Spire Verticool II

Review Pages

1. Introduction
2. Installation
3. Performance
4. Conclusion

The Spire VertiCool II is a well designed cooler with a copper base and 45 fins around the 4 heatpipes. The fan, according to Spire, runs at low RPMs while it is also UV reactive. It's a solution for both Intel and AMD platforms, 775 and K8 sockets respectively.

The installation process was quite easy for both platforms but we would like a solution where we would avoid having to remove the motherboard from the PC case, in order to install the X shaped back plate. Apart from this, you only have to apply some thermal compound on the processor and take care of the four screws. In the case of an AMD K8, things are much easier. However, since the VertiCool II comes with the 775 socket mounting pre-installed, you'll have to do some preparation before attaching it to the AMD processor.

When it comes to performance, according to Speed Fan, the Spire cooler is better than the stock cooling system from Intel. Starting temperatures are 5 °C lower than with the stock cooler, a difference which is also retained at peak temperatures, at least with the Intel P4 3.73GHz Extreme Edition processor that we used for our tests, a rather hot CPU. We also noticed that it takes more time for the Spire VertiCool II to reach the peak heat level, which is a good thing.

Finally, the noise levels from the Spire VertiCool II, are much lower than with the stock cooling system and the reason for this seems to be the lower RPMs that the Spire's fan works at, 700 rpm slower than the stock.