| Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II Cooler Review |
| Written by Maxit | ||||
Manufacturer: Thermaltake Hands up how many people have replaced, disconnected or put up with a squeaky northbridge cooler on a motherboard. They only seem to last a few weeks and either conk out or become so noisy the only solution is to unplug. Motherboard manufacturers have a common mission to stick the ugliest, crappiest, piece of metal possible on top of the northbridge and then stick a 30dB fan on top and still call it a deluxe version. Not to mention the pink gloop that's liberally applied between chipset and heatsink to stop any possible transfer of heat. You think by now, manufacturers would have thought of all kinds of clever solutions to impress enthusiasts. The trouble is nobody cares about the Northbridge. It can bake at sixty degrees, burst into flames, just so long as the cpu is under 30 degrees at 10GHz. Well somebodys finally listened to the poor old plight of the Northbridge and come up with a proper solution. Enter the Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II Northbridge chipset cooler. It's mission, simple. To take your chipset to new levels of coolness and it's got a fancy blue light too!  Picture copyright of Thermaltake The Spec
So how does the Extreme Spirit improve upon the stock cooling of most motherboards. A few features help it along and give it some real cooling power.
 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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