air cooling

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Kingwin Revolution RVT-9225

Posted 01/28/2008 at 4:07pm | by David Murphy

It’s hard to find much innovation in the exciting world of air cooling. At some point, cooling potential is defined by a simple equation of heat pipes, fan speeds, and block materials—increase the efficiency of any of the above, and you’ll see lower temperatures.

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Sytrin KuFormula SHF1

Posted 04/06/2007 at 11:48am | by David Murphy

It’s a rarity in the Maximum PC Lab that a product comes in and performs without annoyance, irritation, or even the slightest bit of “we had to resort to interesting solution x to make things happy.” Enter Sytrin’s KuFormula SHF1 hard-drive cooling unit, a marvel of simplicity that looks good and cools great.

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OCZ Tempest

Posted 10/25/2006 at 3:12pm | by Josh Norem

This month, memory-maker OCZ wades into the hotly contested CPU cooling arena with its blingy Tempest cooler. Though the Tempest has the signature OCZ flair, we were let down by its midrange performance and loud operation.

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Scythe Mine

Posted 09/17/2006 at 12:22pm | by Josh Norem

Scythe is a newcomer to the U.S. cooling market, and is trying to establish itself as the go-to company for monstrous heatsinks that—like Zalman’s—offer quiet cooling. We reviewed the company’s Ninja Plus cooler in July, and were impressed by its silent operation. The Mine runs just as quiet, but suffers several major flaws.

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Thermaltake Blue Orb II

Posted 06/19/2006 at 10:16am | by Josh Norem  

We gave the Golden Orb II a mediocre 7 verdict back in October 2005, but the Blue Orb II is bigger and much, much better. It’s a massive cooler that squats over the CPU socket like a sumo wrestler, taking up every square millimeter of space.

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ThermalTakeTyphoon Mini

Posted 06/08/2006 at 12:37pm | by Josh Norem

This cooler’s predecessor is the Big Typhoon—a great cooler, as long as your PC doesn’t have a side door. You see, that cooler is so damn big that it extends almost all the way to the door of most cases, depriving the cooler of a source of fresh air. Thermaltake recognized the issue and thus the Mini Typhoon was born.

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Arctic Cooling Accelero VGA Coolers

Posted 05/05/2006 at 12:50pm | by Josh Norem

Arctic Cooling has retired its Silencer series of VGA coolers, reportedly because their massive size was causing worldwide plastic shortages (we kid, but they were huge coolers). To replace the Silencer, Arctic Cooling just introduced the Accelero X1 (for nVidia cards) and X2 (for ATI cards).

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Cooler Master Hyper L3

Posted 03/17/2006 at 1:07pm | by Josh Norem

Typically, people swap out their heatsink/fan apparatus for one that is either quieter than the stock cooler or capable of better cooling performance. Cooler Master’s Intel-only Hyper L3 doesn’t grant enough improvement on either front to warrant a switch.

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Cooler Master Susurro

Posted 02/27/2006 at 11:01am | by Josh Norem

Cooler Master says that the word Susurro means “silent” in Latin. And we believe it, based on this cooler’s sound profile (and the fact that we looked the word up). The Susurro specs list the noise output at 16dbA, and that sounds about right. Unfortunately, while this cooler is quiet and easy to mount, its cooling performance is lacking.

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