The highly popular Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme will soon have a new heavyweight counterpart. Expreview have received notification that a copper version of the enthusiast CPU cooler will be available this month for a price of $100-110.
The heatsink is made entirely of copper and there are both advantages and disadvantages to this. A copper heatsink has much better thermal conductivity than an aluminum heatsink. However, it is also more expensive to produce and much heavier than an equally sized aluminum heatsink. For the latter two reasons, Thermalright is only producing 2,000 units, as the overall demand will likely be lower than the rest of Thermalright’s product line. If you want to purchase one of these coolers, you may need to get in fast.
While price may not be an obstacle for the air cooling enthusiast, the mass of this heatsink is a significant issue when transporting the computer around. Weighing in at in incredible 1.9 kg, compared to the 790 g of the original Extreme, the motherboard will be under substantial strain even with a backplate. Therefore, the cooler will be more suited to stationary PCs.
The copper Ultra-120 Extreme was originally on show during Computex 2008. The previously rumored 3 kg mass was fortunately confirmed incorrect by a Thermalright representative. The cooler supports all current Intel and AMD platforms, and has optional support for Core i7. The exact release date is not yet known.
