X-bit labs

Tuniq Tower 120 Cooler Review: All Super Coolers are Great, but Some Are Greater Than the Others

Category: Coolers

by Doors4ever

[ 02/17/2006 | 05:54 PM ]

Today we are going to introduce to you an award-winning cooler from Sunbeamtech that managed to prove more efficient and flawless than the famous veterans from Scythe, Thermaltake and Zalman. Check out this article to learn more about the new owner of the Best Cooler title!

Table of contents:

• Technical Specifications
  
• Package and Accessories
  
• Closer Look
  
• Installation Tips
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Performance
  

I have to be frank with you: I was not excited about testing another cooler with heatpipes at all. Its construction was no revolution any more and has become quite common these days: copper footing, three heatpipes, tower-heatsink and a 120-mm fan. It meant that the thermal performance of this cooler could be quite predictable. One of our latest articles called Battle of the Titans: Super Coolers from Scythe, Thermaltake and Zalman Face to Face demonstrated very clearly that if it is a really good cooler, it will be as efficient as the best solutions from the well-known brand names of today. Despite significant construction differences, Zalman CNPS9500 LED and Scythe Ninja performed almost equally well, and Thermaltake Big Typhoon was close behind them. So, we thought if the new cooler has some design drawbacks or construction flaws, it should turn out somewhat less efficient than these leaders.

Well, if we know everything beforehand, why waste time on tests? Am I right? It turned out that I was completely wrong, but I realized it later. And at first I though I should nevertheless check out some details about this cooling solution, that is why I went on the Tuniq company’s web-site. The information available on this web-site didn’t inspire me at first: the listed product range appeared surprisingly small. There were only two case models and one single cooler mentioned in the Products section. However, the About Us section helped me regain my enthusiasm, because it said that Tuniq was a division of Sunbeamtech, a pretty well-known name in the industry. So, this warmed up my curiosity about the product, especially since we haven’t had any solutions from Sunbeamtech or Tuniq reviewed on our site yet.

Please welcome Tuniq Tower 120 cooler!

Technical Specifications

First let’s take a look at the official technical specifications of the cooler:

• Material: copper footing, aluminum heatsink ribbing;
• Socket compatibility: Socket 478, LGA775, K8 (Socket 754/939/940);
• Supported processors: Pentium 4 3.6GHz+, all K8 processors;
• Heatsink dimensions: 131mm (W) x 108mm (H) x 153mm (D);
• Fan dimensions: 120mm (W) x 120mm (H) x 25mm (D);
• Fan rotation speed: 1,000-2,000rpm;
• Weight: 798g (without fan);
• Thermal resistance: 0.16-0.21^o C/W.