SilverStone SST-AR03 CPU Cooler Heatsink Review

By Tom Jaskulka

Manufacturer: SilverStone Technology, Co., Ltd.
Product Name: Argon Series Heatsink Cooler
Model Number: SST-AR03
UPC: 844761009984
Price As Tested: $47.99 (Amazon | NewEgg)

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by SilverStone.

SilverStone may be known for their cooling, but not necessarily their CPU coolers. As a company, they’ve brought forward many innovations and unique, successful approaches to the ATX case standard with their AP series fans and rotated motherboard enclosures. It’s not that SilverStone is a stranger to CPU cooling – there were the Nitrogen special-application series before the new Argon series, as well as the Heligon high-performance line of heat-sinks. The Argon AR01, AR02, and AR03 are all designed to be more accessible alternatives for enthusiasts, with each model fulfilling a specific purpose. Sporting six 6mm direct-contact heatpipes and a 140mm wide tower-style heatsink assembly, the AR03 is the top option available in the Argon family with the most cooling capacity. Benchmark Reviews will have a chance to find out if the AR03 belongs at the top of the Argon family.

The finish and quality of the AR03 is right up there with the rest of the Argon series. It is packaged well, the mounting hardware feels strong and durable, and all of the surfaces are nicely polished.

The contact surface didn’t have quite the polish of the AR01 but it was still “shinier” than I expected, and there is much more copper heat-pipe to work with here. You can also clearly see the angled leading and trailing edge of the aluminum heat-sink fins, which should serve to cut down on fan noise and possibly create some turbulence as well (good for conducting heat from the fins). As with the AR01, the fan includes ridges on the trailing edge of the blades to cut down on fan noise which seems to be effective. Spinning at 2200 RPM, you’ll still hear it, but at PWM speeds this does seem to assist in keeping the noise down.

The AR03 is almost exactly as wide as the clips surrounding DIMM slots – thankfully, it doesn’t intrude on any slots on the Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0 pictured here, and should clear most components on most ATX motherboards as well. As always, MicroATX and Mini-ITX boards will vary in their clearances, but since space is usually at a premium on those boards you should make sure to measure!

This photo helps illustrate the purpose of the AR03 in the Argon line-up. The chip pictured above is the AM3+ FX-8320 used for testing, along with the imprint left from applying thermal interface material and mounting the heat-sink. As you can see, the contact surface formed from the six 6mm heat-pipes covers the entire surface of the CPU heat-spreader. This maximizes the surface area available for transferring heat, almost all of it being the direct-contact surface of the copper heat-pipes.

The above image shows a Socket 1155 CPU and its respective imprint on the AR03. As you can see, you won’t have as much surface area to help transfer heat from the CPU die itself. Newer, smaller processes bring greater efficiency and lower heat values, but also decrease the surface area from which to dissipate that heat. The AR03 is designed for those larger CPUs, such as the AM3+ or LGA2011/1366 sockets. You may find the AR01 is sufficient for your Core i5/i7 needs, but perhaps the AR03’s slightly greater surface area and staggered heat-pipe arrangement would be enough to consider even if you didn’t need the extra performance. I may have to find out what happens on an Intel platform as well as an AMD, as I couldn’t help but look at those heatpipes and think….”hmm – four 6mm heat-pipes on the AR03 vs three 8mm heat-pipes on the AR01…that’s 24mm of heat-pipes either way…” Would the performance be the same? Well, that’s probably an entirely different article…

The point is, keep your needs in mind when choosing a heatsink. The AR03 is one in a series of three CPU coolers, so you should be able to find one that fits your application.

It bears repeating here that no heat-sink will work effectively unless it transfers heat from the CPU. To do that, it needs to be in contact with the CPU heat spreader or die, with the greater the contact surface the greater the potential for heat transfer. One of our own writers here at Benchmark Reviews has done a lot of work in this area, and it is certainly worth the time it takes to read (and re-read) the discoveries he made during the famous 80+ thermal paste tests (I still see Newegg reviews reference the discoveries made therein).

I mention this because I still see this as a major source of misinformation – most end users will use far too much thermal interface material when switching CPU coolers. Possibly through little fault of their own – I’ve read official repair manuals stating to use the entire tube of thermal paste when replacing a CPU and heat-sink. This is, in almost every case, FAR too much – to the point of being harmful in most cases. So do yourself a favor and get acquainted with CPU Cooler Preparations and Thermal Paste Application.

Processor and CPU cooler surfaces are not perfectly smooth and flat surfaces, and although some surfaces appear polished to the naked eye, under a microscope the imperfections become clearly visible. As a result, when two objects are pressed together, contact is only made between a finite number of points separated by relatively large gaps. Since the actual contact area is reduced by these gaps, they create additional resistance for the transfer of thermal energy (heat). The gasses/fluids filling these gaps may largely influence the total heat flow across the surface, and then have an adverse affect on cooling performance as a result.

The only reason for using Thermal Interface Material is to compensate for flaws in the surface and a lack of high-pressure contact between heat source and cooler, so the sections above are more critical to good performance than the application of TIM itself. This section offers a condensed version of our Best Thermal Paste Application Methods article.

After publishing our Thermal Interface Material articles, many enthusiasts argued that by spreading out the TIM with a latex glove (or finger cover) was not the best way to distribute the interface material. Most answers from both the professional reviewer industry as well as enthusiast community claim that you should use a single drop “about the size of a pea”. If there was ever any real advice that applies to every situation, it would be that thermal paste isn’t meant to separate the two surfaces but rather fill the microscopic pits where metal to metal contact isn’t possible.

After discussing this topic with real industry experts who are much more informed of the process, they offered some specific advice that didn’t appear to be a “one size fits all” answer:

1. CPU Cooling products which operate below the ambient room temperature (some Peltier and Thermo-electric coolers for example) should not use silicon-based materials because condensation may occur and accelerate compound separation.
2. All “white” style TIM’s exhibit compound breakdown over time due to their thin viscosity and ceramic base (usually beryllium oxide, aluminum nitride and oxide, zinc oxide, and silicon dioxide). These interface materials should not be used from older “stale” stock without first mixing the material very well.
3. Thicker carbon and metal-based (usually aluminum-oxide) TIM’s may benefit from several thermal cycles to establish a “cure” period which allows expanding and contracting surfaces to smooth out any inconsistencies and further level the material.

The more we researched this subject, the more we discovered that because there are so many different cooling solutions on the market it becomes impossible to give generalized advice to specific situations. Despite this, there is one single principle that holds true in every condition: Under perfect conditions the contact surfaces between the processor and cooler would be perfectly flat and not contain any microscopic pits, which would allow direct contact of metal on metal without any need for Thermal Interface Material. But since we don’t have perfectly flat surfaces, Thermal Material must fill the tiny imperfections. Still, there’s one rule to recognize: less is more.

CPU coolers primarily depend on two heat transfer methods: conduction and convection. This being the case, we’ll concentrate our attention towards the topic of conduction as it relates to the mating surfaces between a heat source (the processor) and cooler. Because of their density, metals are the best conductors of thermal energy. As density decreases so does conduction, which relegates fluids to be naturally less conductive. So ideally the less fluid between metals, the better heat will transfer between them. Even less conductive than fluid is air, which then also means that you want even less of this between surfaces than fluid. Ultimately, the perfectly flat and well-polished surface is going to be preferred over the rougher and less even surface which required more TIM (fluid) to fill the gaps.

This is important to keep in mind, as the mounting surface of your average processor is relatively flat and smooth but not perfect. Even more important is the surface of your particular CPU cooler, which might range from a polished mirror finish to the absurdly rough or the more complex (such as Heat-Pipe Direct Touch). Surfaces with a mirror finish can always be shined up a little brighter, and rough surfaces can be wet-sanded (lapped) down smooth and later polished, but Heat-pipe Direct Touch coolers require some extra attention.

To sum up this topic of surface finish and its impact on cooling, science teaches us that a smooth flat mating surface is the most ideal for CPU coolers. It is critically important to remove the presence of air from between the surfaces, and that using only enough Thermal Interface Material to fill-in the rough surface pits is going to provide the best results. In a perfect environment, your processor would mate together with the cooler and compress metal on metal with no thermal paste at all; but we don’t live in perfect world and current manufacturing technology cannot provide for this ideal environment.

Probably one of the most overlooked and disregarded factors involved with properly mounting the cooler onto any processor is the amount of contact pressure applied between the mating surfaces. Compression will often times reduce the amount of thermal compound needed between the cooler and processor, and allow a much larger metal to metal contact area which is more efficient than having fluid weaken the thermal conductance. The greater the contact pressure between elements, the better it will conduct thermal (heat) energy.

