| Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II Cooler Review |
| Written by Maxit | ||||
Page 2 of 2 The bottom of the heatsink is a flat round copper affair with plenty of surface area to cover most Northbridge chipsets. It comes with a rough finish. If you're a stickler for perfection you might want to give it some lapping loving for a mirror finish before installing. 
Installation is probably the most annoying part. Not because it's hard to do. The universal mounting kit makes it very easy. The fact that you have to take out the entire motherboard is the real kick but there is no other way to do it. A neat feature is the 360 degrees rotating clip system that allows the cooler to be twisted to blow in any direction. A 3 pin fan connector with plenty of cable allows easy connection of the fan.
The only potential problem might come with the layout of your motherboard. If the Northbridge chipset is close to PCI-E slots and the like, you might have to squeeze a little to install this bad boy. The clip system does allow some flexibility but it's wise to check this before stripping down your whole system only to find your souped up 7900GX2 doesn't want to share parking space with the Extreme Spirit. It's worth noting that some Asus motherboards, like the A8N32-SLi Delux use their own complex heatpipe solution that would not be compatible with this cooler. Under TestWe tried out the Extreme Spirit cooler in an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ and Sapphire PURE RD580 CrossFire motherboard system. The results were very impressive. On average we saw a reduction in temperatures of 5 to 6 degrees over our stock passive heatsink under full load and at idle speeds. The noise from the fan was inaudible.Temperatures hovered around the 42 degree mark after intense sessions of Counter Strike Source compared to stock heatsink temperatures of 48 degrees. A good result for the Extreme Spirit. The Bottom LineThermaltake have produced a neat solution to Northbridge cooling problems. Gone are the days of squeaky fans that pack in after a weeks use. Now there is a proper cooling solution to keep your system rock stable and reliable.The heatsink provides a superior solution to chipset cooling. Eye catching design, attention to detail, simple installation and high cooling performance combine to make a winning package. If you have been neglecting your Northbridge, give it a treat with the Extreme Spirit II chipset cooler. PROS
CONS
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