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| Thermaltake Mini Typhoon Value Pack Heatsink Review |
| Written by Maxit | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Supplier: Savastore (non value pack edition) The Mini Typhoon is Thermaltake's latest offering to the enthusiast crowd. It follows after it's bigger brother, the Big Typhoon, which combined excellent cooling capability whilst being literally inaudible. The version Thermaltake sent us was the "Value Pack" edition. It's identical to the normal Mini Typhoon apart from the included bundle comprising of a custom fan mount, 2 Blue LED satellite fans and a bag of screws. The satelite fans can be attached to the heatsink to aid in cooling other hotspots on your motherboard such as the VRMs or passively cooled northbridge sinks. Alternatively, you can use them to cool hot running RAM such as modules using winbond BH-5 chips. The value pack is a thoughtful addition to the Mini Typhoon, so kudos to Thermaltake for the excellent idea. Unfortunately, at present, we couldn't find priing or availability of the Value Pack edition in the UK, but we reckon it'll be around £3 more than the normal one. The heatsink itself it completely made of copper and uses 6 heatpipes to aid cooling. The quality of construction really shines through and the copper looks very bling. Heatpipes seem to be the de-facto standard of all new coolers catered towards the enthusiast market, so their presence here wasn't much of a surprise. The cooler is a universal fitting one and will fit on LGA 775 and AM2 sockets along with socket 939 based motherboards. Let's move on and take a detailed look at the technical specifications:
Installation and Test SetupThe cooler has been designed so that it can be mounted on any supported motherbord without having to remove it from the case. this is accomplished by an array of clips which are placed over the base of the heatsink. Now, on the Big Typhoon, you had to remove the motherboard and use bolts to clamp down the heatsink which necessitated removal of the motherboard. While this may be an inconvenice, we feel that it would have been a much better idea to use the same mechanism on the Mini Typhoon. You'll find out why in a minute. As always, our setup consisted of:
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. Whilst installing it on our usual LGA 775 setup, everything seemed fine until we powered up. The clip seemed secure, and the push-pins had been properly secured through the motherboard. However when turned on, it turned off after about 6 seconds. The same thing hapenned again on our second attempt. By now I had figured out what must have happened. I disconnected the power and uninstalled the cooler. To my horror, the heatsink had hardly made contact with the IHS of the CPU!!  . The blob of thermal paste applied was just as I left it before mounting the Mini Typhoon, with only a minor spec on the base of the heatsink.On the second attempt everything seemed OK and temperatures seemed reasonable. Luckily, the chip survived both times thanks to Intel's excellent inbuilt thermal protection which will immediately halt and power down the system if temperatures reach dangerous levels. After ensuring that the cooler was correctly mounted, I proceeded with load testing. Results Cooling was considerably better than the stock Intel cooler. The Mini Typhoon managed to cool our overclocked and overvolted CPU 8°C and 12°C lower than the stock offering under idle and load environments respectively. At the same time, the cooler produced a good reduction in sound noise compared to the stock cooler. When turned down to 7v, the Mini Typhoon was near silent, although you could still hear a resonating hum from the fan bracket. At the lower voltage, the cooler ran 2°C and 1°C hotter than the stock offering. A nice trade off if quiet computing is high on your agenda Final ThoughtsWhilst cooling performance is significantly better than Intel's stock offering, the LGA 775 mounting mechanism isn't without potential problems. We still had difficulty mounting it on our Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard on later attempts, but succeeded mounting it numerous times on our Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 motherboard without any hitches. There are no mounting issues on Sockets 939 and AM2. If you do buy one to use on your LGA 775 motherboard, we advise you to take extra care and thoroughly ensure a secure mount has been achieved as it managed to catch our team out on a few occassions.The inclusion of the Value Pack was a great idea from Thermaltake and provides extra flexibility for performance systems. The Mini Typhoon has the potential to be modded with after market 92 mm fans and with a variety available to tickle your fancy, it shouldn't be too hard to customise your Mini Typhoon to your own specs. If you are after performance cooling or a quiet computing environment, the Mini Typhoon allows you the choice making it great choice for most enthusiasts. The heatsink looks great when fired up. It's like a blonde driving a red Ferrari - it really is a head turner and perfect for modders who wish to max the looks of their system. If you are in the market for a good looking, flexible and solid performing cpu cooler, the Mini Typhoon from Thermaltake might just be what you are looking for. Pros:
Cons:
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