Introduction

We reviewed the Akasa’ Nero S CPU cooler only just last month dubbed their “premium cooler”. Now however Akasa have come to the market with a cooler capable of mounting two 120mm fans titled, the “Venom”, not to be confused with the Venomous X from Thermalright. Akasa state on the box “King of Cooling”. Now this isn’t to be taken offense but Akasa is more known for their low cost budget coolers delivering serious bang for buck for any consumer, CPU or GPU cooling. When a company takes a brave step to dub there cooler so, one can only be pessimistic. However, no doubt it will probably be the best cooler Akasa produce to date. With the tag line on the box, “unlock Venom GAME ON!”, we could be in for a real treat with a cooler offering a lot of cooling potential.

About Akasa

Akasa design and manufacture a comprehensive range of high quality technology products including coolers, heatsinks and fans. They work closely with Intel and AMD to ensure the products match the complex demands of CPU and form-factor technology. So when new, advanced technology arrives, Akasa have the products and expertise to make it work for you.

Specifications

Heatsink Material: Aluminum fins, Copper heatpipes

Weight: 805g

Cooler Dimensions: 120x96x160mm

Socket: Intel LGA775/1156/1366, AMD AM2/AM3

Fan Speed: 600-1900RPM (PWM Controlled)

Noise Level: 6.9-28.9dB(A)

The Cooler

We were very pleased with the Nero S’ offerings last month and we are hoping more of the same and better with the Venom. When we first looked over the cooler in all its glory, one couldn’t help but find similarities between it and Titan’s Fenrir with the same fin spacing, and four 8mm heatpipes arranged in the same order. If Akasa can match or better it, then they are on to a winner here.

The build quality of the cooler is well made indeed. Maybe not to the standard of Prolimatech’ Armageddon we reviewed earlier, but still up there. Each 45 high grade aluminum fin has been rounded off to remove any sharpen edges to safeguard the user.

What’s interesting to note is that the cooler seems optimized for push-pull rather than a single fan; thus the “Smart Design” Akasa state about the cooler. If you note the picture above and below, each side is different with one side shaped inwards towards the coolers heatpipes, and the other side shaped in a convex manner. We can only presume that this is to aid the airflow of the intake fan to push the air through the aluminum profiled fins effectively allowing the opposite fan to pull any straggling airflow more efficiently. The arrow slight dent along the coolers middle from top to bottom on the outside of the fins where the ‘pull’ fan would be positioned helps to eliminate any dead spots of air within the cooler closest to the fans bearing helping to shift the air out quicker. In contrast, the other side features an oval gap when the fan is mounted. This gap helps to centralize the airflow through the coolers fins and heatpipes enabling to push the airflow more effectively.

The base of the cooler features HDT (Heatpipe Direct Touch) Technology. We’ve reviewed many coolers featuring this very technology with the same worries before testing. In principle, HDT is great in respect that it may offer rapid heat transfer from the CPUs base through copper heatpipes to the radiator fins for the airflow to disperse the heat effectively, but In reality some coolers get it wrong whereby once mounted some heatpipes are in contact with the base more so than others, thus more heat being focused on one or two of the heatpipes more so than the others making them unable to cope in high demand situations.

Like the Nero S, Akasa have divided the four heatpipes with 3 aluminum separators all equally flat. This ensures that once mounted, the cooler is as flat as it can be and in good contact with the CPUs base ensuring optimum cooling efficiency. The four 8mm copper exposed heatpipes have been machined smooth, in fact the whole base has and is not convex at all.

The kit supplied is a joy to see. Not only do you get 8 bright yellow siliconized rubber fan mounts for easy installation to the heatsink with anti-vibration properties for quiet operation, but you also get mounting for not just Intel, but AMD also. It’s nice to see a high performance cooler support all major and current platforms out of the box. If you see below, this cooler features Akasa’ new mounting kit dubbed the originally titled, “Easy Select Kit”. I don’t think we need to tell you what it does. It does what it says on the tin and offers a very simple but effective mounting.

Moreover, you are supplied with one Venom 4-Pin PWM 120x25mm fan. This fan is part of the S-Flow family of new fans Akasa have developed. According to Akasa, they provide 30% more airflow than your standard 120mm fan. This is mainly down to the fan blade design as each blade has been shaped in such a manner to deliver strong centralized airflow with minimal resistance.

Once paired up with the Venom coolers airflow focused design, it should prove very fruitful when we see the results. Cooler aside, this fan is rated to spin from 600-1900RPM with a max airflow rating of 83.63CFM and a noise level between 6.9-28.9dB(A). These figures sound very promising especially backed with the bearing type used; HDB (Hydro Dynamic Bearings). These HDB use a dynamic pressure field and an anti-leak seal to maintain constant bearing lubrication and in turn can extend the fans lifetime up to 50,000 hours, and moreover lowers the fan noise both at low and high RPMs. Note, Akasa do not provide the second fan.

Test Method

All our coolers follow the same rigorous testing conditions. We strapped on a single 120mmx38mm fan in the shape of the San Ace 9G1212H1011, widely considered one of the best fans on the market due to its under-volting ability (lower RPM) and high static pressure – perfect for heatsinks. This fan can produce up to 99CFM at full speed. If a heatsink is supplied with a fan, we shall be testing that stock fan(s) on full RPM.

