Mini-ITX CPU Air Cooler Round-Up

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I was hoping for one that can be mounted like the stock AMD cooler, without having to rely on pulling-out the motherboard to install the back plate.
 
The Shadow Rock LP does not require the use of low profile memory, standard memory without a tall heat spreader can fit.
 
I'm curious what the requisites were for just these four coolers being tested. Was a notification sent out to all the mITX cooler makers to ask for a sample product to test and these are the only four that were sent? Or was it a case of not all mITX cooler makers were reached out to? It's not real clear in the intro.

Tom's tested eight of them back in Nov. 2013:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/low-profile-heat-sink-mini-itx,3639.html
 
You'd probably be upset if you found out that these were leftover samples sent with things like the big coolers that I test and the small cases that he tests, so let me be nice and say that he has the full license to pick up on small cooling reviews where I left off. So this is just the intro to a series of reviews.

 
As Crash mentioned earlier (and as I mentioned in the article), most of these coolers came with the mITX cases I received. We also had a couple requests from manufactures to test their products. I've still got a couple of coolers on hand that need to be tested at some point, but I've shifted my focus back to cases for the time being, so it's going to be a bit.

That does leave me some time though to start sending out requests for samples and I'm open to suggestions on what to request. Also, if there's enough demand for a particular theme (i.e. budget coolers) I can also put together another round-up.
 
I'd like to see tests based on cooler height: This is the best performer up to 40 mm, 45 mm, 50 mm, 55 mm, 60mm, 65mm etc. At least when I go searching for a cooler one of the first questions I ask is "will it fit." In addition it makes the comparison more relevant. A 75mm cooler will likely be better than a 45, or 58mm. The second question is "how does it perform" and the third "how much is it". Q2 and Q3 I might switch but the first one is not negotiable. I also think that the stock cooler should be in all comparisons.
 
Thanks for the article.

I'd love to see how Scythe Big Shuriken II Rev. B compares. I have one paired with a Noctua 140 mm fan on my Sandybridge-E. I don't know if it's compatible with Skylake, though.

Something I've seen on at least one other site is to take another set of cooling measurements using a common reference fan. This is helpful for those of us who would swap fans anyway, and it's a more direct apples-to-apples measurement of cooling efficiency.
 
Thank you for testing a product in the environment it was meant to be used in! This is a great start to a (hopefully) comprehensive series of reviews and a truly useful roundup. Thanks guys!
 
First of all, I'd like to appologize to everyone for the missing information.
The NH-L12 for example has 0.5" of offset. That's important to know if you're wondering "can I turn this thing to fit the other way". I later started listing which directions the offset pointed (front/rear left/right). When you have both the dimensions AND the offset, you can figure out what the biggest cooler to fit your board will be.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/low-profile-heat-sink-mini-itx,3639.html

Second of all, one reason the NH-L12 was included in both articles is so that a reader could compare the differences of various coolers (such as "this one is cooler than the NH-L12, what does the previous article say about the other one). So the NH-L12 is the "conversion factor" cooler.

 
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