Unfortunately, it is often times not possible to get optimal pressure onto the CPU simply because of poor mounting designs used by the cooler manufacturers. Most enthusiasts shriek at the thought of using the push-pin style clips found on Intel’s stock thermal cooling solutions. Although this mounting system is acceptable for casually-used computers, there is still plenty of room for improvement when overclocking.

Generally speaking, you do not want an excessive amount of pressure onto the processor as damage may result. In some cases, such as Heat-pipe Direct Touch technology, the exposed copper rod has been pressed into the metal mounting base and then leveled flat by a grinder. Because of the copper rod walls are made considerably thinner by this process, using a bolt-through mounting system could actually cause heat-pipe rod warping. Improper installation not withstanding, it is more ideal to have a very strong mounting system such as those which use a back plate behind the motherboard and a spring-loaded fastening system for tightening.

Heat-pipe technology uses several methods to wick the cooling liquid away from the cold condensing end and return back towards the heated evaporative end. Sintered heatpipe rods help overcome Earth’s gravitational pull and can return most fluid to its source, but the directional orientation of heatpipe rods can make a significant difference to overall cooling performance.

The following is retained word for word from the source article, but note that not every CPU cooler will be or can be tested in a horizontal orientation. Please refer to the testing methodology on the next page or the pictures in the article to see how each specific cooler was tested.

For the purpose of this article, all CPU-coolers have been orientated horizontally so that heatpipes span from front-to-rear with fans exhausting upward and not top-to-bottom with fans blowing towards the rear of the computer case. This removes some of the gravitational climb necessary for heatpipe fluid working to return to the heatsink base. In one example, the horizontally-mounted tower heatsink cooled to a temperature 3° better than when it was positioned vertically. While this difference may not be considered impressive to some, hardcore performance enthusiasts will want to use every technique available to reach the highest overclock possible.

The CPU coolers were tested installed in a computer case in its normal orientation (a NZXT H630). A 200mm top/rear exhaust fan was added to the enclosure to aid in cooling VRMs and most of the front drive cages were removed to clear the path from the 200mm intake fan. The GPU remained installed during testing. All fans were set to 100% to remove that variable from the results (motherboard fan control was disabled). This is how I would assume most enthusiasts would set up a similar case while overclocking a similar platform.

All tests were performed using the AIDA64 Extreme Edition Stability test, using 100% fan settings on an Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0. The test was allowed to run until temperatures plateaued, then I recorded the ambient temperature of the intake air and began logging temperatures over the next minute. After an initial warm-up run, I ran each test at least three times (more if I received inconsistent results), and recorded the ambient temperature again. Once I had “good data,” I dropped the best and worst results and subtracted the (average over the test) ambient temperature from the median result to arrive at the delta T temperature you see in the chart.

Each time a heat-sink was swapped, the Tuniq TX-2 thermal interface material I used for each application was cleaned off of the contact surfaces with Arctic Silver’s ArctiClean two-step TIM remover, and an appropriate amount of TX-2 replaced for the next heat-sink. Due to the nature of applying TIM and mating two surfaces, I would like to adopt a 3% margin of error – even though my thermometers and the built-in thermal diode measure temperatures down to one-tenth of a degree Celsius, it could be assumed that temperatures within a degree of each other are essentially the same result.

• Motherboard: Asus M5A99FX-PRO R2.0 w/ 1708 BIOS/UEFI
• System Memory: 8GB (2x4GB) GSkill Ares 1600MHz DDR3 CL8
• Processor: AMD FX-8320 Piledriver, 4.6GHz/1.428V LLC (Extreme)
• Audio: On-Board
• Video: Sapphire Radeon 7950 3GB 1000MHz Core, 1300MHz mem
• Disk Drive 1: OCZ Vertex 2 240GB
• Enclosure: NZXT H630, +200mm exhaust fan (top/rear)
• PSU: Rosewill Lightning 800W Modular 80+ Gold
• Monitor: 1920×1080 120Hz
• Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit w/SP1

A strong showing for the AR03. It seems the extra mass and surface area of the larger AR03 was enough to deal with the thermal load of an overclocked FX platform. Measured at the outlet during the stability test, the test system was consuming approximately 290W. I can’t know for sure unless I measure the current from the CPU itself, but it appears each heat-sink had to dissipate around 200W of heat from the CPU. Some of the smaller coolers just couldn’t deal with the high thermal load as easily as the bigger coolers or those of different designs, and even liquid coolers using thin radiators and one fan didn’t shed the heat as effectively as the AR03. Of course, the NZXT H630 ATX case used for testing has a large amount of airflow, and without that I’m sure the liquid coolers would perform much better (by not having to deal with heat build-up inside the case in a poor airflow situation).

