Design and Functionality

Triton 88 is built according to the same principle as the well-known Thermalright IFX-14. Its heatsink consists of two arrays with a fan between them:

Each heatsink array is built of 45 aluminum plates with 0.5 mm thickness. The gaps between the plates are at 2 mm. The plates sit on six copper nickel-plated heatpipes 6 mm in diameter.

The cooler measures 112x125x153 mm total, which means that it is more compact than Thermalright IFX-14 (146.2x124x161 mm). It weighs 876 g compared with 790 g by IFX-14, though the latter comes without a fan.

Heatpipes are combined in two groups, three in each, and are slightly curved towards the outside away from the cooler central axis:

The aluminum top cover with Asus logo and the fan can be easily removed. This allowed us to learn that the heatsink arrays are symmetrical that is why the fan may be installed onto any of them:

The distance between the heatsink arrays is 31 mm.

The heatsink plates are pressed against the heatpipes, you can clearly see the traces of lock gaps on the photo below:

Just like Axe Square AMAzing, Triton 88 has special grooves in the base plate where the heatpipes are soldered. The thinnest part of the nickel-plated base measures 3.5 mm.

The base of the Triton 88 cooler we received for our tests turned out with a little bump in the center:

As a result, the thermal paste imprint from the processor heat-spreader was far from ideal:

There is a 120 mm nine-blade fan installed between the two heatsink arrays. It is made by Everflow (model TB12025SU):

The fan rotation speed is controlled using pulse-width modulation method (PWM) in the interval from 800 to 2100 RPM. The claimed level of noise is at 20 dBA, but no one knows at what speed this noise was measured. We also do not know the MTBF of the fluid dynamic fan bearing, although it is not really that important as you can easily replace the default Triton 88 fan with something different. Moreover, there are four wire clips for additional fans among cooler accessories, which can be used to attach the fans to the outside of the heatsink arrays.