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Cooler Master V8

David Murphy — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:40:00 -0600

Cooler Master’s V8 CPU cooler offsets a somewhat time-consuming installation process with near-record-setting performance for an air cooler. The sleek aluminum cooler’s 12cm fan sits between two heatsinks on the device, sparing fingers from the accidental nip of its 800rpm-to-1,800rpm variable fan.

The V8’s installation process is similar to that of most other CPU coolers, but with a few more screws involved. On an Intel platform, you start by attaching two retention plates to the cooler itself. You then remove the motherboard from your case and flip it upside-down, matching the ends of the cooler’s four retention screws with the mobo’s holes. You balance this contraption in your lap while using four large nuts to secure this beast of a device in place. You can also use an included backplane to mount the device, but we found the nut method to be far easier.

The 16-centimeter-tall V8 emits a slight red glow when you power up your machine. You adjust the speeds of the included fan using a knob that you can secure to your PC using an included PCI bracket. At its lowest setting, the cooler easily outperforms a typical Intel stock cooler and comes within a few degrees of our top air cooler, Thermaltake’s DuOrb. Cranking the V8 to its highest setting makes for a bit more noise than the DuOrb but produces only a meager two-degree increase in cooling performance on both our idle and burn tests.

This performance, nevertheless, places the V8 in the top echelon of coolers we have tested—second place, to be exact. The installation process isn’t a picnic, but we’ve experienced worse. All and all, it’s a great addition to a machine—both aesthetically and thermally.

Thermalright IFX-14

David Murphy — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:05:00 -0600

Installing Thermalright’s beefy IFX-14 CPU cooler is incredibly complex. Assembling the troublesome amalgam of parts, pieces, screws, and brackets made us long for the snap-lock mechanism of standard Intel coolers. That said, the IFX-14 delivers massive cooling when it’s up and running. But there’s a caveat: It doesn’t include any fans. Thus, its performance depends on the type of fan you attach to one or two sides of the device. Our benchmarks are based on the use of two generic 12cm fans we pulled from a box in the Lab.

You’ll want to plan out the cooler’s (and your motherboard’s) installation before you actually attach the IFX-14, as it can block a good chunk of your motherboard’s cabling routes and standoff holes.

Even getting two fans to work with the IFX-14 can be troublesome. This cooler’s immense size—two towers of heatsink fins connected to four 0.8cm heat pipes—caused the device to push right against our RAM, making it difficult to attach the fan-mounting clips. The IFX-14 also nudged up against the north bridge on our EVGA 680i motherboard. This forced us to rest a southern cooling fan in the split between the cooler’s heat pipes. It’s hardly an ideal location, as we were unable to secure the fan to either of the cooler’s fins.

The IFX-14’s cooling performance is better than our champion’s, Thermaltake’s DuOrb, by a few degrees in both our idle and burn tests. But the cooler’s usability issues make us long to trade in these degrees for a more painless installation process—or one that doesn’t constrain our case options. For example, if you incorporate the IFX-14’s optional back-side heat-pipe cooler into your installation, you won’t be able to use a top-mounted power supply. There’s simply not enough room. Likewise, we made the mistake of screwing the cooler into place before testing how its size would affect our motherboard installation. The cooler blocked two standoff screws and taxed our ability to connect power supply cables.

Bigger is often better in the world of CPU cooling, but the IFX-14 pushes the limit too far.

Zalman CNPS9300 AT

David Murphy — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0500

We did not expect this. When we first got our hands on Zalman’s CNPS9300 AT, we assumed the company had pulled a “Honey, I Shrunk the CPU Cooler” on its flagship product, the bulky CNPS9700. That’s certainly true if you consider the tale of the tape: The CNPS9300 is 80 percent smaller than its big brother, and its total thermal dissipation area has been nearly halved, from 5,490cm² to 2,583cm².

Zalman is keeping the current black-fan version of the CNPS9300 for now but hasn’t ruled out making an
LED-fan version that matches the CNPS9700’s look.

Logic only dictates that this cooler should perform far worse than the Zalman CNPS9700. But the built-for-silence CNPS9300 AT nearly matches its big brother’s performance—as well as that of our top cooler, Thermaltake’s DuOrb (reviewed July 2008).

