The Tuniq Propeller 120 is definitely a stylish heatink, promising specifications and comes in a great bundle with the Tuniq TX-3 thermal compound and a fan controller in the box. In terms of aesthetics though, the Tuniq retain its crown, delivering a nicely finished product that will be an attractive addition to anyone's computer. It's unique design with the fan installed on the top of the aluminum fins offers make it compact in size, with a small footprint that guarantees excellent compatibility with today's complicated motherboards. However, the specific design had a negative impact on its performance, especially under overclocking. The Tuniq Propeller 120 was efficient enough with our Intel Core i-7-920 running at stock speeds, but it fell short of its main competitors under demanding overclocking conditions. It is obvious that the surface area of each fin was too small for efficient heat dissipation and adding to the fact tower coolers generally make better use of the airflow in a case, the top down design had limited chances against some other 'heavyweights' of the category. The installed 120mm fan is spinning at very high speeds and as such, it produces much noise. Adjusting the RPM using the included PCI cpu fan controller would help here but this would have a serious impact to the cooling efficiency.

To sum up, the Tuniq Propeller 120 is not the best performer you can buy for $50, at least if you are an overclocker. Adding a second 1200 fan could help here but the heatsink's design would not help for such mods. For sure, the Tuniq Propeller 120 looks great at night installed into your PC and will lower the temperatures of your CPU. In a world without any competition from other solutions, the Tuniq Propeller 120 would be a great choice. But the competition is here and it is stiff. Tuniq engineers need to further improve the Propeller 120 before being able to compete with other tower designs.

Retail package
Design
Motherboard compatibility
Installation time
Copper Base quality

Pros:

+ Aesthetically pleasing
+ Complete retail package
+ Very good volume for fitting most PC cases
+ Decent performance at stock CPU speed
+ Installation procedure is very straight forward
+ Product includes separate PCI fan adjuster + Tuniq TX-3 thermal compound
+ Works with both AMD/Intel platforms

Cons:

- Noisy at full RPM
- Competition offers better performance at lower price (i.e. Scythe Mugen 2)
- Design does not allow installation of a second fan
- Unable to maintain an overclocked CPU