CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part 3 - Are Box Coolers any Good?

[muk]

The higher the CPU frequency, the higher the heat dissipation. Cheap CPUs ship with simple coolers that aren't suited to overclocking.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/03/03/cpu_cooler_charts_2008/

 

[night_wolf_in]

OMG. this is the final article of this series. n THEY DIDNT REVIEW ANY MAJOR CPU COOLER.


god, they wasted so many hours for NOTHING. damn

 

[eaglesfan]

Why did they bother?

They didnt review ANY of the ones that 75% of the people I know use.

I agree...waste of hours to say the least.

 

[PeterHighlander]

I must agree, they didn't review several of the brands listed in the initial "who's being reviewed" table.

 

[alert101]

Could have included the Zalman 9500/9700 series (which they seem to use in their reference system) in the review. It's an old series but probably one of the best on the market.

 

[runswindows95]

"In the first part of this series, CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part I - Losing your Cool?, we found that nearly half of the aftermarket coolers we reviewed suffered from some serious flaws. The second part, CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part II - Junk or Jewel?, ended with a better overall result.

In this installment, we will take a look at coolers that ship with CPUs in retail boxes - so-called box coolers."

Looks like there will be more articles than the three posted.

 

[cah027]

I was a little disappointed in this one as well. I skimmed threw it. But it did give a good contrast between box and after market coolers. I think I will always get an after market even if I don't overclock.

 

[hairycat101]

[quotemsg=2431306,5,114146]Could have included the Zalman 9500/9700 series (which they seem to use in their reference system) in the review. It's an old series but probably one of the best on the market.[/quotemsg]

I totally agree. They are the old standby, solid, everyone knows they rock series. They are more of a reference then the freakin' stock coolers!

 

[zero2dash]

Yeah, who uses the Thermalright Ultima-90, Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, Tuniq Tower, Zalman CNPS-9500 or CNPS-9700 anyway? I mean those coolers are SOOOOOO overrated.

/sarcasm
Horrible article. Cover everything but the 5 most commonly used coolers.

 

[bob8701]

Worst hardware review ever: the box cooler is design to handle stand operation only. for example the E6300 series heatsink can handle up to 65 Watt, not 114w in the test. It is a simple fact, anyone with brain can figure out before test it. Get some heatsinks can handle 120 w and compare the test result make more sense.
They should test each cpu heatsink on different heat group base on their spec. and please keep test condition as same as possiable(the fan position)

 

[blackened144]

Assuming they will be covering all the coolers in the picture for part 1, there will be another part to this series. My GeminII is in the pic, but hasnt been covered so far either.

 

[Kari]

well that was a nice waste of everyones time...
one boxed intel cooler would have been nice in the series but 6! thats just freaking stupid

 

[bobbknight]

The greatest omission that I see is the Arctic freezer Pro 7, they list Arctic, they show a picture of it in the article, but no info on it at all.

Interesting, why is this?

I have found the Arctic series of coolers to work well in many different computers and socket combinations. At an excellent cost to performance ratio.

My Arctic Freezer Pro 7 works very well at cooling my Q6600 Socket 775 CPU, yet not a word of it in any of the charts.

 

[Phrozt]

[quotemsg=2431306,5,114146]Could have included the Zalman 9500/9700 series (which they seem to use in their reference system) in the review. It's an old series but probably one of the best on the market.[/quotemsg]


"Here, let's take some Zalman coolers that are WAAAAY out of date and sub them in for the zalman coolers that people have been using for years. Then we can complain that zalman sucks!"

Might as well release an article where you tested all of the latest games on Windows 95 to show how bad Windows is.

This guy is a moron, and THG was stupid as hell for release not one but THREE horrid PoS articles by this 12 year old. THG is seriously "loosing" (way to misspell a word in the goddam title) a lot by releasing crap like this. I sent some feedback, but apparently they don't care how stupid they look.

