Conclusion
THG has pulled all the stops to give you the latest in-depth look at the market for air coolers. No fewer than 55 products were subjected to the rigors of a comprehensive testing procedure with our CPU simulator.
There was a visible trend away from cheap, run-of-the-mill, aluminum coolers. Practically every manufacturer has at least one copper cooler or one composite cooler (copper in combination with aluminum) in its product range. Unfortunately, one principle still holds true for air coolers: in order to cool well at extreme clock speeds, they have to make a real racket and be on the heavy side.
We have to give it to the head of the class, the HHC-001 from CoolerMaster - its innovative heat pipe system gives it an unmistakable edge. Unfortunately, its noise level is extremely high compared to your standard, run-of-the-mill cooler. Even cooling behemoths like the nearly 800-gram Swiftech MC462 are no exception to the noise principle.
The PAL 8045 from Alpha is, however, a bright spot that is extremely silent, yet still powerful. The Foxconn is a real insider's tip for a quiet and very inexpensive everyday cooler. It is being marketed by American online retailers for less than two dollars. The P14 with the Verax fan offers disappointingly poor cooling capabilities. While the cooler rightfully claims to be one of the quietest products in the market, its cooling capacity is one of the lowest we tested.
All in all, the market is dominated by products that meet the demands of your average user.
AMD should answer the question of why its products don't come equipped with IHS right from the fab. A larger contact surface between the cooler and the CPU would make it significantly easier to design powerful coolers - Intel has already proven that it can be done.
For now, THG recommends ambitious users plagued by noise to use the admittedly pricey, but unbeatably quiet and powerful, water-cooling systems.
