Closer Look

When looking at cooling solutions all too often we forget that besides the big names there are many solutions out there that never see the pages of many popular enthusiasts media or even get any coverage really at all. Especially when considering that besides the enthusiasts and gamer communities which we cater to there are many more uses for systems which go unnoticed every day yet life as we know it would halt shoudl these systems stop functioning so viable cooling solutions for them are primary concerns for everyday life.

Many server side solutions are made for small blade servers such as we have today and to some surprise to some of you many of the popular cooling manufacturers such as Thermaltake and many others who have been making enthusiasts coolers for some time also service these important workstation and server solutions for even longer.

Dynatron is one of those companies that has been around for coming up on 20 years now as it started in 1991 and has beena major player in the cooling solution market it is just that most of you readers likely may not have heard of them as they make solutions for datacenter servers and workstation solutions. These sort of solutions tend to come in a brown box as seen below and have a simple spec meant to done one thing and that’s control thermals.

This cooler as you can see has a straight outlet duch made to blast air through the fins and out as efficiently as possible. you will notice the cooler employs a densely packed fin array which is used to cool the vapor chamber cooling plate below. Vapor Chambers are quite efficient as it uses an internal compound to change states and move heat quickly away from the cooling surface and transfer it up to the fin array where it can be removed via the cooling blower fan attached. as you can see the Vapor Chamber is rather large and pre applied Shin Etsu thermal material paste keeps the contact well achieved with optimal thermal transfer.

Installation

The installation of the R25 is actually very simple since there is no backplate or anything to be considered. There is one thing you have to keep note is that the ILM design for LGA2011 is offered in two varieties which is the standard Desktop design with full 90 degree separation between each mounting point. Many servers utilize what is called a slim ILM which as you can see above on the left and that is what the Dynatron R25 utilizes. the mounting points are integrated into the ILM design which means once the CPU is installed you simply place the cooler over the CPU and tighten the mounting screws and plug in the fan connector to the appropriate motherboard connector.

This mounting is very good for tight board space like you will see in many server applications. where every millimeter of board space is at a premium. The R25 cooler mounted right up without issue just ensure you mount it so that it will vent properly in the correct direction with the air movement from the chassis fans and will not block or obstruct the airflow in any way from the chassis cooling airflow.

Performance

We tested the Dynatron R25 with a E5-2687W which is a 150W TDP CPU.

The small size of a 1U system at under 2″ you must keep in mind that cooling capability means you get much more noise, its just a fact of life in this sort of application and the R25 is no different. as you can see the R25 did quite well even under loaded testing but now I did not have time to drop the system into extended datacenter use yet so long term results including heat soak means I can estimate temps more in the range of 66-70C on the CPU core readings but that is very much dependent upon chassis design and individual operating environment as a actively cooled server co location will make for very good temps in this sort of application and the addition of active cooling to the CPU definitely offers a nice capability via focused airflow and as I said before should chassis airflow fail the CPU could at least keep itself cool until service is rendered.

The blower style fan on the R25 is good at what it does just understand servers are loud, they are designed to be as they are meant to sit in racks where people are not sitting so taht they can make as much noise as they need to stay cool. so yes the fan is loud but this is not made for a gaming system or desktop its made to be under load 24/7 for the lifetime and never stop.

Our Final Thoughts

I know that Dynatron is not a crazy high end cooler company in terms of what most of you are used to but in all honestly they make a viable product for applications that affect everything in our everyday lives from surfing this very site to Google to Facebook to eve your ATM all pulls data that is stored on datacenters which are cooled with devices just like this and overall the cooler does its job very well and keeps even the most power hungry XEON in our arsenal cool which is quite an accomplishment in itself being that its a 1U enclosure design.

The price point is right in the middle of the pack and it does its job so all in all it is a great product and be sure to stay tuned as we have a few more unique coolers from the team over at Dynatron coming soon.