Battle of the CPU Coolers

Review Pages

1. Intro - AC Freezer 7 Pro
2. Akasa AK-965
3. Akasa AK-925 Revo
4. Asus Silent Knight II
5. Asus Triton 75
6. GlacialTech Igloo 5160
7. Noctua NH-U12F
8. OCZ Vendetta
9. Scythe Andy Samurai Master
10. Scythe Kama Cross
11. Scythe Infinity (Mugen)
12. Scythe Ninja Mini
13. SunbeamTech.com Silent Whisper
14. Titan Amanda Tec
15. Titan TTC-NK34TZ
16. Titan Vanessa L-Type
17. Tuniq Tower 120
18. Zalman CNPS8700NT
19. Zalman CNPS9700LED
20. Zaward VIVO
21. Test methodology
22. Results - Idle
23. Results - Load
24. Results - Noise
25. Summary

This CPU cooler roundup, without any doubt has been a very interesting journey for us. We tried to gather as much as possible coolers we could get in a short period of time and perform thorough tests. We examined our methodology and tried to keep the same rules and conditions for all the contesters. We hoped that we succeeded in presenting you with an accurate and close to reality roundup. If you passed all previous pages and came directly here to read who won, lets try to sum it up for you.

In most tests, there was an absolute and without any doubt winner, the Titan Amanda Tech. Armed with two 92mm fans and TEC (Thermo-Electric Cooler) technology managed to keep our processor temperatures very low, to the point we thought we were testing a water cooling solution. The produced noise was also very good, since the PCI controller card that adjusts the rotation speed does its work. The installation procedure is not very difficult and the big volume might be an issue for small computer cases. What you will not like is...its retail price. With almost $110 its the highest priced cooler you can possibly buy today.

So is there any serious competition to Titan's Amanda offer? Of course there is and in fact we have a hard time in announcing a winner. The Noctua NH-U12F, the Tuniq Tower 120, the Asus Silent Knight II and Scythe's Infinity/Mugen all performed very close. Each cooler has its own features, so is there another CPU cooler we can suggest at an affordable price? Yes there is! The Akasa AK-965 proved to be a very low priced solution (25$) and most of the times outperformed bigger and higher priced solutions. We didn't expected to get a top performance but at that price, we are more than happy. At the previous pages there are many graphs with different numbers and different scenarios. We hope that this roundup was enjoyable for you and hopefully soon we will update our records with new models and other manufacturers that didn't managed to get their products in our labs in time.