Digital-Daily : Cooling : light-coolers_01q2007

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Testing low-end coolers. Spring 2007

Author: Date: 30.03.2007

ASUS Chilly Vent

CPU coolers bearing ASUS logo are not frequent at our retail shops, but anyway they have proven successful in our test lab. Let's look at low-end coolers made by this manufacturer.

Their "low-endness" is quite relative, since we haven't been able to find the cooler on sale yet, but the price should not be very high.

The transparent plastic package immediately demonstrates the cooler's exterior, and the additional box with bundled items contains only a tub of proprietary thermo paste and an installation guide.

Externally, the cooler looks simple enough: an aluminum radiator, a couple of heat pipes, and a small fan. But the appearance is misleading - just look at the specifications:

Externally, the aluminum base turned out to be nickel-plated copper, and the "small fan" is in fact able controlling the rotational speed on its own. The rotational speed is adjustable within 1500 to 4500 RPM depending on the air temperature inside the housing. The same methodology is useful during hot days.

There are fins tightly soldered on the base, and the heat transfer is accelerated with heat pipes which transfer heat onto the upper part of the fins.

The base of the cooler is rather coarse, but there aren't traces of coarse polishing. Thermo paste is not pre-applied but is kept in a syringe. Judging by the substance, we deal with the currently popular thermo compound which stands out with its high efficiency and extreme difficulty to apply.

The method of fastening on the motherboard is simple and effective - the thrust plate hooks at the central teeth of the near-CPU frame, with the final pressing is done by turning a wrench.

ASUS Chilly Vent Lux

The second "low-ender" by ASUS differs in only one word in the name and two features. For instance, take the package.

Now the plastic body cast with the cooler is almost fully packaged into a cardboard shell, although the user can see a detailed view of the cooler's design.

The label on the box tells of a small weight of the cooler as "merely 382 g", which means it is a bit lighter as compared to its predecessor.

It is evident from the specifications that all the changes have been made by the new fan which was seen through the transparent walls of the package.

The suffix "Lux" has brought a fan with some larger diameter of the impeller and increased number of fins. The fan rotates at the permanent speed 2000 RPM with the noise level not exceeding 25 dB. Its noise is heard but it can be an obstacle to only those who are after completely noisy systems.

The radiator fully replicates the design of the similar ASUS Chilly Vent, so it doesn't make sense dwelling on that. Fastening on the CPU cooler is both easy and convenient.

ThermalTake TR2-R1

Recently, ThermalTake is creating not merely new cooler models but as much as new series of cooling systems. One of the series is dubbed «TR2 Value Cooler» and under its trademark coolers for most varied platforms, even for Socket 478, are produced. Curiously, but ThermalTake have created a separate web site for that. Of the TR2 series, we have received a quite interesting cooler for the AMD Socket AM2 platform, named TR2-R1.

The plain but colorful package tells of the key advantages of the cooler, as well as demonstrates how effectively the fan blows about the near-CPU space around the cooler. A special emphasis is made on the noiseless operation - «Ultra Silent».

We noted the weight of the cooler, which is a bit large for a value cooler, as well as not immodest dimensions combined with the attractively low price. The declared noise level meets the large statements of «Ultra Silent», although it is still early to judge about its level.

We found nothing else besides the cooler, so we now move on to its description.

The low but wide aluminum radiator is equipped with a fan of impressive size. The major advantage of the cooler is just the large fan rotating at 1300 RPM. It can't be called completely noiseless, but the noise is vague, and inside the CPU housing you can hardly detect its presence by the sound.

The base is rather coarse to touch but is anyway flat. On the central part, there is a pre-applied layer of white thermo paste, quite a liquid substance, and its excess is easily squeezed through pressure.

The fastening of the cooler is light and efficient - a thrust plate with a clip is used.

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	Content:
	Page 1 - GlacialTech Igloo, Arctic Cooling Alpine, SilverStone Page 2 - ASUS Chilly Vent, Vent Lux, ThermalTake Page 3 - Tests. Final words Top Stories: MoBo: ECS X58B-A (Intel X58) ASUS Rampage II Extreme (Intel X58) MSI DKA790GX and ECS A780GM-A Ultra MSI P7NGM (NVIDIA GeForce 9300) Intel X58 and ASUS P6T Deluxe MSI P45 Neo2 (Intel P45) Foxconn A7GMX-K (AMD 780G) VGA Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 – a new leader in 3D graphics! ECS HYDRA GeForce 9800GTX+. Water-cooled and SLI "all-in-one" Radeon HD 4830 CrossFire - better than Radeon HD 4870! XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition in the SLI mode Leadtek WinFast PX9500 GT DDR2 – better than GeForce 9500GT DDR-3 Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic: exclusive, with unusual features Palit HD 4850 Sonic: almost Radeon HD 4870, priced as HD 4850 CPU & Memory: GSkill high-capacity memory modules CPU Intel Core i7-920 (Bloomfield) DDR3 memory: late 2008 CPU AMD Phenom X3 8750 (Toliman) AMD Phenom X4 9850 – a top-end CPU at affordable price CPU Intel Atom 230 (Diamondville) Chaintech Apogee GT DDR3 1600