Cooler Xtreme : Coolers
: Cpu Cooler : Power Cooler PCH075
Power Cooler PCH075
Well, there's a certain funkitude
to this thing, isn't there?
This Power Cooler novelty act has
a fairly normal overall design. Fan on top, heat sink underneath. But it's
got four unusual features.
First, its copper core. There's
a copper slug embedded in the middle of the heat sink, and it's just big
enough to pretty much match the die size of a Socket 370 or Socket A CPU.
The above picture also shows the
peculiar clip the PCH075 uses. It's a twist-lock design, but better than
Thermaltake's Golden Orb version.
You hook this cooler on as normal,
which is very easy when it's in its loosey-goosey unlocked position. Then
you turn a separate locking ring, which has a pair of finger-push tabs sticking
out of the sides. The ring's easy to turn, locks the cooler down properly,
and doesn't turn the heat sink significantly. The Thermaltake design locks
by turning the whole heat sink, grinding it down onto the processor.
Get a load of that heat sink.
The outer, gold-anodised piece looks heat-sinky, but it's really just an
air-channelling shroud, and it's a very solid press-fit onto the inner spiral
fins. It's pressed on hard enough that a couple of the inner fins are bent
and there are little tabs of aluminium swarf sticking out in a few places;
you are not going to pull this thing off again by hand.
What's the fourth unusual
feature? The fan.
Power Cooler use this "Turbo Fan"
on all of their current coolers. It's got two layers of separate offset
blades, and it looks sort of like what you'd get if you piled two low profile
60mm fans on top of each other, turning one so its blades lined up with
the gaps in the other one.
Whether this novel design delivers
much lower noise, or much higher air flow, I'm not sure. It's not very loud
and it moves a decent amount of air for its specs, but it's not a very high
power fan, and is obviously inferior to full-height 7000RPM units. But,
for the racket they make, you'd want them to be good air movers.
Compared with other fans with similar
dimensions and the same noise level, the Turbo Fan certainly seems to be
just as good, and may be better. It moves more air than you'd expect for
a fan of this thickness, because although it's got normal 60mm fan mounting
holes, the rotating part itself has a larger diameter than normal - more
like 70mm. There are curved bulges in the frame to accommodate the bigger
impeller.
All the flashy design in the world's
of little interest without decent performance, though, and the PCH075's
not an awfully effective cooler. It managed 0.68°C/W, which isn't disgraceful,
but isn't very exciting either.
Hey, it's easy to attach, it looks
like a battlemech's navel ornament, and it doesn't make much noise. Three
out of four ain't bad.
