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Gigabyte G-Power Cooler Pro Heatsink Review

Written by K.I.T.T.

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Gigabyte G-Power Cooler Pro Heatsink Review
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Price: £31.67 inc. VAT
Manufacturer: Gigabyte
Supplier: The Cooling Shop

Introduction

The G-Power Cooler Pro is one of Gigabyte's offerings to the enthusiasts cooing department. It employs the use of 4 heatpipes which should ensure great cooling performance. The heatpipes along with the base are made entirely of nickel plated copper to ensure excellent heat transfer. Included are a variety of clips, adapters and mounting kits enabling the installation on almost every mainstream platform, including socket 478, LGA 775, socket 754, socket 939 and socket AM2. Also included is a rheostat which can be mounted in a 3 1/2" floppy bay, allowing you to control the speed of the fan.

The fan itself is a 92 mm affair which has 4 blue LEDs. It looks rather pretty lit up. It does however create a racket at full speed. 40 dB At over 3200 RPM!! You'll also want to keep any fingers clear of the fan as not only does it spin faster than most offerings on the market, the edges of the blades are rather sharp and gave my finger a nice little cut whist playing with it

Let's look at the specifications:

Dimensions

110 x 110 x 109 mm

Bearing Type

Ball bearing

Rated Voltage

12V

DC Current

GH-PDU21-MF / 0.10 Amp (1700 RPM) ~ 0.5 Amp (3200 RPM)
GH-PDU21-SC / 0.13 AmpFan Speed
GH-PDU21-MF / 1700 ~ 3200rpm
GH-PDU21-SC / 2000(Default) ~ 1700(Low Speed) rpm

Airflow Max.

GH-PDU21-MF / 68.5 CFM
GH-PDU21-SC / 42.5 CFM

Noise

GH-PDU21-MF / 21.3 dBA (At 1700rpm) - 40.1 dBA (At 3200 rpm)
GH-PDU21-SC / 21.3 dBA (At 1700rpm) - 24.5 dBA (At 2000rpm)

Life Expectancy

50,000hrs

Weight

430g

Compatible CPUs

Intel® Pentium® Extreme Edition Series
Intel® Pentium® D Processor Series
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor Series (LGA775)
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor Series (mPGA 478)
Intel® Core^TM 2 Duo Processor Series
AMD AM2 Series
AMD Athlon^TM FX Series
AMD Athlon^TM 64x2 Series
AMD Athlon^TM 64 Series

Installation and Test Setup

Annoyingly, if you're using a LGA 775 motherboard, you'll need to install a supplied mounting bracket onto the board which requires removing the board from the case and screwing it on. However, as this is a universal HSF, we can't really complain.

Our setup consisted of:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 ES overclocked to 2.8 GHz and overvolted to 1.4v
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard
2 x 1 GB Team Xtreem PC2 5300 RAM

Our CPU was overclocked to 2.8 GHz. Although 1.4v was not required, we pumped up the volts to see how the cooler would cope with larger heat loads.

To test performance, we measured idle and load temperatures of the setup using a reference Intel HSF anf compared the results. To test load temperatures, we ran dual instances of Prime 95 using SP2004 Orthos beta.

Results

As far as cooling performance goes, the results speak for themselves. A reduction 12°C and 17°C under idle and load conditions respectively over the stock cooler is pretty impressive. However, there's another side to the story - Although it delivers in the cooling department, at full speed the G-Power Cooler Pro is LOUD, significantly more than the Intel reference HSF. It's so loud that it's irritating and annoying even if you're listening to music turned up a fair bit. It's almost as loud a vacuum cleaner!! However, when turned down to 7v, it still manages to cool our CPU significanty better than the stock HSF, while being rather quiet - not silent, but acceptable and much quieter than the stock cooler.

Final Thoughts

So does the G-power Cooler Pro hit the G-spot and offer the perfect balance of power and silence? In this case sadly not.There is no doubt that the G-Power Cooler Pro is an excellent replacement over Intel's stock offering, however at full blast it's just too loud to live with. Lowering the speed of the fan improves noise levels but sacrifices cooling performance a bit, although it still ran cooler than the stock HSF. If you're after excellent cooling, bling LEDs and couldn't care less about noise, this may be the thing for you. However, at nearly £32, it isn't the best value option as simmilarly performing coolers can be had for less. It does look pretty though.

Special thanks to Finlay Mann for lending me the cooler to use when I only had the stock Intel cooler