I have to admit, I was a little surprised at how well the AR03 managed the heat from an overclocked FX-8320. Of course this type of thermal load is what it was designed for, but since it looks deceptively similar to the AR01 at first glance I suppose I had assumed it would perform similarly as well. That is not the case! While we’re only talking differences of a few degrees Celsius, the AR03 managed to out-perform a few all-in-one liquid coolers (to which I credit its greater surface area).

While I don’t normally place it in the results, I often test these types of coolers using a push/pull configuration as well (I don’t list them because in almost every case it drops the temperature by approximately one degree Celsius, making the additional cost and noise not worth the trouble for most applications). The AR01 seemed to benefit from an additional fan, the AR03 not so much. This leads me to believe the AR03 is already performing at its “peak” efficiency, whereas the smaller AR01 needed a little help offloading those 200 Watts of heat.

There’s a reason why the AR03 is at the top of the Argon series of coolers – that’s where it’s designed to sit! With its greater surface area and additional heat-pipes, the AR03 should be your choice if you are working with higher thermal loads from high-end processors. It may be overkill for some setups, but that’s what the other Argon coolers are for.

I was surprised to see the AR03 go toe-to-toe with some popular all-in-one liquid coolers. Of course, this shouldn’t be that surprising – usually, the more surface area the cooler has to dissipate heat, the better it will perform. With its larger 140mm width and six 6mm direct-contact heat-pipes, the AR03 handles the heat from an overclocked FX processor without an issue.

If blue is your favorite cooler, you’ll probably agree with me in saying the AR03 is a great addition to the various tower coolers available. There’s only so many ways you can arrange a stack of aluminum plates, but SilverStone manages to keep the AR03 looking like a premium product. Everything is polished nicely, and the AR03 looks and feels like an attractive product.

It is constructed on par with other products in its price range. There aren’t that many moving parts to tower coolers, but the heat-pipes are finely ground and polished, and set precisely in the aluminum base.

I’m still highly impressed by the simple and effective means of mounting fans that SilverStone has utilized for their Argon series of CPU coolers. They are easy to use, and make it a simple process to mount and remove fans. Unfortunately, since it shares the same back-plate with the other Argon coolers, you will be unable to choose a different cooler orientation than what your motherboard allows. It’s a pretty common back-plate though, so if you look around you may be able to find a compatible mounting system that allows you to change the direction of the heat-sink.

As of August 2013, the AR03 was selling for $47.99 (Amazon | NewEgg). For the performance it offers, this is a very fair price. If you have the room and can deal with the default motherboard orientation (at least on AMD sockets), you can probably find a use for the AR03. If you don’t feel that your socket will make the most out of those six heat-pipes, there’s always the AR01…at least they both use the same convenient fan mounting system. Or, if you’re the type of person that likes to keep a little performance in reserve, the AR03 should accommodate whatever platform you choose to use it on.

Ultimately, you need to choose the cooler that best fits your build and purposes. If it fits within your budget and you have a socket that would make the most of it, I would feel comfortable recommending the AR03. There’s quite a bit of cooling performance there for the price, and the fan mounting system is great to work with.

+ Excellent fan mounting system
+ Still clears most DIMM slots
+ Added surface area can accommodate higher TDP CPUs
+ Great price/performance ratio
+ Blue helps it stand out among similar coolers

– Hope you like blue! (If not, I guess it’s easy to switch the fan…)
– Can not switch orientation of heat-sink (at least on AMD sockets)

• Performance: 8.00
• Appearance: 9.00
• Construction: 9.50
• Functionality: 8.00
• Value: 8.50

Recommended: Benchmark Reviews Seal of Approval.

COMMENT QUESTION: Who makes your favorite CPU cooler?