X-bit labs

Gigabyte 3D Rocket II Cooler Review (page 2)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 04/26/2007 | 05:54 PM ]

Design

Gigabyte 3D Rocket II corresponds very well to its name, looking somewhat like a real rocket:

The cooler design is tower-shaped, but at the same time is highly original and unique. Four copper nickel-plated heatpipes rise from the copper base. They go through numerous aluminum plates and the whole thing is topped with two plastic casings, the lower one hosting a 92-mm fan:

The fan blades face up, i.e. the air is pushed away from the top of the cooler heatsink and is sucked in through its side ribs, and not from the bottom of the heatsink as you may have assumed at first. It happens to be this way because there is another small fan at the very bottom of the aluminum heatsink and it directs the airflow right to the mainboard.

It is interesting but there are no special wide slits for air intake between the heatsink plates. So, both fans suck the air in only through the available gaps between the plates and therefore there is a plastic “skirt” with four guides looking very much like rocket wings. In fact, it is hard to believe that these plastic guides really improve air intake, but let’s believe the manufacturer’s word here.

The tower fan has 7 arched blades and features four blue LEDs:

The variable resistor included with the cooler allows changing the fan rotation speed from 1500rpm to 3000rpm. The noise level in this case will be 16dBA and 33.5dBA respectively.

Unfortunately, the manufacturer didn’t provide any information on the technical specifications of the fan at the bottom of the heatsink:

Of course, this fan serves to cool down the area around processor socket.