X-bit labs

Old New Coolers from Zalman, Tuniq, Noctua and Thermaltake for the Overclocked Yorkfield Processor (page 17)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 04/29/2008 | 06:44 PM ]

Conclusion

Of all our today’s testing participants there is only one cooler that will hardly satisfy any of you: Zalman CNPS7500-Cu LED, as it failed to demonstrate any remarkable cooling efficiency. However, it will certainly find its way into compact system cases, although overclocking will hardly be of primary importance or will not be possible at all in this case. Tuniq Tower 120-LBF, Noctua NH-U12P and Thermaltake Big Typhoon 120 VX showed very similar results. Noctua cooler can provide higher maximum cooling efficiency and offers more flexibility, however it is about 50% more expensive than Tuniq or Thermaltake coolers. As for the drawbacks, Big Typhoon 120 VX doesn’t get pressed against the processor heat-spreader tightly enough and requires you to open the system case every time you need to adjust the fan rotation speed.

All three coolers look very decent on a new quad-core processor even against the background of Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme. The differences in maximum processor frequency are not critical at all. Nevertheless, none of them managed to outperform the Thermalright super cooler in cooling efficiency and acoustics. And as for the price and availability of the cooling solutions, ach overclocker has his own subjective opinion about them. Other than that, I hope this article gave you an idea of where these modified but at the same time relatively old cooling solutions belong in the current hierarchy and how they compare against the today’s undefeated performance leader.