There’s an enormous amount of aftermarket coolers available to those wanting more performance or lower temperatures. The market’s currently dominated by tower coolers, and top coolers have fallen out of favor. Rightfully so? We find out.
Most of our heat sink round-ups involve tower-style, or cross-draft coolers. Rarely do we venture into down-draft designs because, well, there simply aren't as many of them out there. Of course, that didn't stop us from wondering if the more common cross-draft configurations offer some sort of practical advantage, or if down-draft arrangements can perform just as well.
The vendors, at least, tell us that tower-style coolers are the better choice for most scenarios, and that they’re the way to go for high-performance and gaming PCs. On the other hand, down-draft heat sink and fan combos are recommended in home theater PCs (HTPCs) and more compact desktops.
There are two reasons for this. First, down-draft coolers can be installed in slimmer cases; they can be built in such a way that they require less clearance above the CPU, if only because of the way their fans are positioned. Second, and also a result of fan positioning, surrounding components like memory, the chipset, and voltage regulation circuitry also receive some cooling (and not just the CPU). Down-draft coolers actually look fairly good on paper. We set out to see how they fare in practice.
We went ahead and asked all of the heat sink vendors for their best down-draft designs, ultimately leaving the submission choice up to the manufacturers. Only three companies ended up submitted samples, though the resulting field represents the current crop of top-down coolers pretty well, including a number of performance and price levels.
Our three down-draft coolers are the Enermax ETD-T60-VD, the Noctua NH-L12, and the Scythe SCKC-2100 (also sold as the Scythe Grand Kama Cross Rev. B). Prices run the gamut, from Scythe's $44 and Enermax's $55, all the way to Noctua's $72.
- Down-Draft Coolers For Compact Cases
- Enermax ETD-T60-VD: In The Box And Installation
- Noctua NH-L12: In The Box And Installation
- Scythe SCKC-2100: In The Box And Installation
- Benchmark System
- Enermax ETD-T60-VD: Cooling Performance And Noise
- Noctua NH-L12: Cooling Performance And Noise
- Scythe SCKC-2100: Cooling Performance And Noise
- Benchmark Overview
- A Down-Draft Cooler For Everyone

Don't forget to account for ambient noise, which is already often higher than the rated loudness of many coolers.
with the greatest 140mm desktop PC fan in existence, the Sanyo Denki 9LB1412M501: bit.ly/QOHXJA
Specs: 140x140 51mm 138CFM 2000rpm 39dBA 12V 0.5A
Essentially the most perfect balance of airflow to noise I have ever seen.
I can only imagine how well this fan can cool not only the CPU but virtually the entire upper half of the motherboard as well. Alas, my dream will remain a dream since although I know where to buy the fan, the min. order quantity is 10, pushing the total price to at least $500; way out of my reach.
But speaking of which, Tom's, why not compare motherboard voltage regulator and RAM module temps with these top-down coolers vs tower coolers? Myself and many overclockers will be extremely interested in these temps.
1) For most people (and more people now more than ever), the stock cooler is more than adequate. This is especially true on the Intel side, but AMD's stuff runs fine stock as well these days, so there is less need to OC, unless you are OCing just for the fun of doing it.
2) Tower coolers are cheaper. $20-30 gets you a rather effective cooler these days, most of which have replaceable fans if you happen to think the stock fan too loud. For those who have tons of money to sink on a sink, there are much prettier/effective options on the market in every price bracket.
3) Of the few people who need or want to OC their machines, pretty much all of them have a mid-tower which is more than capable of fitting a tower, so space is not a concern.
Now, with all that said, I can actually see a future where this changes: Parts are getting smaller and cooler all the time. There are already some awesome itx mobos out in the wild, and uATX mobos capable of high end xFire and SLi. If you look for them, there are some decent (though not amazing) lower profile PSUs on the market. Actuially, if you go down the list, the only part lagging behind has been the HDD, which is still relatively large, loud, hot, and slow. In the next year or so we will start to see 2TB SSDs (due to better firmwares, die shrinks, and tripple cell nand), which should still fit in the current 'laptop' style form factor. They do not need the same cooling as a HDD, and they take ~1/4th the space, so these small high-density drives should be able to breathe life into performance oriented mini boxes. At least for people like myself, where performance/storage/noise/size are all high priorities, this will make a huge difference, and may put myself in the market for one of these shorter coolers... though I could always leave the top off and have that tower sticking out like a giant tumor
I have one and have done this exact test in my own house.
so it comes down to the case itself and air-flow.
where's the CM GeminII..?
COOLER MASTER GeminII S524 120mm CPU Cooler
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103100
the end result is that the side blowing or out of the back standard coolers we see like the Hyper Evo and such are slightly better.
recirculating air inside the case (trying to cool off mobo components) really doesn't do to well.
just go 'water' or get the air out the case..
Cheers!
I would like to see cooling solutions tested in environments where they are actually used, cases that have a number of other components that warm up and parts that block and redirect airflow. I'm willing to bet that some of these results would be alot different.
I may have to get rid of this annoying, gurgling closed loop water cooler. Or maybe just go all in and go full water...
Unlike down-drafts which blow the air against the mo-bo and in effect against other components near the CPU (I think), tower coolers blow air parallel to the mo-bo (parallel things don't make contact).
I would like to see cooling solutions tested in environments where they are actually used, cases that have a number of other components that warm up and parts that block and redirect airflow. I'm willing to bet that some of these results would be alot different.
My question, too. Tower coolers can be used to direct air to exhaust fans at the back and top of a case. Down-draft recirculates the air in the case. That very fact is brought up in almost every graphics card review with axial vs centrifugal fans.
I'm not sure how much difference that makes, but I'd love to see some metrics.