With the great cooling capabilities of the Big Typhoon, we got a temperature drop of 7 and 18 degrees under idle and 100% CPU load resptectively. This drop gave us the opportunity to increase the clock speed by 825MHz while keeping the temperature below what it was when using the original Intel cooler that came bundled with our proccessor.

The 16dBA noise eminating from the Big Typhoon make it an excellent air cooling solution. Although it's obviously not as silent as other no-fan solutions, its large 12cm fan with low revs contribute to its noise reduction. However, there are some minor problems with its design. The high density cooling fins can quickly gather a lot of dust quickly. This will decrease the heat transfer capabilities and as we noticed, increases the noise generated. So every once in a while, you have to clean it. Also, as you saw, the Big Typhoon is really, really big. It will take up most of any remaining space inside your case and could possibly interfere with any cables that were using that space, such as a front panel audio connector or an EZ plug cable (found on the latest Asus motherboards).

The installation has its own, pros and cons. It was really great to see universal coverage for 775, 478, 939 and Socket A type motherboards. On the other hand, to ensure the stability and compatibility of the Big Typhoon, ThermalTake had to put into play 3 H clips. This means, pluging in or removing the cooler, requires that you take the whole motherboard out of the case. However, this will hopefully need to be done only once as cleaning the fins does not require removing the whole backbone.

The Big Typhoon costs around $50 USD. Although it's a relatively high price for an air cooler with no particular special features, the silence and/or overclocking it offers, more than make up for it.

Pros:
-Low Noise (16dBA)
-Very good thermal reduction

Cons:
-Huge size
-Fins gather dust easily

Performance:
Features/Design:
Installation:
Value for money: