ThermoEngine V60-4210 Socket A cooler review

RipNet-UK heeft een review gebakken van de ThermoEngine V60-4210, een socket A cooler voor procs tot maximaal 1,5GHz. De fan draait tot 5500rpm, zorgt voor een airflow van een kleine 20CFM en veroorzaakt zo'n 37dBA aan herrie. In de test werd hij vergeleken met een Mini Chrome Orb, die onder full-load een Duron @ 1000 MHz zo'n twee graden warmer liet worden. Ook was de Orb een stuk lastiger om te installeren dan de ThermoEngine, die op dat gebied profiteert van een beter ontwerp. Het enige nadeel is wel de prijs; hij kost namelijk het dubbele.

Let's take a final look at these two coolers and compare them in terms of performance, build quality, cost, and ease of installation. The Mini Chrome Orb is a solid performer, but crucially loses out by 2 ºC at full load to the ThermoEngine - and full load is obviously where the performance really counts; after all you're less likely to see crashes when your machine is idling. Both coolers are well engineered and it's hard to separate them on this point, although if pushed I'd again have to opt for the ThermoEngine. On costs the Orb is a runaway winner at only half the price of it's competitor, but again £23.49 (about US$34) is not a great deal to pay for such a quality piece of hardware as the ThermoEngine - particularly when it might save your far from cheap CPU from getting fried.

And finally, ease of installation. The Orb falls down badly here, it is very uncomfortable to both install and remove, requiring an awful lot of force on it's clipping mechanism. It feels as if there is a very real danger of either cracking your chip, or even worse breaking one of the locating tabs of the CPU socket, and thus trashing your motherboard. Bad juju indeed....

To sum up the ThermoEngine is a well engineered cooler with an excellent retention mechanism, that delivers very good performance.