thanks for the review, was just looking at a situation where top down coolers were the only option, so for me the timing was impeccable.

kinda wonder how it'd do in a case, with how the different fan orientations affecting airflow.

also: unique? nobody wants to talk about the cooler master v10, eh?

Thanks for the great review! And for throwing in the prolimatec vortex fans! Glad to hear they did so well, I've got a couple in a system now, but I haven't tried them on a cooler, definitely going to try that now. I'd also like to see it in different orientations, but I'm not too worried about it.

Wondered if this heatsink would work in the FT-02?

Don't see why not as the height should fit with 5mm to spare. Unless you have a really hot processor, you could experiment with removing some fans.

I'm thinking more about the pipes orientation, since there was something about this subject with some GPU coolers.

Two questions:

1. How would this work with the "vertical" part ducted to the exhaust 120mm case fan?
2. Doesn't the horizontal part disrupt the ideal airflow pattern (front to back) in a case (say... Solo)?

In other words - how about testing various schemes in an actual case?

Can't wait for a version with those pipes straightened out.

Yes, the most obvious question is to try this in a case, where the rear exhaust fan pulls air through the upright bank of fins. The bank of fins that is parallel to the motherboard could maybe have a fan, if needed, and it cold be sized as needed. Maybe this is why they didn't include any fans?

Does Genesis with two Antec TrueQuiet 140 at minimum stock speed (500 rpm) work better than Venomous X Silent edition (with its two stock fans that are FDB and run at 600 rpm)?

hmm... was thinking about it, and perhaps reversing the airflow would work better with this cooler.

rear exhaust becomes intake, blows through tower section, some gets sucked through downdraft section, front fans exhaust.

seems like it'd love being put in a lian li pc-a05n.

without question though, it'd take a fair bit of experimenting to find the optimal setup for this cooler in a case.

It looks like you used about 10x too much thermal paste there.

inside a tower it will be behind all the other coolers;
since the airflow on an open testbench is beneficiary for top-down CPU coolers; inside a case a tower column based heatsink design has the benefit from the front->back airflow path and will perform better than any comparable weight/material top-down heatsink.

common knowledge by now

For what it's worth, this just barely fits in my P183 on an Asus P8Z68-V. By barely I mean that the heatpipes on the top-down section are actually contacting the back of my optical drives, and the tower section is maybe a millimetre or two away from having issues with the side panel going on . Nice cooler though, running it with a pair of Yate Loon 120mm fans @ 1200rpm under load. Max temps are 58-60c on the cores, with ambient temp at ~20c & the i5-2500k at 1.30v @ 4.5ghz.

I think for the price it's not a logical choice for most folks. If I added the cost of fans to the cooler it would almost cost as much as my CPU did (ok which was pretty cheap but hey it's just a cooler)
If you look at the peformance of the best on the market they are pretty close peformance wise a few degrees here and there is really no compelling reason to lose sleep over that

I'm still of the view a budget cooler like the Hyper 212 plus (and other similar ones) with a replacement quieter fan is a slam dunk for most folks. Designs will be limited you can only oversize so much before you reach impractical levels.

Quick question:

What should a 120 exhaust fan speed be like to effectivelly exhaust the air out of a solo case (for example) if your cpu would be cooled by a prolima genesis with both 140 fans on???
It seems sensible to me that the 120 fan should spin significantly faster than the 140 ones to keep up with the flow. Even more so if the vertical 140 fan blowing through the genesis is tightly close to the case fan???

This kind of question is best answered experimentally -- you've got to do the trial & error... and let us know your findings.

Regarding your logic... it's plausible, but there's also the effect of heatsink impedance on the airflow of those 140s. And there's no hard & fast rule that dictates the CPU fan's airflow must match the exhaust fan... although we've long followed the guideline of trying to match in/out flows in the case as a whole.

I have a Prolimatech Genesis with 2x Prolimatech Vortex 140mm fans on the CPU (using an i7 3770K at stock), and another Vortex 140mm at the rear in a Fractal Design Define R4 case. Potentially you don't really need to run the case exhaust at all (though I wouldn't advise this), as the back facing CPU fan is already somewhat close to the back of the case. (I've had the system on for a short while with only CPU fans at 500rpm, temperatures stayed consistent with what I normally expect at these speeds).

Never the less, my system temperatures are perfectly fine running all fans at 500rpm (the lowest you can basically go). Right now I've got the front fan running at 500rpm, a side fan running at 500rpm, one of the CPU fans running at 600rpm, the other at 700rpm, and the rear exhaust at 500rpm. My CPU temperatures are a bit below 40 degrees at idle (although I do have a fair amount of stuff open). On load the highest I tend to get is 50 degrees. For contrast, with all fans at 1100rpm in a non quiet case with lots of holes in the top I got 30 degrees at idle.

It's worth noting however that in my scenario, I have a passively cooled RAID controller directly under the CPU heatsink, and below that is the back heat spreader of the massive ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU II graphics card. The flow of the air from the CPU fans greatly helps to cool the RAID card. As such, I run the CPU fans at a slightly higher speed than I might otherwise desire in order to cool the card.

For optimum cooling, it may be worth investing in a fan controller (I have the BitFenix Recon) which can dynamically adjust the speed of the fans depending on the temperature at certain points in the case (utilizing the special heat sensitive cables that may be included).

As I'm again looking for components for a new PC, I stumbled upon this beauty. Seems like a good compromise to me, cooling the mainboard, but at the same time having a front to back flow.

But a few questions arose:

* Your were testing Vortex RED fans. Prolimatech also sells Vortex blue fans. But I cannot find any difference in specs. Are these the same, but just another color+LED for the RED one?

* Do you still think, the Prolimatech fans are the best ones (most silent) for this cooler?

* Why are there still so many non PWM fans out? I personally think, that a CPU cooler fan actually absolutely should have some regulation, to get a result as quiet as possible. I know it can be added. But I still wonder why it's so seldom (at least seems to me like that, especially for the silent fans).

* According to your opinion, is this still the cooling solution, which yields to most silent result? Or are some water cooling methods quieter.
It's a bit strange. But e.g. in other reviews they tell, that e.g. a Corsair H100 in silent mode is e.g. quieter than a Noctua. And from a price POV it doesn't make any difference. So I would be interested, if such a solution would be as silent, or even quieter. For I would like the idea, not having much airflow obstruction inside the case, when there's not big cooler in the way.

Thanks for any comment.