Thermaltake V1

We’ve been operating under the assumption that Zalman’s CNPS9700 is the Highlander of CPU coolers—immortal and utterly immune to the benchmarking threats posed by other, lesser devices. That’s until we ran across Thermaltake’s newest V1 cooler. As far as we can tell, the blue-lit device is the guy who brings the chain saw to a swordfight. It looks great, fits great, and outcools our reigning champion ever so slightly.

Installing the cooler was almost a breeze (ha ha), save for one hang-up. The locking mechanism for our AMD X2 rig ran into the cooler itself. It’s not a deal-breaker, but in this case, you really have to push on the little lever to set the cooler in place. It’s a minor flaw for such an explosive device.