Tom's Holiday Buyer's Guide 2008, Part 4

Vigor Gaming Monsoon III LT

http://www.vigorgaming.com/
$60
By: Chris Angelini

Intel’s Core i7 is still brand new, launched less than a month ago. Thus, it’s not surprising that the aftermarket for i7 cooling is still relatively thin. Even though our very own Thomas Soderstrom has Swiftech’s latest LGA-1366 water block in his lab for testing already, there doesn’t seem to be much available for sale just yet. And so we’re forced to go with air cooling in the quest to tune our little i7 920 on MSI’s X58 Eclipse. Not that air is a bad thing. In my Editor’s Corner: Overclocking Core i7 piece, I was able to get the 920 running stably at 3.8 GHz without much effort using Thermalright’s Ultra 120 Extreme.

Like the Extreme, Vigor Gaming’s Monsoon III LT boasts massive copper fins with heatpipes running through them. Unlike the Thermalright cooler, however, Vigor’s design employs two arrays of fins with a space in-between. Another difference is that Vigor uses four pipes, like Thermalright’s Ultra 120. The Extreme ups the number to six. But while our reference Ultra 120 Extreme might have an advantage in raw surface area, Vigor’s Monsoon kicks things up a notch with cooling. Two 120mm fans move a lot of air, quietly. And the shroud attaching the fans to the heatsink does a much better job keeping the fans, heatsink, and power cables attached than the Ultra 120 Extreme’s clip-on fan bracket. Finally, the Monsoon’s fans are of the four-pin variety, controlled by PWM signals from the motherboard.

Sure, $60 is a lot to pay for an air cooler. But if it lets you take your sub-$300 Core i7 920 up to 3.33 GHz without even having to adjust voltage, then it pays for itself as you save $700 from the cost of a 965 Extreme.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
  • snotling
    The model is way too skinny. she makes the hardware look cheap.
    Reply
  • snotling
    SnotlingThe model is way too skinny. she makes the hardware look cheap.I did notice there were two girls in there, but even if you add them up you still get too little meat to call that a woman.
    Reply
  • wicko
    Wow, I can't believe I'm reading complaints about these girls. They are skinny, but not anorexic, they look like they're in very good shape. My girlfriend is getting jealous :p
    Reply
  • blackened144
    I personally like the brunette for the articles.. Something about her reminds me of Christmas.. The blonde, not so much..
    Reply
  • LSoares1
    Wait, Did I miss something? What happened to part 2 and 3 of the 2008 Holiday Guide? All I see is part 1 and now this one....
    Reply
  • LSoares1
    nevermind - I see the links in this article, but I didn't notice them on the Guide section.
    Reply
  • antiacid
    SnotlingThe model is way too skinny. she makes the hardware look cheap.Were you looking for "fat girls gone wild" when you opened this review? Seriously, this had to be the dumbest complaint of the year.
    Reply
  • WINTERLORD
    Of course, you’ll void your warranty in the process,

    does anyone know if intel really can tell if your CPU has been just mildly overclocked? with no burn marks ect. i wonder about that cause id love to overclock it's fun to tinker with, but could not afford getting a bum chip, and it not be under warranty.
    Reply
  • Nice to see the update about the Seagate fix, finally.
    Reply
  • WINTERLORD
    That "the Gigabyte’s board with 2 graphics slots" is a sweet looking motherboard. and for anyone who just needs one graphics card slot i bet this be an alswome rig as well. a deffinit choice if i upgrade to the core 2 quad route. prolly go nehalem core i7 though
    Reply