Vortex Plus

Having a small form factor HTPC, I needed a heatsink/cooler that wasn't too tall and this seemed like a good match. I read some reports that the cooling wasn't as good as some other low profile heatsinks, however that was not the case. I have my fan speed set at 900RPMs and to only increase when the CPU temperatures go above 60C, however I have not had that happen yet. I haven't run any stress tests with Prime95, however I have done some pretty CPU-intensive operations such as transcoding a DVD to watch on my iPad and playing Half-Life 2 (on Linux, using Wine, which adds some additional processing overhead), and it hasn't ever gone over 50C. This is with an i7-2600K which is no puny processor. The fan is virtually silent at low RPMS and ideal for HTPC usage - as I mentioned, my temperatures have remained low with the fan at a low speed during intensive tasks. Watching a movie is even less CPU intensive and the fan remains at the lowest setting and CPU temps never go over 40C. Overall I'm very impressed with this cooler and is has exceeded my expectations. Some of the other reviews on this item are correct that it can be a pain to install if you're not patient. If you don't have an access panel on your case to get to the underside of the motherboard, you will be required to remove the motherboard to install the heatsink backplate. I didn't find this to be a problem; in fact I'd much rather have a backplate securing my heatsink as opposed to the original Intel pushpin design. Another quirk is that the metal portion of the heatsink is very close to my RAM and is mounted over the top. Perhaps with a larger motherboard this wouldn't be the case, but it a concern with my micro ATX board. I'm not sure how hot my RAM modules are getting because of this, however I haven't experienced any problems yet. Due to the mounting and the design the heatsink is directly above my RAM which means if I need to replace or upgrade RAM I will need to remove the heatsink to get access to the slots (and remove the motherboard to get the backplate off). If you have RAM modules that have large heatsinks that protrude from the top such as the G.Skill Ripjaws then you might have clearance issues. These are all necessary engineering tradeoffs that I can live with for fitting a decent cooler in a small form factor case.

OK the short review is a great success reducing my 100% CPU utilization temperature by approximately 30 degrees C. Due to the number of poor reviews I felt obligated to provide this review. CPU Configuration- Intel i5-2300 running at stock speeds and had the stock Intel provided cooler. Utilizing the stock cooler during high loads I will easily run at more than 80 degrees C. This being an older Sandybridge 95 W spec chip it doesn't surprise me things got hot. With the same processes running I now top out at approximately 53 C. A solid 27+ degree reduction. Also the idle temperature is greater than 5 degrees cooler. Installation was painless. With the varying reviews here as well as on Newegg regarding installation issues I was very careful and took my time. Before doing anything I couldn't reverse I temporarily positioned things to see how well it would fit. My motherboard and chassis did allow for adequate space so I suspect a tighter chassis would be much harder to manage. I turned the cooler into all four possible orientations until it worked best and I have access to everything. The plastic attach hardware for the heat sink mounts went on just fine. I did use a very fine layer of silicon lube to get them to slip into place easier but I am not sure it really made any difference. Again I was very careful and did not break any of the hardware. The design could easily have been accomplished with the correct screws, nuts and plastic washers to make it more robust but the included hardware did work fine. I did put a thin layer of the Arctic Silver 5 on the CPU and heat sink side due to the uneven surface of the heat sink. I wanted to make sure the gaps between the heat pipes and aluminum heat sink material were filled. Clearly with the success of the temperature drop it worked well. I suspect those not getting high quality temperature reductions are not applying enough thermal paste to fill the gaps. Yes, I would buy this product again.

I bought this to cool an AMD A10-5800K quad core/graphics APU. Because the space available in my case (Foxconn SFF R20-A1) was very limited due to where the CD/DVD drive is mounted, I was forced to find a heatsink that leaned toward the I/O panel. This one was just the right size, the COOLER MASTER GeminII was too tall, and the 120mm fan versions are too big. This one just barly fit! Pros: - Direct contact heatpipes cool more efficiently than non-direct. - Shape allows you to provide clearance on any side of the CPU. - The Supplied fan has 4 vibration reducing rubber pads in the corners you can pilfer when you replace the fan (see cons below). - There is enough cleance for normal height memory modules like Kingston Hyper X, Corsair XMS, and non-heatsink memory. Cons: - The retaining clip for FM2 socket is hard to keep together. It has two metal pieces held together with pressure and comes apart easily while trying to position. It is secure once fastened down though. The lever protrudes further out than the heatpipes do. It got in the way of wires that couldn't be moved. This required me to turn the clip around so that the lever was under the overhanging heatsink fins. This ment that I could not fasten it down using the lever. I had to press down firmly on the other end with my finger to clip it into place. This works fine for me. Your experience may differ. - The fan supplied is too loud and too big. I removed one star for this. I used a slim fan from the Scythe Suriken rev. B heatsink (I would have used that heatsink but it would not fit). It's far quieter and thin enough to fit under the lid of my case. Cooling performance is only slightly worse with the Scythe fan (1-2 deg. Celsius). but a good tradeoff for my use as an HTPC. The supplied clip is slightly bent to fit the larger fan but works fine. Other: - The fan retention clip will not work for a closed corner fan, it clips into the bottom hole on open corner fans only. There are no holes to screw the fan into place.

