°TheMadDutchDude°
Banned
Introduction
Whilst CPU’s continue to get faster, more power efficient and cooler, the heat sinks bolted on top of the CPU continue to get bigger. The cooler features heat pipes to dissipate heat away from the processor into the tower block where the heat gets transferred into the fins. Thermalright have chosen to use heat pipes because in fact it’s the world’s most effective air cooling solution to date.
Today, we have the Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme in our hands and we’re about to put it through its paces.
A little bit about Thermalright;
Taken directly from Thermalright’s website – last accessed on Saturday, 29th November 2008
Specifications
Specifications taken directly from Thermalright’s website – last accessed on Saturday, 29th November 2008
Packaging
Unfortunately, the packaging the cooler came in is far from exiting. First impressions based on the box were quite a letdown but let’s not let it put us in a negative mood!
Once the box was opened, we got pleasantly surprised. Faced with the cooler packed very securely in foam. All the accessories that come with the cooler are in the box underneath the Thermalright sticker.
Once the items had been taken out of their boxes, we can see it is all wrapped in plastic. This is to protect the cooler from moisture during transport. The items in the white box are also enclosed in plastic because it keeps them all together; it also helps to stop the components rattling against each other and causing damage.
The cooler
First impressions gathered from the cooler is that it is an extreme solution, hence where eXtreme dictates itself from the name of the product. Simply amazed by the sheer size of this cooler. It is designed for a 120mm fan.
From the top of the cooler, we can see the six (twelve double sided) U shaped heat pipes which take heat away from the base attached to the CPU. They run the entire way through the cooler to provide maximum heat dissipation.
In the picture below, you can see the accessories that come with the cooler in that white box described earlier. It contains the LGA775 bracket and back plate, an AM2 bracket, the two types of screws to mount the cooler to the motherboard. A big “Thermalright, The Ultimate Cooling Solution” sticker for those amongst us who like our stickers, some thermal paste, two anti vibration strips to stick under your fan which is supposed to make it quieter and last of all; two clips to hold a 120mm fan in place.
Here’s a picture of the kit overall:
Well, that is enough about the kit itself, let’s move on to installation!
Installation
In order to install this CPU cooler, you have to take your motherboard out of your case. It requires you to fit a back-plate on the motherboard to support the coolers weight. Most Intel coolers come with a pushpin design, however due to the weight of this cooler (790g) Thermalright have had to use the bolt-thru alternative. This is the only way this cooler will stay in your motherboard. If Thermalright used the pushpin design it would simply fall out and cause some serious damage to the graphics card if not break it and the slot it is in.
The CPU back-plate
The cooler attached to the motherboard
From our experience, it is recommended that you leave installing the fan until last as you will not be able to get to the screws to fasten it to the motherboard. One important thing to remember is; tight is tight! You do not want to put too much pressure on your motherboard and/or CPU!
Results
Here is the following hardware we used during the test:
Intel E2140 1.6GHz 800FSB 1MB cache @3.2GHz with 1.4375 volts
MSI P35 Neo2-FR
GeIL Black Dragon 2x2GB PC2-6400 C5 RAM
PaLiT 9600GT 512MB 650MHz Core/1625Mhz Shader/900Mhz Memory @750MHz Core/1875MHz Shader/ 950Mhz Memory
Antec Nine Hundred with all fans on LOW
Thermal compound used: Arctic Cooling MX2
Antec Tri Cool attached to the cooler on LOW
For the temperature tests, we let the computer fully boot up and then waited 10 minutes to get an optimum idle temperature. To find out the maximum temperature of the CPU we ran Orthos Stress Prime95 for 30 minutes, it might get 1°C hotter if we left it on for hours, although we didn’t see much point in doing that.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for something with amazing cooling performance, then this is probably the cooler for you. People around the world consisting of overclockers and gamers say this is a “must have”. Now, we can see their point.
Now, on to the final part of this review which is the scoring.
The good
Excellent cooling
Doesn’t cost an arm and a leg
High quality construction
Will hold two fans for push/pull configuration
The mediocre
Have to take out your motherboard to install
May not fit all motherboards, especially if you have a big NorthBridge cooling system and/or cooling on the MOSFETs
The bad
None to report
Performance: 9/10
Price: 9/10
Presentation: 9/10
All round, a fantastic buy!
