Thermaltake FRIO Overclocking CPU Cooler

[PAGETITLE=Introduction][Top Ad] With CPU heat thresholds and power consumption staying nearly constant as of late, it is no surprise that the venerable heat sink has not changed much over the last few years. End user's currently have a wide variety to choose from in numerous styles and formats. Whether it is the tried and true air cooler you are after or one of the ever growing in popularity water-based models, there is surely something for everyone's taste and needs. Having been around since the very beginning of the PC, Themaltake's constantly evolving lines of merchandise contains something for everyone. It's strived to offer a wide variety of functional yet exciting products to choose from, and from the mundane power supply to the ever eccentric enthusiast chassis, the company has strived to listen to what the end user wants and then integrate such desires into new releases. While it can be argued that we are getting more of the same old design in most new releases, I still find that manufacturers are tweaking and fine-tuning for new CPU releases and also for the obvious thermal heat load increases. As has been proven in the past, heat sinks are not created equal, and I have personally tested parts that are nearly identical on paper yet perform very differently in the real world. For me, innovation can never take a nap, as when that occurs, we will truly have market stagnation. Today, we're taking a look at Thermaltake's latest high-end heatsink offering, the FRIO. With the capability to swallow up over 220W of thermal power, this latest release sports five large heat pipes in a tower design. Dual 120mm fans are included, and it also has built in speed controlling dials. All in all, this looks to be a great package with huge potential. For you curious about socket support, don't worry, all current sockets are taken care of. I'd say it is time to tear the box open, strap it down to our test bed and see just how well it copes with our red hot i5-750. Closer Look. Once out of the well-packaged Styrofoam protector, the FRIO represents itself well. Far from gaudy as Thermaltake's products have the tendency to be, I find it well designed and tasteful. I also am very appreciative of the "compact" design. For such a large cooler, the company has built it with a small overall footprint which will make those of us that have tall memory modules happy when it comes time for installation. This is welcome news in my book as I have had a lot of trouble with many other new releases fitting inside our test PC, especially Noctua's NH-D14! The structure itself is comprised of tightly packed fins. Again, to me this is a bonus as it saves space as well as keeps things simple. The fans are also mounted in a shroud which will direct the airflow far more accurately than designs that simply clip the fans to the fins. Rubber mounts assure a tight fit and help isolate any noise due to vibration. The 8mm heat pipes are arranged in a staggered pattern and use the more conventional method of heat transfer by way of the CPU contact plate instead of direct die contact. The surface finish on the heat plate is exceptionally smooth, though, and should allow for ultimate in heat transfer. We can also see here another example of how Thermaltake kept everything compact as to minimize the overall height. This will help those of you who have tight height constraints, as the 165mm spec should work for the majority of current chassis on the market. All current sockets are covered as far as hardware is concerned. Bracketry for AMD's AM2/AM3 as well as Intel's S775, S1156 and S1336 are included. The three way Intel back plate is a nice design and does away with the need for a separate piece for each socket. To me this is not only a cost savings but also stops waste as most of us just do not need the ability for multiple socket installation anyways. Both fans are able to be controlled by small rheostats attached to each individual fan. With a quick twist you go from the silence of 1200RPM to the roar of the full tilt 2500RPM. There is a slight inconvenience factor in that you will need to remove the side panel to access these dials, but this will be of little concern to most as many will find the setting they prefer soon enough and not need constant access. Overall, Thermaltake seems to have done its homework on the FRIO, and it's good to see, as there's a lot of competition out there. With our look complete, we can now take a look at both installation and performance. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Installation and Testing][Top Ad] To assure that our results are as accurate as possible, all of our CPU cooler testing is performed under highly-controlled conditions. Our test chassis is kept in a near-steady 20Â°C ambient environment, with readings taken before and after testing with a standard room thermometer. After we boot up our machine, we allow Windows to settle itself down for 10 minutes to stabilize processes that might be running in the background. Once the PC is completely idle, we record the current CPU temperature as that in our results. BIOS settings are verified prior to each run, and to help with quick switching of our various profiles, we make use of the motherboard's ability to store multiple configurations. We primarily use two for our testing here - stock speed, of 2.67GHz, and also a maximum overclock, of 4.01GHz. Stock settings were achieved by using "Load Optimum Default", and storing those as our stock profile. The maximum overclock was obtained after extensive testing and tweaking to insure it was stable. The BCLK was raised to 191MHz. The CPU's vCore was raised to 1.400v, and the IMC voltage was raised to 1.30v. The RAM is run at 1.6V and does overclock with the CPU during overclocking testing. For our monitoring and temperature reporting, we use Everest Ultimate Edition 5, from Lavalys. It allows us to grab the results from each one of the cores, and the CPU has a whole, so we believe it to be indispensable to our toolkit. To help push our Intel Core i5 750 to its breaking-point, we use OCCT Linpack testing. The reason is simple: it utilizes LINPACK. After much testing with various "stress testers" in the past, we've found that running a multi-threaded tool that supports LINPACK, such as OCCT (and also LinX), pushes both AMD and Intel CPUs like no other. This results in higher temperatures than others (like Prime95) can muster, and also greater power consumption. Because our test machine is equipped with 4GB of RAM, we set OCCT to use 90% of the available memory, and then set the test to run 1 hour total. With the help of Everest, the CPU's various temperatures are recorded throughout all of the testing, and also for a minute after the test ends. The maximum recorded temperature found in the results file is labeled as "Max" in our results. Component Model Processor Intel Core i5-750 - Quad-Core, 2.66GHz Motherboard ASUS P7P55D Premium - P55-based Memory OCZ Reaper PC3-1333Mhz 2x2GB Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB Audio On-Board Audio Storage Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB Optical LG 20X DVD DL CPU Cooler CoolIT ECO A.L.C. Noctua NH-D14 Thermaltake FRIO Chassis Zalman GS1000 (with 2x 64 CFM 120mm Fans) Power Supply Corsair VX550 Et cetera Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit After selecting the appropriate brackets, it is a simple matter of four screws to secure said brackets to the heat sink base. Next, you install the neoprene washers and thread it through the motherboard mounting holes. Once that is done you then install the foam washers between the back plate and the motherboard. Finally the mounting nuts hold everything firmly together. I would have preferred thumbscrews instead of the included nuts which require a flat heat screw driver for proper tightening. I am very happy to stress the fact that I was able to mount both fans onto the FRIO even though we run very tall memory on our test platform. This is a great bonus as I have had significant clearance issues with quite a few current releases and it always bothers me that I feel that overall compatibility is sacrificed by far too many designers who are more focused on absolute performance. Space is also ample between the FRIO and the top slot of the test bed. Most motherboards come with the uppermost PCI-E slot at the top of the expansion area and this is another area where tight is not always right. Proper airflow is easily maintained and you won't have to worry that either your graphics card or your CPU will get cooked due to clearance issues. After the FRIO was installed and the test bed booted up, we benched these results: Thermaltake's results are impressive here, and are made even more so impressive since Noctua's CPU cooler retails for about $20 more. Where the FRIO does suffer is with noise at load. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Final Thoughts][Top Ad] After the dust settled, I must say that I was very impressed with Thermaltake's FRIO. For ~$59.99 USD, you get one hell of a performer that is capable of hanging with the best of the best in terms of currently available models across all manufacturers. I was nothing short of amazed at my stress-testing results, especially when you compare it to the massive Noctua NH-D14. For $20 less, you are only asked to sacrifice 4°C of cooling capacity. The overall package is also something to be praised. The simple back plate design and the inclusion of two-speed controllable fans makes this a very complete and well-thought-out design. Setup and installation is simple enough so that even the novice installer should have little issue in completing the installation. I cannot emphasize the huge benefit of the overall size of the FRIO as well. Coming in at 165mm H x 139mm W x 98mm/118mm D (depending on single/dual fan configuration) you are almost assured you will have the space to put this part on your board without worrying about interference. Performance seems to be of more importance than size for most people, so this is a very welcome...

Thermaltake FRIO Overclocking CPU Cooler

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