This great looking northbridge cooler from Thermaltake promises to bring reliable and powerful cooling to motherboard northbridges. Featuring a blue LED fan, a heavy copper base, and two copper heatpipes for cooling, is this product a good buy or a bust?

In a day where a good motherboard can set you back $200 or more, it would be terrible if a failed northbridge cooler caused your motherboard to overheat and die. This cooler from Thermaltake is great if you want to be sure you have a good, stable cooler that won’t suddenly die. Overclockers will also love this cooler as it is definately a step up from a stock northbridge cooler and will therefore provide better cooling.  Not only that, but this cooler offers some functional bling. Its blue LED fan will bring a bit of flare to even the most boring of systems, assuming you have a window in your computer case to see it.

I’d like to thank Thermaltake USA for sending PC Fastlane this product to review. Thermaltake is well respected in the PC community for providing quality products, including computer cases and cooling devices.

To get things rolling, let’s take a look at the advertised specifications for this product on its infomation page at Thermaltake’s website.

Features:

• “Heatpipe technology provide efficient cooling.”
• “All copper structure provides effective heat conductivity and dissipation.”
• “Seamless soldering process provides best contact for heat transfer.”
• “A universal clip design fix all motherboard.”
• “Multi-direction installation:
  Rotatable clip can adjust to any direction for the best system air flow.”
• ” 40×40x10mm Silent LED fan, 19dBA.”

Specifications

Heatsink Dimension: 48×40×70 mm
Fan Dimension: 40×40×10 mm
Rated Voltage: 12V
Started Voltage: 7V
Rated Current: 0.1A
Power Input: 1.20W
Fan Speed: 4500±10% RPM
Max. Air Flow: 3.47 CFM
Max. Air Pressure: 1.61mmH2O
Noise: 19dBA
Life Expectation: 30,000 Hours
Connector: 3 Pin
Weight: 169 g

Based on  the pictures, one might  think this product is a CPU cooler, but it’s not! This is a northbridge chipset cooler geared towards hardcore computer enthusiasts. It is available for around $20 USD from various online stores.

On the front of the packaging you’ll find the product features as well as a few pictures of the cooler. On the back there are detailed specifications, details about the two possible installation options (more on that later), and a bunch of barcodes.

Is there a product that isn’t wrapped in a plastic shell? Unfortunately, the answer is no. The fortunate part about the Extreme Spirit’s II plastic shell packaging is that it’s easy to open. The entire plastic shell isn’t sealed, instead, it is only sealed at four different points and is as a result very easy to open. Absolutely no cutting, throwing, burning, or exploding is needed to get this baby out of its packaging. I  can see how difficult-to-open plastic packaging prevents theft, but too many manufacturers use it. A person can easily walk into any electronics store and find a $200 item packaged in this stuff, which makes sense because it prevents theft. But then right next to it he could probably find a $5 item wrapped in the same packaging! Thermaltake, in their infinate wisdom and knowledge, must have known no one in their right mind would steal a $20 northbridge cooler (imagine trying to sell one of these on  black market ) and so decided to give the consumer a break and provide easy to open packaging.

Along with the cooler came a manual with installation instructions, screws and various other doodads to install the cooler, and a bag of thermal grease. Everything you need to install and use the cooler comes with the cooler, though you may want to substitute the included thermal grease for some Article Silver.

From the moment I first layed  eyes upon this cooler, I could tell it was high quality.  In the picture you can see the transparent 40mm fan. Though it’s just a fan, its also a transparent fan, which doesn’t take away from the overall look of the cooler like a black fan would. The base of this baby is solid copper, which shows it is very high quality. Copper is one of the best metals for dissipating heat, but it is also expensive. Cheap coolers will often be made of aluminum or a combiniation of aluminum and copper, but this one is 100% pure copper, just like Grandma used to make. From the base of the cooler extends two copper pipes with numerous copper fins protruding from the sides. The combination of the fins, heat pipes, and heavy copper base makes for an excellent cooling experience. In all the pictures it looks like one of the copper pipe tops is bent or damaged, but it isn’t. All the pictures I’ve seen of this cooler on the Internet have the same copper pipe that looks damaged.

Aesthetically, this product is very pleasing. Its light copper color makes it look great and reflects some light, but at the same time isn’t too shiny. I saw no tarnishes on the cooler and because copper is a relatively neutral color, it will match any computer setup.

I decided to try out this nice little cooler on an older socket 370 flex-ATX motherboard. Unfortunately, there was no place to mount the cooler! The product description clearly states it supports all motherboards, but that is clearly not the case. I think the reason why the cooler wouldn’t work on this motherboard was because it was fairly old and is of the flex-ATX variety.  I think 99% of users will have no problem fitting this cooler on their motherboards, but I would check before buying this cooler just in case.

Luckily, I had another motherboard I could use for the cooler. To install it, I first had to pry off the old northbridge heatsink. It was secured with some kind of glue so it took quite a bit of effort to remove. After several minutes of pulling, twisting, and the help of a screwdriver, I freed the heatsink from the northbridge CPU. I also used som isopropyl alcohol to remove the old thermal grease from the heatsink.

Next, I attached to the heatsink to my motherboard according to the included manual. Overall, the quality of the manual was very high, offering very clear directions but at the same time being concise. Finally, I plugged the fan into a 3 pin connector on my motherboard. Besides the motherboard compatibility issue, this cooler was easy to install. It’s as simple as just taking off the old cooler and slapping the new one on.

Final Thoughts

At around $20 USD, this cooler is a good solution for anyone looking to replace a dead motherboard chipset fan, in need of more cooling for overclocking, or simply wants to add more bling to their computer. It is good looking and provides excellent cooling. The only drawback is there may a few compatibility issues with some motherboards, though this probably will only affect users of very old motherboards or those who use an uncommon motherboard form factor.

Rating

The Good

• Easy to open packaging.
• Heavy copper base, numerous copper fins, and heatpipes for efficient cooling.
• Great looking blue LEDs.
• Cheap (around $20 USD).
• Easy installation.
• Good manual.

The Bad

• May not work with some motherboards, especially older ones and others that use uncommon form factors.

A big thanks to Thermltake USA for making this review a reality! Thermaltake has been in the cooling industry for many years and the northbridge cooler I reviewed today is just one of their many quality products.