Whilst CPU’s continue to get faster, more power efficient and cooler, the heat sinks bolted on top of the CPU continue to get bigger. The cooler features heat pipes to dissipate heat away from the processor into the tower block where the heat gets transferred into the fins. Thermalright have chosen to use heat pipes because in fact it’s the world’s most effective air cooling solution to date.
Today, we have the Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme in our hands and we’re about to put it through its paces.
A little bit about Thermalright;
Taken directly from Thermalright’s website – last accessed on Saturday, 29th November 2008
Specifications
Specifications taken directly from Thermalright’s website – last accessed on Saturday, 29th November 2008
Packaging
Unfortunately, the packaging the cooler came in is far from exiting. First impressions based on the box were quite a letdown but let’s not let it put us in a negative mood!
Once the box was opened, we got pleasantly surprised. Faced with the cooler packed very securely in foam. All the accessories that come with the cooler are in the box underneath the Thermalright sticker.
Once the items had been taken out of their boxes, we can see it is all wrapped in plastic. This is to protect the cooler from moisture during transport. The items in the white box are also enclosed in plastic because it keeps them all together; it also helps to stop the components rattling against each other and causing damage.
The cooler
First impressions gathered from the cooler is that it is an extreme solution, hence where eXtreme dictates itself from the name of the product. Simply amazed by the sheer size of this cooler. It is designed for a 120mm fan.
From the top of the cooler, we can see the six (twelve double sided) U shaped heat pipes which take heat away from the base attached to the CPU. They run the entire way through the cooler to provide maximum heat dissipation.
In the picture below, you can see the accessories that come with the cooler in that white box described earlier. It contains the LGA775 bracket and back plate, an AM2 bracket, the two types of screws to mount the cooler to the motherboard. A big “Thermalright, The Ultimate Cooling Solution” sticker for those amongst us who like our stickers, some thermal paste, two anti vibration strips to stick under your fan which is supposed to make it quieter and last of all; two clips to hold a 120mm fan in place.
Here’s a picture of the kit overall:
Well, that is enough about the kit itself, let’s move on to installation!
Installation
In order to install this CPU cooler, you have to take your motherboard out of your case. It requires you to fit a back-plate on the motherboard to support the coolers weight. Most Intel coolers come with a pushpin design, however due to the weight of this cooler (790g) Thermalright have had to use the bolt-thru alternative. This is the only way this cooler will stay in your motherboard. If Thermalright used the pushpin design it would simply fall out and cause some serious damage to the graphics card if not break it and the slot it is in.
The CPU back-plate
The cooler attached to the motherboard
From our experience, it is recommended that you leave installing the fan until last as you will not be able to get to the screws to fasten it to the motherboard. One important thing to remember is; tight is tight! You do not want to put too much pressure on your motherboard and/or CPU!
Results
Here is the following hardware we used during the test:
Intel E2140 1.6GHz 800FSB 1MB cache @3.2GHz with 1.4375 volts
MSI P35 Neo2-FR
GeIL Black Dragon 2x2GB PC2-6400 C5 RAM
PaLiT 9600GT 512MB 650MHz Core/1625Mhz Shader/900Mhz Memory @750MHz Core/1875MHz Shader/ 950Mhz Memory
Antec Nine Hundred with all fans on LOW
Thermal compound used: Arctic Cooling MX2
Antec Tri Cool attached to the cooler on LOW
For the temperature tests, we let the computer fully boot up and then waited 10 minutes to get an optimum idle temperature. To find out the maximum temperature of the CPU we ran Orthos Stress Prime95 for 30 minutes, it might get 1°C hotter if we left it on for hours, although we didn’t see much point in doing that.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for something with amazing cooling performance, then this is probably the cooler for you. People around the world consisting of overclockers and gamers say this is a “must have”. Now, we can see their point.
Now, on to the final part of this review which is the scoring.
The good
Excellent cooling
Doesn’t cost an arm and a leg
High quality construction
Will hold two fans for push/pull configuration
The mediocre
Have to take out your motherboard to install
May not fit all motherboards, especially if you have a big NorthBridge cooling system and/or cooling on the MOSFETs
The bad
None to report
Performance: 9/10
Price: 9/10
Presentation: 9/10
All round, a fantastic buy!