Since it eschews the CNPS9700’s fan controller in favor of a four-pin motherboard connection, the CNPS9300 AT’s fan can be controlled through the BIOS or by using a utility such as SpeedFan. We welcome the change, as it’s much easier to adjust the cooler via a software application than by opening your case and turning a knob.

Cranking the CNPS9300 to full throttle elicits a loud whirr, but it allows the device to match the quieter DuOrb degree for degree. Letting the BIOS automatically decide the fan’s speed drops the device’s cooling power by about five degrees; however, it is much quieter when set on auto mode.

The CNPS9300 still relies on a tiresome and frustrating installation mechanism. The backplane requires motherboard removal, perhaps the least irritating part of the process. The cooler’s mounting bracket barely fits atop the voltage regulators of our EVGA 680i motherboard. And the amount of force we applied to the screws on the CNPS9300’s retention bar to affix it to the mounting bracket had us seriously concerned about the welfare of our processor.

Because of the CNPS9300’s installation shortcomings, the DuOrb remains our reigning cooler of choice, despite its gargantuan size. We love the performance Zalman has achieved with its mini-cooler. Attaching it to our CPU is where we start to sweat.

Waytronx Demos Biggest Coolers Ever*

David Murphy — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:51:02 -0600

I had the pleasure of meeting with Waytronx CEO Bill Clough earlier this week. But who's Waytronx, you ask? Good question. Prior to said meeting, I had never heard of them--and for good reason. The company works on the technology and reference designs behind cooling units, and licenses their work to manufacturers (like Waytronx's newest friend, OCZ Technology). Their work is what's powering OCZ's new Hydrojet cooler, and you can definitely see a reflection of their style in the batch of reference designs Clough showed off.

Before I mention anything else, let's just get the elephant out of the way: this cooler is huge. It's friggin' huge. I'm no stranger to large devices, having seen just about every size of water cooling kit, air cooler, and peltier unit that an aspiring company could conjure up. But the WayCool designs are just big. Clough swears they'll fit within Intel's specification of a 550g (~1.2 pound) maximum heatsink weight, but I just can't believe that to be accurate in the slightest. Especially given what's underneath the hood.

Yes, that's right. This is more than just your typical huge air cooler. The giant radial fan and heatsink combination you're looking at covers up an underlying pump and self-contained coolant mechanism. It's a hybrid cooler, one that can apparently suck four times the heat off a CPU using Waytronx's fancy, proprietary carbon technology. You'll also note the giant hole in the center of the device--it's surrounded by a radial fan, akin to what you would find on a stock cooler for an 8800 video card.

I was expecting a dramatic "woosh" when Clough powered his test machine up for the first time, but the cooler is fairly quiet, given it's unassuming size. I'm not suggesting it's silent by any means, but it's at least not going to blow an eardrum. Of course, this is all just abject speculation--for all I know, the cooler could have been set at its lowest speed setting.

Still, it's a fascinating concept. I'm used to seeing "hybrid" coolers of a more typical variety: a semi-large radiator attached to a CPU block/pump combination via some skinny plastic tubing. It's nice to see these semi-awkward designs go entirely self-contained with the WayCool devices, which still offer plumbing options for extra expansion. As you'll note in the picture below, this CPU cooler is taking on the additional task of cooling two 8800 cards. I'm surprised to see this, as nothing outside of a peltier seems to be able to provide adequate cooling for a typical Quad-Core + SLI 8800s setup. But hey, maybe I'll be proven wrong when we get one of these devices in for review next month!

Koolance PC4-1025BK

David Murphy — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:01:25 -0600

Sweet mercy, at first glance Koolance’s PC4-1025BK case seems like a perfect power-user box. Unfortunately, this water-cooling-enriched case is simply too small to contain certain enthusiast hardware and too complicated for the average user.

The case integrates a water-cooling mechanism directly into the chassis—Koolance’s KIT-1000KB cooler, a tri-fan setup that comes with a front-mounted controller mechanism for auto-adjusting the fans’ speeds. The whole getup is a tidy little package that cools monstrous amounts even when using the quietest mode the PC4-1025BK offers.

But impressive benchmark scores do little to alleviate our utter contempt for the design and building process that accompanies the PC4-1025KB, an experience wholly unlike what one encounters with the similarly outfitted Gigabyte Mercury Pro (January 2007).

