X-bit labs

Ultra Chill-TEC vs. Ultra-X or the Battle of Thermo-Electric Cooler and Air Cooler

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 05/14/2007 | 03:24 PM ]

In this article we are going to introduce to you a new thermo-electric cooler from Ultra using Peltier element and heatpipes in its design, which will be competing against a highly efficient air cooler in our today’s test session. Read more now!

Table of contents:

• Package and Accessories
  
• Design
  
• Installation Tips
  
• Technical Specifications
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Thermal Performance
  
• Conclusion
  

The first thermo-electric cooler using heatpipes that we tested in our lab was Titan Amanda TEC (for details see our article called Titan Amanda TEC (Thermal Electronic Chip) Cooler Review).

Despite the drawbacks that we pointed out in our article, this cooling solution based on medium-power Peltier element still demonstrated pretty impressive cooling efficiency with overclocked processors. As it happens pretty frequently, the launch of this cooling solution stimulated other cooling product makers to start rolling out their alternatives using thermo-electric technology. This is how Vigor Monsoon II and our today’s hero, Ultra Chill-TEC, cooling solutions came into this world.

Here it is:

Despite external resemblance with the Titan offspring that I have mentioned above, Ultra Chill-TEC boasts a number of distinguishing features that have had positive as well as negative effect on its cooling efficiency. Therefore, it definitely deserves out special attention and detailed testing.

Moreover, today we get a great chance to actually update our Titan Amanda review, because it received a lot of complaints from our readers for the absence of proper “hot” dual-core processor during our test session. Besides, since the Titan Amanda TGEC Review came out, we have also got our hands on a highly efficient cooling solution that also proudly bears the word “Ultra” in its name. So we have every right to call our today’s test session not a super-cooler battle, but Ultra-cooler battle. :)

So, let’s get started!