Page 3 - Installation and Test Results
The installation steps written inside the SAMA A60E manual are short and simple. For my AMD CPU, I started by screwing the brackets onto the heatsink. Next, I applied the provided SAMA Freeze thermal paste onto the CPU, and screwed the heatsink onto the AMD stock backplate.
With the heatsink in place, the fans can be clipped on using the provided mounting clips. Although my computer utilizes an AM4 socket, the SAMA A60E also supports AM5 and Intel LGA sockets. As for RAM clearance, I experienced no issues.
I am very impressed with the visual design of the SAMA A60E. The cover plate for the heatsink towers is appealing, and the black fan color fits well with the theme. The installation process was very simple with minimal steps. SAMA has also provided an entire tube of thermal paste alongside the cooler, which can be used for multiple installations. Although I think the visual design of the cooler is incredible, the implementation undermines it due to the fans being prone to getting difficult to remove scratch marks. Some quality control issues, which likely will not affect performance, slightly devalue the product as well.
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 AORUS Elite Wi-Fi
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 4x8GB
Graphics: ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 V2 OC Edition 10GB
Chassis: Lian Li Lancool II Mesh RGB
Storage: Western Digital WD_BLACK SN770 NVMe SSD 1TB, Western Digital Black SN750 NVMe SSD 1TB
Power: Corsair RM850x 850W
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared hardware:
- SAMA A60E
- be quiet! Pure Rock Pro 3
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro
- Cooler Master Hyper 411 Nano
- Cooler Master Hyper 612 Apex
All tests were performed on my custom-built computer to best reflect real-life performance. The computer remained in a room with the temperature controlled to be about 20 degrees Celsius for all tests. The thermal paste was applied according to standard practices for AMD CPUs. The fans attached to the heatsink were all connected to the same CPU 4-pin fan connector on the motherboard. The eight case fans, three GPU fans, and the product's CPU fans in my computer were all set to max speeds to allow maximum airflow through the heatsink for all tests. For the idling tests, the computer was left running for at least an hour before data was collected. To stress the CPU, Prime95 was used to place a high load on all available threads using the Large FFTs torture test setting. The highest core temperature measured by HWiNFO was recorded after waiting at least 10 minutes for the temperature to stabilize. HWiNFO is used to obtain accurate temperature data, since it directly reads the CPU's integrated thermal sensors.
Starting with the idle test, the computer was left idling for a long time before the highest core temperature was taken. In the first graph, the SAMA A60E achieved the lowest temperature at 24 degrees Celsius. The idle test performance is excellent, but we will have to see how well it performs in the load test.
After stressing the CPU for over 20 minutes to generate as much heat as possible, the temperature was stabilized, and the highest core temperature was recorded at 49 degrees Celsius. Although it is not the lowest temperature, the performance is still excellent as it is only one degree above the lowest. Perhaps there would be a larger delta for a more powerful CPU, but for my mid-range AMD Ryzen 5600X, the SAMA A60E is a strong competitor with the other powerful air coolers in terms of performance.
In terms of the volume produced by the fans on the A60E, it was louder at max speeds than the other coolers I have tested. On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is pure silence and 10 is standing right below fireworks, I would say the cooler is a 1.0 on idle. The sound produced is still rather quiet even putting my ears right next to the fans. In SAMA's test data, the volume reached 45.2dBA when the fans are spinning at maximum speed, which equates to a volume slightly louder than the hum of a refrigerator. I agree with this rating and would give it a 4.5. I also noticed a quiet, high-pitched ring coming from the cooler alongside the hum sound. It is common for fans to produce high-frequency noise due to the high RPMs, but this was much higher than usual, which I found very distracting.
Overall, the SAMA A60E performed really well for my setup. The performance was excellent for my mid-range AMD Ryzen CPU. The noise produced is excellent at low speeds, but quite distracting at max speeds due to the high-pitched noise.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware
3. Installation and Test Results
4. Conclusion
