Hardware Bistro

Product: NQ3360A
Manufacturer: NorthQ
Supplied by: NorthQ
Price: 37USD/RM133
Launch Date: Oct 2008

After reviewing NorthQ 3350A, today we will review its sister; 3360A which is a giant heatsink and equipped with 120mm fan. NorthQ 3360A is very similar with 3350A where the differences are the fan size; 120mm instead of 92mm and four heatpipes instead of three heatpipes. Let us go through further on this NorthQ 3360A and see how much it can do better than NorthQ 3350A.

 

Company Profile

NorthQ is a Denmark company that produces computer peripheral products like air cooling cooler, watercooling, power supply, casing and so on. Some of NorthQ famous products like Siberian Tiger I/II water cooling system, Green Line PSU which approved by Elsparefonden

 

Features:

- A new generation of high efficient CPU coolers
- The design combines 4 Extreme 8mm copper U-Heat pipes
- Direct contact on the CPU for optimal heat transfer
- A large number of thin aluminum fins for perfect airflow
- The cooler is originally fitted with 1 x 120mm black fan
- Multi clip system enables easy installation on sockets: LGA775, AMD K8/754/939/940/AM2
- Equipped with a build-in alarm function in the fan controller that indicates if the fan stops spinning during operation.
- Optimized for extreme performance gamer systems.

 

Package:

- Blister package

Specifications:

- Dimension: 125mm x 104mm x 155mm (L x W x H)
- Fan Dimension: 120 x 120 x 25 mm
- Bearing: Hydromatic ball bearing
- Rated Voltage: 12V
- Rated Current: 0.38A (Max)
- Thermal Resistance: 0.092 (C/W)
- Fan Speed: 1000 - 2200 RPM +/- 10%
- Noise: 15 - 25dB +/- 10%
- Air Flow: 55.6 - 80.1 CFM
- Life Time: 30,000 Hours
- Connector: 3 Pin
- Fan controller with build-in FAN alarm included
- Weight: 757 g

AMD:
Sempron 3500+ or higher
Athlon 64 5000+ or higher
Athlon 64 x2 6000+ or higher
Athlon FX62
Opteron 2,6GHz or higher
Phenom 2.4GHz or higher

Intel:
Core 2 Duo / Core 2 Quad 3.16GHz or higher
Pentium(64) 3,6GHz or higher
Pentium D 3.6GHz or higher
Pentium 4 3.8GHz or higher
Celeron 3.33GHz or higher

Packaging

 

Same with NorthQ 3350A, the 3360A also come with a black rectangular box and due to heavier size; NorthQ has included a handle for user to carry it more easily. NorthQ 3360A also called as Max Tower Extreme. Unlike 3350A, the accessories of NorthQ 3360A are all kept neatly inside a box.

 

The NorthQ 3360A cooler and the fan are packed with a plastic box to protect them. Besides the cooler and fan, the rest of the accessories are user manual, thermal compound, Velcro strip, fan speed controller with a cable, and bracket for Intel LGA775 system, four buckles and two springs.

 

The user manual shows the package contents, fan installation, and cooler installation on both AMD and Intel systems. The user manual shows all the necessary installation steps that users are required to know. The bracket and four buckles are only for Intel platforms and the two springs are used to install the fan on the cooler.

 

 

NorthQ 3360A

If you have gone through our review on NorthQ 3350A then you shouldn't feel strange with this 3360A CPU cooler as they are very similar. NorthQ 3350A is a tower cooler for certain people if they compare with their stock tower, if yes then NorthQ 3360A should be an extreme tower cooler for them; as the 3350A looks much more smaller when standing beside 3360A.

 

NorthQ 3360A is a vertical cooler and such cooler is very popular for high end CPU cooler. Since the air flow is blowing horizontally, the MOSFET of motherboard will not get blowed where some CPU coolers are purposely design blowing the airflow vertically toward the CPU in order to cool down the MOSFET as well. Besides the fan size, another significant difference between NorthQ 3350A and 3360A is 3360A is made by four extreme 8mm copper U-heat pipes; one more additional heatpipe than 3350A. NorthQ 3360A also is made by huge amount of aluminum fins which are seated next to each other very closely. Copper material is good for thermal conductivity and aluminum is cheaper and good for heat dissipation.