The stock cooler really was not doing the job cooling my FX 4100 chip. Temps up around 55 during transcoding are really too high. I had already tried to install a tall cooler with negative results. This one fits in the small case and cools the CPU. It was a bit of trouble to install. It uses a clip that clips to the standard AMD mount instead of replacing it with screws as some aftermarket coolers do. To make matters worse, its a two piece clip and while I was attempting to clip it down it kept coming apart. Due to the overhang of the large cooling fins you can't clearly see what you are doing. While installing,I ran out of cuss words for the guy who engineered the clip. A one piece clip would have saved a lot of trouble. But this is a good solution if you have heat problems. Just don't expect the installation to be easy.

CPU: i7-6700k Bottom line up front: plastic retainer pins break and overheat your CPU, avoid this product or use metal screws. I liked the look of this cooler and it served me well for about a week. But the thin plastic portion that pushes the cone-shaped plug into the motherboard screw hole is too thin and wore out. My CPU started hitting 90°C+ out of the blue. When I went to inspect the cause and lifted the case I could hear something rattle and fall to the bottom. Turns out the plastic retainers all broke and only the thermal grease and metal retainer bar were keeping the cooler just slightly connected to the CPU. In retrospect, I could have overtightened it, but I suspect that the tension on the retainers combined with the heat (78°C ~ 172°F under high load) weakened the integrity of the plastic. This wouldn't happen with a metal screw. I tightened with a small screw driver with one hand. I've built several computers and always tighten not-quite as much as I can with one hand. No problems. Because the system uses thin plastic push pins it likely requires far less tightening. However, this is not stated anywhere and the instructions simply say to tighten. So either take my review as advice if you decide to buy, use metal screws, go with the hyper 212, or spend a little more for the H-60 liquid cooling system (typically ~$50-60).

Background. I am a web designer (vs. a gamer) who runs several Office apps and Adobe Suite products at same time. I have a two-year old 1st generation I7 with a slim case (1386 socket) and over the last several weeks noticed the stock fan on my system was making allot of noise, constantly on "high", and after internet research determined others where having similar "noise" and "fail" issues with their stock fan on this model. I searched and this seemed to be the only "low price" item that would fit, and replacing a fan for me is not something I wanted to do, but had to. If you buy this product their are two things I think should be mentioned. The way it is designed it is good for a slim case but if their is anything else restricting within an inch this fan is virtually impossible to get into your system. I had to remove the power supply just to get two mounting screws tightened. Even still to tighten it was a pain because the design does not allow a screwdriver access to underneath the heat sink without some bending of the vents. I mention mounting screws and suggest you buy 4 hex head M3 screws instead of the push pins it comes with. While I state a screwdriver will bend the vents, it took me 2 minutes to take out the stock fan but the plastic push pins supplied are cheap, did not fit the M3 socket hole and after about an 1 1/2 hours of frustration ran out and bought screws. These plastic push pins, even if they worked would barely support the weight and just see them vibrating loose in time. After about 5 days installed the fan is running efficiently (per Speed Fan and Everest core temp is acceptable but on the high side which according to research is typical for an I7), the fan is a small hum no big improvement over original stock fan, but is operating correctly vs. the worn out stock fan "always on" Summary I just think this product is a result of cheap engineering (IE. the mounting system of the fan to the heat sink is two thin metal wires) and if I had not spent so much effort just to getting it in there would not buy this product again. It does the job but I would probably try a different product first as it is just awkward and better suited if you have the motherboard off the chassis vs. replacing inside. I am sorry but when you hold this up to the stock fan you can see the difference in material quality and the way this product is designed is an "in-chassis" nightmare installation

I scoured long and hard to find the right cooler that would fit my Thermaltake Armor A30. This one worked quite nicely (leaving about 10 mm to my PSU). For AM3, it's really tough getting the bracket on, but after an hour, I finally figured out you have to unscrew the AM3 mounting bracket on the mobo and bend it a bit to accomdate the cooler bracket. I also had to only latch half of the fan on at first. The instructions are a little murky, but it's nothing a little engineering mindset can't fix. The fan is pretty quiet, even when it hits 2700-2800 RPM under load. This performs better than a stock cooler (though, not that great in general, so only get it for HTPCs and small form factor cases). It normally hovers around 2k RPM form me and it's just as quiet as my mid-tower case with an Intel Core 2 Duo stock cooler.

excellent TDP for a peltier no problems with it at all other than the fan is rather sad and vibrates uh yeah vibrates its not balanced very well at all. As far as the shape of it the base is the perfect size and the heat sink fins that stick out can go against another metal surface to help dissipate more heat away from the peltier im using a 12710 for this and the heat sink dont get that hot really i was much surprised after buying 2 diffrent solid aluminium heat sinks that failed the TDP needed for the peltier to do the max cold it could do in fact they stayed over 110F but not this im glad i bought it it stays way cooler. It even worked well for a 12715 peltier but for some reason i cant get a good cold temp out of it the 12715 the 12710 is colder i dont get it but ok what ever. I was able to get -15c 5f at 14.5 volts from the 12710 and the 12715 dropped to 14c 57f at 14.5 volts

La verdad es que es un buen cooler. El nivel de ruido es casi nulo, la instalación algo complicada la verdad, pero lo interesante es el bajo nivel de ruido. Yo uso un procesador AMD FX-8300

seems to work well in i7 2600 processor, not over clocked but ran flat out for near four hours n no complaints. would recommend to a friend thanks

avec carte mère socket LGA 1151. température très stable même avec grande demande de processeur (intel core i5-8400). n'a jamais dépasser les 45°C. Seule chose à dire: Installation vraiment plus facile quand la carte mère n'est pas dans l'ordi.

absolutely brilliant.

works well with my AMD 8 core and runs silently and cool. Thx for the great CPU Cooler