Cooler Xtreme : Coolers
: Cpu Cooler : Spire 5E32B3
Spire 5E32B3
Spire give their coolers the kinds
of names that Daleks give their children. Once you've wrapped your brain
around its title, though, their 5E32B3 is a worthy enough unit. It's got
an all-aluminium heat sink, lightly sculpted for better air flow, and a
good retention mechanism. The clip's a quite strong one-piece design, with
a neat folded-over end that makes a good pocket for a screwdriver. You're
not likely to stab your motherboard while installing this cooler.
On the down side, the 5E32B3's fan
is a low profile, low noise, low usefulness 4000RPM 60mm unit. If you want
a CPU cooler you can barely hear from outside the computer case then this
is the sort of fan you want on it, but you can do a lot better. Fortunately,
the fan's standard sized, so you can easily remove it, grab some longer
mounting screws, and install a not-much-louder full height fan. Or go all
the way and stick a seven watt monster on, if you like.
You can't expect
world-beating performance from an all-aluminium cooler with a small fan,
and the 5E32B3 doesn't surprise; it turned in a 0.73°C/W score. Which is
a long way from being rubbish, for a quiet cooler like this.
