer to select their fan of choice.
The NT06-Lite comes packaged in a plastic package with specifications and other information visible. There was some foam thoughtfully placed between the base and the fins to prevent the heatpipes from bending. Since the only thing suspending the fin basket is the heatpipes, this is important.
The NT06 weighs in at a little over 500g without a fan, making it fairly light. It may look like a 100% aluminum design but it is actually constructed almost entirely of copper. The heatpipes, upper fins and base are all copper. The small lower fins above the base are aluminum. The NT06 employs an attractive fan shroud displaying the Nitrogon and SilverStone logos. The shroud provides about a millimeter or two of extra clearance for the fan and also allows a 120mm fan of your choosing to be mounted with screws rather than clips. Although clips make fan installation and removal very easy, screws provide a much more secure mount. This could be a pro or a con depending on your preference.
The small aluminum fins above the base are a welcome addition and are not always found on downdraft coolers. Although heatpipes are very effective at transferring heat away from the base, some heat can be dissipated directly via these fins. It seems logical to include them as part of a downdraft design, as the base will receive a fair bit of airflow thanks to the above mounted fan. This small aluminum sink helps to keep the heatpipes sandwiched as well. My only complaint about SilverStone’s implementation of this is that there could have been better contact with the top of the base and heatpipes—there are some gaps.
There is a whole slew of mounting hardware included as this heatsink supports numerous sockets including 775, AM2, 939, 754 and even 478. One concern I immediately had was the large universal backplate that is included. Although it should work just fine with the majority of AM2 and 939/754 based systems, it can cause an issue with some newer LGA775 based motherboards. Due to protruding pins from coils and other power regulation components on the rear of these modern motherboards, the backplates need to be shaped appropriately.
As you can see, the base is not polished on the Nitrogon, but it passed our flat-glass and straight-edge test with flying colors. It is difficult to see from the image, but the water was distributed evenly and held the heatsink to the glass with some force. The base is completely flat, which is much more important than shine.
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