Coolers for Pentium 4 `2002 Q3
Thermaltake Dragon
I already said that Thermaltake coolers are most widespread in Russia. Both coolers that I took for tests were also made by that company. The first one is Thermaltake Dragon which will be covered below. The second one is Thermaltake Volcano 7+. The cooler (Volcano 7+) proved to be so attractive that deserved a separate detailed review. Here we are bringing in its specifications and test results only.
The cooler sells in a typical of Thermaltake transparent plastic package. The cooler comes dismantled:the radiator, the fan and the plastic pressure plate are all separated. Besides, the package has an adapter to plug the cooler directly to the power supply. It's a pity no other device for manual regulation of the fan's rotational speed was there in the package.
The cooler is very easy and fast to install: the radiator, the fan all are fastened by the pressure plate with two levers. In the installation the levers are resting on the small pads and anyway they need to be turned uniformly and precisely.
The cooler design is a clone of the Intel reference cooling system. But the clone is not absolutely identical - Thermaltake engineers modified the bending direction of all the fins into the reverse. The fin bends are impressive - each fin is smoothly bent in all three dimensions.
Why is that needed? No doubt the developers pursued a good goal in mind - to make fins fully matching the airflow direction. This could have resulted in the radiator maximum efficiency with a very quiet operation of the entire cooler. But in practice both goals have failed to be met. The cooler efficiency does not surpass essentially that for aluminum coolers, and noise is hard to stand. The maximum noise is produced just as air passes through the radiator fin and is not caused by the high-speed fan.
Additional noise may arise because of the loose connection between the fan and the radiator. Therefore, when inadequately fastened, the cooler may produce excessive vibrations.
the maximum rotational speed is 6000 rpm
The fan is placed into a steel housing badged with the Thermaltake logo. I plugged it separately - of course, the noise was there, but easier to put up with.
If you look at the radiator more closely, you will see that the base is of copper with the fins made of aluminum and simply painted to look as copper. That was found out by chance - I accidentally scratched one of the fins, the paint came off and I saw a silver-like gleam. I suspected it was a fake and scratched the central rod. And found it was made of copper. The Thermaltake's website says the base was made of copper, but nothing was mentioned of the fins.
By the way, the central rod is pressed into the radiator, and for better heat transmission from the rod to the fins some thermal conductive material was used. Such design is a clone of the reference cooler which has a copper core and aluminum fins.
As regards to the base, it is quite big and smooth. No deep traces of polishing is there, and it is too far from the mirror-like perfection.
The cooler has a number of flaws. The most critical is the high noise level. Besides, it is only the core that is made of copper, but the fins are of aluminum. As a result, the cooler showed poor efficiency. And the price of the cooler is twice as much of the aluminum cooler.
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