Building a functioning machine in the case is nightmarishly complicated. You have to assemble the CPU water block yourself, attach the tubing, and somehow wedge a motherboard and high-end components upside-down amidst these plastic modified tentacles. A 7.1-inch-long power supply doesn’t even fit in this Lian-Li case—unless you remove a drive bay. An Nvidia 8800 GTX barely fits in the case as well.

It doesn’t help that Koolance neglects to include a manual for the case itself. You get a manual detailing everything you need to know about the accompanying water-cooling mechanism, but no guidance on how to set up anything else in the case. True power users may never refer to a manual, but it’d be nice to have a reference during the installation process.

Midtower cases might work for some high-end rigs, but the PC4-1025BK proves that an antiquated design plus tons of tubing spells disaster.

Swiftech H2O-120

David Murphy — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:45:29 -0600

A lot of the enclosed “for newbs” water-cooling kits we see at Maximum PC are pretty lame. You get a pump/heatsink combination that’s mildly irritating to install, connected by tubing that’s slightly wider than the veins in your arm. The tubing goes to a radiator that’s often unable to handle the heat output of the processor—even with a noisy 12cm fan pushing more air through it than a jet engine. You spend half an hour installing the device for a whopping cooling difference of three degrees versus what you get from a stock air cooler.

Assembling and installing Swiftech’s new H20-120 water-cooling setup will leave many on the brink of frustration, but if you’re willing to trade an hour of your life for additional cooling relief, this device delivers. It cooled our test rig by an average of 6.5 degrees more than our stock cooler in both our idle and punishment CPU tests, outperforming most of the water-cooling kits we’ve tested.

Setting up the H20-120 is similar to building a DIY water-cooling kit. The pieces don’t come assembled; you must do the grunt work. If you’re running an AMD rig, you need to take apart the Intel-specific waterblock that’s attached to the pumping mechanism by default. Instructions are provided, but the process could be confusing for a liquid-cooling newbie.

In a perfect world, Swiftech would have taken a note from its competitors and preassembled the entire kit. The company could close-loop the system and free everyone from having to double, double toil and trouble up a liter of coolant—of which the cooling kit uses very little. Small details, but absolutely crucial for inexperienced users that want a no-fuss setup.

The H20-120 functions great, but it straddles the line between the newbie and enthusiast markets. It’s mildly complex for the former, and its lack of included water cooling for graphics cards will surely make the latter froth at the mouth. Consider this a practice run for your first piecemeal setup.

Thermaltake Big Typhoon VX

David Murphy — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:14:23 -0500

It’s hard to look at Thermaltake’s Big Typhoon VX cooler and not think one of two things: the most horrific joke you can make about size mattering and the current market price of the Dremel you’ll need to cut a hole in your case to make room for this Godzilla of a cooler.

We kid, but only a little. The cooler’s 10.3 centimeters of bulky height already makes it quite a space-filler in your rig, but the Big Typhoon’s size is amplified by the chunky 12cm fan that rests on top of the device’s six heat pipes. Strapping this sucker to a CPU reminds us of those times in SimCity when we would flatten some poor Joe’s house to make way for the Eiffel Tower or something equally grand.

But there’s nothing to joke about when it comes to the Big Typhoon’s performance. It sucks a serious amount of heat from your processor, joining the ranks of our ever-favorite Zalman CNPS9700 as one of the best air coolers we’ve tested. While the baseline temperature of our stock cooler varied during the testing of the CNPS9700 and the Big Typhoon, both devices cooled our FX-60 by near-identical amounts during our burn test—about 12C. To its credit, the Big Typhoon also comes with a fan-speed adjuster. And even at its lowest setting, the device still does an amazing job. We don’t often see quiet-mode coolers beating our processor’s default stock cooler. Usually when we lower fan speeds to a silent setting, processor temperatures go up, not down.

But getting this cooler on the CPU is the real treat. Snapping the single clip across the device’s base takes all of 10 seconds, easily the fastest installation of any air cooler we’ve seen. Were it a bit less bulky, the Big Typhoon VX would be gusting its way to a Kick Ass for sure.

Thermaltake V1

David Murphy — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:28:25 -0500

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.