X-bit labs

New Shining CPU Cooler: Gigabyte G-Power II Pro Review

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 01/28/2008 | 02:24 PM ]

The new Gigabyte G-Power II Pro cooler boasts universal design, requires elementary installation procedure, is compact at the base, noiseless at minimum fan rotation speed and very quiet at maximum fan rotation speed. Read more in our review of this excellent product!

Table of contents:

• Package and Accessories
  
• Design and Functionality
  
• Installation Tips
  
• Technical Specifications and Price
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Cooling Efficiency and Acoustic Performance
  
• Intel Core 2 Duo Platform
  
• Intel Core 2 Quad Platform
  
• Acoustic Performance
  
• Conclusion
  

The past year 2007 was a very interesting year in terms of new CPU air-cooling solutions. Over the past year we tested over 30 new CPU coolers, and some of them were in our labs more than once. Moreover, we didn’t have enough time to test six new models that we are going to introduce to you in the beginning of this year. However, you may understand that these are far not all the air cooling systems that arrived to the market in the past year.

I am saying all this so that you could understand how tense the competition in this market segment is these days. It is not enough to simply launch an efficient cooling solution. To ensure that it becomes a commercial success, it should not only be competitive, but should also stand out against the background of other alternatives and attracted the potential customer’s attention somehow. It should be not just a nice feature, but something really cool that would leave the competitors no chance.

Well, looks like Gigabyte has no problem with inventing something cool for their coolers. Remember the 3D Cooler Ultra family, the 3D Rocket and 3D Rocket II, the G-Power Pro. All of them stood out a lot against the background of other companies’ solutions thanks to their original designs, neon fans, LED highlighting and other things. However, all of them couldn’t boast one very important feature: high cooling efficiency for overclocked processors. Only the very last one on the list, G-Power Pro, announced almost three years ago already, proved a worthy opponent to the super-cooler of those days - Zalman CNPS7700Cu. However, I am sure you know that Zalman CNPS7700Cu can no longer be compared to contemporary leaders of the cooling solutions market in terms of efficiency (if you still don’t believe it, we are going to prove it to you very soon in one of our upcoming articles devoted to the new and old cooling systems).

So, finally, Gigabyte launched their best fighter: G-Power II Pro (GH-PSU22-LB) cooler. According to the company, this solution represents a great combination of highly efficient performance, low noise and stylish looks and should definitely sin some fans in the market fairly soon.

So, today we are going to talk about this newcomer, how successful the new Gigabyte solution turned out and what is so special about it.