Thermalright sent over all three models in its True Spirit heat sink family, complete with 92, 120, and 140 mm fans. We dropped each one onto an FX-8350 processor to gauge its cooling performance and acoustic output. Which one takes the value win?
Meet Thermalright’s True Spirit Heat Sink Family
Thermalright’s coolers have a well-deserved reputation for excellent build quality, thermal performance, and quiet fans that come bundled with the company's heat sinks. Over time, we've seen Thermalright expanded its portfolio of enthusiast-oriented products to include entry-level and mid-range offerings as well. Its HR-02 Macho is regularly recommended on our forums.
Recently, the company sent over three of its slim tower-style CPU coolers in different sizes, accompanied by 92, 120, and 140 mm fans, to put through their paces in our lab. Why might you be interested in a cooler like this? The form factor facilitates good compatibility by not blocking memory slots, they're some of the best-performing heat sinks, and they can be made to operate quietly.
Really, this is the first time we've rounded up heat sinks from one vendor, comparing different sizes from the same line, rather than narrowing down one configuration from as many companies as possible. Thomas is going to continue with that more traditional approach for us, but the Tom's Hardware Germany team plans to fill out our CPU Cooling Charts with these vertical comparisons, too. For this first exploration, we're looking at Thermalright's True Spirit 140(BW), 120M(BW) and 90M.
Packaging and In The Box
The True Spirit 140(BW) comes in a blue-and-black package, while the 120M(BW) and 90M ship in yellow-and-black packaging. The heat sinks are protected by sponge foam, and the accessories are in their own small cardboard box next to the coolers.
The bundles for all three coolers are almost completely identical. There’s a universal back plate accommodating current AMD and Intel processor interfaces, a universal retention frame for the sink, and the hardware you need to secure the plate, frame, and cooler. If you've ever used Thermalright's Macho solutions, you'll already be familiar with the configuration process. Each cooler also includes a well-illustrated installation manual. What's more, Thermalright includes a small 2 g bag of its own “Chill Factor” thermal paste.
The only differences you'll notice between the coolers' accessories are related to fan mounting. Not only do the bundled fans sport dissimilar diameters (140, 120, and 92 mm), but the larger coolers include retention clips for two 140 or two 120 mm fans, whereas the smaller 90M only comes with clips for the included 92 mm fan.
Vibration isolation is a bit different too. Thermalright's 140(BW) employs two large rubber pads that are glued to the cooler itself, whereas the 120M(BW) and the 90M only get two thin rubber strips.







Not all sites and reviews used Delta temps.
Nice review but kind of renders it moot for comparison out of the Silverstone and THermalright Scope.
Also, please stick to the same units.
More comparisons would have been nice.
Other then that, those are some fantastic coolers, even though the thermal probe on FX-8350 under windows gives me flawed measurements in idle, under load it's quite good.
Diameter has a lot to do with it - it's more to do with tip velocity than actual RPM. Your fan was likely about 40-50mm.
I've got 40mm fans that are near silent at 3K RPM. You can get 40mm fans that do 13K.
Same old stuff; different day.
@SpadeM: Seems like I just did not RTFM close enough
@all: We just startet off with the new system for CPU cooler testing and had to start somewhere - there will be more results and coolers coming soon
Your very informative review in July compared 9 large coolers recommended the Noctua's NH-U14S. And I cannot tell if the "Smart Buy" recommendation here makes the Thermalright a better choice or not. Plus the top picks at Newegg are well known models from Cool Master, Zalmen, Noctua and Rosewell.
I'm really curious how these top models really stack up. Thanks
The fact that the little guy managed to (barely) handle the overclock was a bit surprising, but really cool to see. Thermalright makes good cooling solutions for its customers.
The noise levels seemed a bit inflated, but then I noticed that they said "distance: 30cm." Using the lazy-man's method of correcting the noise to a distance of 1m, I think that works out to mean we could shave off about 10db from the obtained results. (It's within the ball-park, at least. Using the numbers from another review, the Silverstone AR01 had a difference of 17db.)
The noise levels seemed a bit inflated, but then I noticed that they said "distance: 30cm."
Is seems like the bearing of the TR-TY147 is of a better quality compared to the TR-12025-BW and TR-9225-BW, whose bearings are a little more noisy. Anyway, they're still "okay" and you don't have to push the fans towards max rpm