We now use LinX Build 0.6.1 for our entire load testing of heatsinks as this stresses the CPU more so than other load tests and really puts strain on the heatsinks. Idle testing was taken after a LinX run had finished. We allowed a ‘cooling off period’ of 10 minutes for the idle test. Both minimum and maximum temperatures were taken from Real Temp Build 3.58; an average of the cores was taken. Any energy saving features were disabled in the BIOS. OCZ Freeze was the TIM of choice.

All tests were run a minimum of 3 times (each run was followed by a remounting of the heatsink) and only the best results are represented. Our test system can hit 4.41GHz stable with 1.45v. However, due to the high voltage, not all heatsinks can cope, so we decided on a ‘safe’ voltage level of 1.35v, and a lower stable clock speed of 4.20GHz for our testing.

Test System

Intel Core i7 930 @ 4.20GHz w/ 1.35v

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7

HIS HD 5850 1024MB

Corsair Dominator GTX2

Enermax Modu87+ 700W

Intel X25-M G2 80GB

The Results

Analysis

It could be said that Akasa have come up with a great formula with their latest cooler. When we placed our high performance fan onto the Venom as we have done with the other coolers tested, we can see that it’s only within 2C of the Venomous X and Megahalems. Better still, just one 1C behind the low cost favorite; the Titan Fenrir. Compared to their previous cooler, the Nero S with the same fan and speed is a good 3C behind the newest cooler. When we used the S-Flow fan provided and set it to run at 1200RPM, we obtained a readout of 81C on the loaded i7 system. When using two of the S-Flow Venom fans at the same speed again, we see only a 3C difference which we were expecting a little more to be honest. However bear in mind we used a fan controller to keep the fan(s) running at 1200RPM as thats what we found to be the sweet spot both noise to CFM ratio – great cooling without losing noise comfort levels. With the fans at full throttle, we’re sure to see a bigger margin.

Conclusion

So summer is finally among us, even if its not that hot here in the UK we are going to need some serious cooling to keep our overclocked systems from sweating all day long. It seems fit that Akasa would bring a new cooler to the market that looks like a bumble bee, sorry i mean hornet! Akasa haven’t provided us with a cost to this cooler as of yet, but we hope it will fall into the sub £40 bracket like all their coolers do. If the Nero S is priced at £30-35, we can only guess something similar at £35-40 Inc VAT. At that price zone it will be rather competitive in an already competitive CPU cooler market. The cooler comes with both Intel and AMD mounting so they should be able to grab a major share of both platforms. The airflow design of the cooler does work with regards to the “Smart Design”, but not as effective as we were expecting, with just a 3C difference in performance using push-pull on the loaded system compared to a single fan. Whether the design actually works at all is debatable as strapping a second fan on for push-pull to any cooler will make a difference to the temperatures. Perhaps the single Venom S-Flow fan is that good, it’s actually makes no sense to push-pull and waste money.

On the plus side, the cooler is very well made and color coordinated to suit the Venom S-Flow fans which look great. The fans themselves offer some very decent airflow whilst not actually screaming like a headless chicken. From 600-1100RPM the fan was virtually silent yet was still pushing quite a bit of air for the noise level it was producing. Even 1600RPM was totally fine for day to day use without breaking ones comfort levels. With the cooler supplying 8 rubber fan mounts to reduce any vibration added to that, this cooler looks set to be a favorite to any PC owner looking for some great cooling at low noise levels but not prepared to spend fortunes on Noctua products.

Full out performance wise, this cooler came within 2C of Thermalright’s Venomous X which costs £45 Inc VAT. However, Titan’s Fenrir priced at £30 was 1C better still. It’s hard to recommend a product without actually knowing the retail price but this cooler should be stocked in the shops at the end of May just in time for Computex. If the cooler comes in at £40 or less, we would recommend you take a look at this cooler. It may not be the best but is very close to it when pushed to the limits when using high performance fans with its four thick 8mm copper heatpipes that directly touch the base of the CPU for effective heat transfer. However, if you’re looking at 24/7 use, then this cooler has that option for you as well with its very quiet and efficient Viper fan supplied, plus the ability to mount another fan at ones wish. The Titan Fenrir may cost up to £10 cheaper but doesn’t have the ability to mount two fans for push-pull, nor the fan on the Fenrir isn’t as quiet as the Viper fan supplied, and its build quality isn’t as good as the Viper cooler. If your after pure performance without sacrificing comfort levels, you need to check this cooler out!

The Akasa Viper gets a 9/10 and a Gold Award.

Pros:

Very easy and secure mounting

Effect cooler both using high performance and quiet fans

Supplied with one of the best noise to CFM fans on the market

Support for all Intel and AMD platforms

Great build quality

Four 8mm Direct Touch Heatpipes

8 Anti-vibration rubber fan mounts (4 more for optional fan)

 

Cons:

“Smart Design” isn’t that effective

Second fan not supplied (only minor)

 

Thanks

A big thank you to Akasa for providing the sample for review.