[quotemsg=2431326,12,112277]well that was a nice waste of everyones time...
one boxed intel cooler would have been nice in the series but 6! thats just freaking stupid[/quotemsg]

They could include 6 box coolers because, in order to make the article more retarded, they had to cut the TOP 5 coolers. They had to fill that space somehow!!

 

[razor512]

they should at least review some of the amd ones,

not sure of the model of cooler but i took a picture of it

can you please review some of the stock amd coolers and compare them to the some of the after market ones

with a .4V increase and a 727MHz overclock get up to 72-74C at full load on both cores


amd seems to have better coolers than intel

 

[SpinachEater]

To the authors:

It looks like you have taken some suggestions (stock HS testing and thermal compound attention). Thanks for doing so but it looks like you tried to play it off as if it was all part of your plan...which is shady if you ask me and makes the entire series more of a jumbled mess than what is was in the first place. Where is the organization? Come on, you are paid to do this and THG readers deserve better.

Intel isn't even listed in the companies table so it's obvious it was a last min thing. At least give us some credit, we aren't that stupid. Swallow your pride and mention that the readers have asked you do to this because otherwise, you weren’t going to.

 

[panicatak]

"Intel is producing new box coolers for its Penryn processors of the 8000 and 9000 line, which are much smaller than the previous models. We will be testing these versions in an upcoming installment of the Cooler Charts."

It would seem there is more to come...

 

[tjhva]

This feels like a to-be repeat of the 'Does memory matter article', in that Tom's won't respond of any of these valid concerns.

Ultimately producing a sup-par article and frustrated readers.

 

[razor512]

[quotemsg=2431328,14,3194]"Here, let's take some Zalman coolers that are WAAAAY out of date and sub them in for the zalman coolers that people have been using for years. Then we can complain that zalman sucks!"

Might as well release an article where you tested all of the latest games on Windows 95 to show how bad Windows is.

This guy is a moron, and THG was stupid as hell for release not one but THREE horrid PoS articles by this 12 year old. THG is seriously "loosing" (way to misspell a word in the goddam title) a lot by releasing crap like this. I sent some feedback, but apparently they don't care how stupid they look.



They could include 6 box coolers because, in order to make the article more retarded, they had to cut the TOP 5 coolers. They had to fill that space somehow!![/quotemsg]


what are you talking about windows 95 runs crysis just fine

 

[sailer]

I agree with razor512 that a review of a couple of the AMD boxed coolers might have been included. The one that came with my FX60, for instance, was pretty good. Replaced it when overclocking, but for stock use, its good. Right now, it resides on my 4400+. But all the coolers reviewed are for Intel CPUs, so continuity probably dictates that no AMD coolers will be seen.

As for the article, it was a total waste of electrons in the cyberspace world. Like we didn't already know that the stock coolers from Intel were bad, or worse than bad.

 

[jeremyrailton]

I love Tom's to death, but I hope they weren't planning on capping off the cooling articles with this. Thirteen pages of the obvious seems a little on the weak side. Here's to hoping they have another article with the coolers we all want to see tested.

Perhaps they're only testing the free ones they got. If so, just tell us that so we quit hoping for the likes of the Ultra 120/90 or Freezer 7 to appear. Heck, I'm using an old thermalright HR-01, and it does the job.

 

[spaztic7]

If this is all they are doing... my god is it bad. I understand that there are a lot of coolers to look at, but does anyone here care about stock coolers? Honestly, does anyone care? I want to see the god coolers. I want to see what can beat the thermalright ultra 120 extreme. I want to see THG compete with Anande Tech on their heatsink comparisons.

This has been a major letdown, so far.

 

[Multiplectic]

This series of articles is SO flawed it has become pointless...

Intel's boxed coolers, ok, where are the Sanyo Denkis? Those didn't exist at all?
Hell, some Q6600 B3 still have them.

 

[TSIMonster]

These articles are flawed. Their grading system sucks. I mean the actually subtract when they have to install a backplate? Backplates are a good thing.

Also, where is the beef? You are reviewing coolers that many will never even consider using.

 

[tjhva]

What gets me giddy is that they won't even respond, or address these concerns.