AVOID -- Coolermaster Aero 7 -- AVOID

Hi,
I bought one of these snazzy looking coolers to overclock my 2500+ Barton.

When it arrived, I took one look at the box and found the product to be second hand! Even down to silicon grease (complete with fingerprints) on the underside. That a side, I thought, 'well if it works then whats a bit of grease and packaging'.

Well I powered it up, (luckily not on a cpu!) the fan was spinning at all. Powered it down. Noticed that the fan blade was caught up on the outer edge, proded it to reseat it and tried again. This time the fan started and came with free tractor sound effects! As you can imagine, I'm not terribly happy at the moment. Powered down and back up again, nothing, no life at all.

From then on it started and worked fan everytime I started it.

So I rang the suppplier (withheld due to this on going matter). I gave them the part number and my invoice number and before I got chance to tell them what the fault was, the assistant said 'Don't tell me it's set on fire?'.

To which my response was, 'no, it's 2nd hand, do these fans set on fire?'. He then back tracked, and said 'Uhhhh the motors burn out! Giving out smoke'. I asked why the product wasn't recalled and apprently, they only got the recall notice today (the day of me calling).

So my advice, is although it appears to be an excellent built/looking and performing HSF, reliablity is the suffering so avoid it. If you have one, look out for the smoke and it might be wise to run some software to alarm on fan speed.

Good luck!

Dave