 

NorthQ 3360A has the sane heatsink shape of 3350A but just in bigger size. The concave area of the side of the heatsink is for installation purpose but due to its giant size of the heatsink, the deepness of the concave area might not enough for easy installation. Let us discuss more in the installation section. For the second picture above, the small curve is to hold the spring for attaching the fan on the heatsink.

 

NorthQ 3360A is made by four heat pipes to maximize the heat transfer from processor to aluminum fins. Direct heatpipes contact with processor is very popular for CPU cooler nowadays. The base of 3360A is not so shinning due to mixing of two materials at the base; aluminum and copper heatpipes. With such mixing material, cleaning the thermal compound is a small problem here but it shouldn't take you a lot of time to clean it up.

 

The installation clip of the NorthQ 3360A can be removed from the heatsink by unscrewing two screws. The clip can be used to install the heatsink straight away on AMD platforms and require the socket bracket for Intel platforms. Since NorthQ 3360A is a giant heatsint, we would prefer the clip a bit taller or longer so that users can hold it and install it on motherboard easily. 

For Intel users, the NorthQ 3360A socket bracket is required to be installed on the motherboard. Four buckles are provided to secure the socket bracket on the motherboard. These are exactly same with 3350A. The bracket and buckles are working very well and can be holding up the 120mm heatsink firmly without any issue although 3360A weight is around 757grams.

 

Attaching fan on the heatsink for 3360A is same with 3350A where two springs are required to hold the fan on the heatsink. Users can change any other 120mm fan as they like as the incoming fan of NorthQ 3360A is a standard 25mm thick 120mm size fan. If you found that the performance of incoming fan/heatsink is still not good enough, then you may change it to other more powerful fan which can generate greater air flow;CFM.

 

NorthQ 3360A fan is a 120mm fan which is made by hydromatic ball bearing and providing maximum airflow around 80CFM and noise at 25dB. For 3360A, all the four fan corners are enclosed with some sponges to avoid the loud noise for the fan vibration on the heatsink. Although the fan speed controller is very similar with other fan speed controller of other brand, but NorthQ includes a nice feature on it; build in alarm function to indicate if the fan stops spinning during operation.

 

 

Installation, Testing & Performance

Here is the picture after the completed installation of NorthQ 3360A by attaching all of them together; fan, heatsink and motherboard bracket.

 

The installation process of NorthQ 3360A is same with 3350A but the degree of difficulties has increased much more especially for tiny/slim/small casing with limited space. We have some problems during the first trial to install this NorthQ 3360A on our test bed. However after understand and familiar up with the process then it is not so hard and difficult as expected. We recommend for those who are interest and going to buy this cooler for their system, please ensure your motherboard is compatible with this giant cooler as it may get blocked by the MOSFET of the motherboard or other motherboard components.

 

Test Bed
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8300
Memory: 4GB 800MHz DDR2 Memory
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Seagate HDD
Graphic Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX280
Optical Drive: 16x DVD RW
System BIOS: F7
Operating System: Microsoft Window XP SP2
Benchmark Software: Gigabyte Easy Tune 6
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

Here are the temperature comparison results for NorthQ 3360A with other CPU cooler like one of our favorite 120mm cooler from Tuniq which is a very good air cooler. During idle load, Tuniq Tower 120 is one degree lower than NorthQ 3360 however during full load, we found that NorthQ 3360A is one degree better than Tuniq Tower 120 which is quite surprising and maybe due to the additional heatpipe as Tuniq Tower 120 only comes with three heatpipes. Overall NorthQ 3360A is performing very well although it is a bit noise but since the fan speed controller is provided, you may lower down the noise when the system is not running in full load like gaming, overclocking.

 

Conclusion

With the testing results, it is clearly show that NorthQ 3360A is the champion here which is able to beat its competitor which is one of the best air coolers in the market. However if you are having a slim or small casing then this cooler is not for you as it will eaten up the space of your inner chassis unless you can proper management of your system and provided you don't have issue on installing this cooler. This cooler is meant for extreme users like PC enthusiasts like overclocker, gaming and it is one of the best air coolers that is available in the market right now. Furthermore with its cheap price at 37USD, it is definitely a good deal.

Pros:
* Good cooling performance result
* 4 extreme heatpipes with direct contact with the CPU
* Changeable with other 120mm fan
* Fan controller comes with build in alarming feature
* Cheap

Cons:
* Not easy for installation
* Heavy; 757grams

 

Thanks to NorthQ for providing this sample for us to review.

 

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