Modern CPU's can pump out an enormous amount of heat, especially once overclocked, and the little tiny aluminium heatsink and fans (HSF) that come shipped with processors do an amazingly feeble job of keeping them cool.
The solution to this problem of course is to purchase an aftermarket HSF, of which there are literally dozens to choose from. For a good long while now, the best cooler available has been the Ultra Extreme 120 from Thermalright. Nothing available in NZ has been able to topple its dominance in terms of price/performance or sheer popularity. This, however, could be about to change.
Enter the Prolimatech Megahalems. Founded just last year, Prolimatech is a Taiwanese company dedicated soley to computer thermal solutions, and the Megahalems seems to be their only product in the market so far (though their website hints at upcoming VGA and RAM coolers). This product is already making waves with rave reviews around the globe, and has recently landed in New Zealand selling at Computer Lounge for $129 by itself or $139 with a 120mm fan.
Given the hype surrounding the Megahalems, I managed to get my grubby little mitts on one and have decided that the only way it can impress me is by doing a better job than our dear old friend, the Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120. First though, a quick look at the product.
The Cooler
The first thing you ought to notice about this thing is that it is fricking huge. Standing just under 16cm tall and weighing in at almost 800 grams it looks and feels the business. Six 6mm U-shapped copper heatpipes connect the fins to the base and the whole unit has a nice shiny chrome-like finish.
One other thing I noticed when I first picked the card up is that there are no sharp edges on the unit. Some other coolers, particularly the Thermalright ones, have very sharp-edged fins which are good at shredding your skin and scratching your PC components during installation. Also if you look on the top of the cooler you can see what looks like a outline the Autobot's logo etched into the top fin. Very cool, even if it is on the borderline of breaching copyright.
In the box
Inside the slighty-bland yet compact and solid retail box (complete with carry handle), you'll find:
- the cooler wrapped in bubble wrap,
- Intel socket 775 and 1366 mounting brackets,
- fan clips, thermal paste and install guide.
Worth mentioning here is the fact that all the pieces of the mounting brackets come in their own little seperate plastic ziplock bags. They have a very heavy duty feel with a grainy matte-black finish, so I imagine that if there were all shipped together in the same compartment they would end up pretty scratched, so it's nice to see a little thought put into this from the manufacturer.
So far so good. Time to get it set up.
Installation
The Megahalems definitely has one of the best mounting systems for any air cooler that I've used. When you attach the rear bracket to the underside of the motherboard, you have screws which hold it in place from the topside of the motherboard. This eliminates the need for the cement-like adhesive commonly used to hold this piece in place.
Next, as you can see in the pictures, there are two black crossbars which get screwed down either side of the CPU socket, then once you've put the cooler on the CPU itself there is a third black crossbar which goes through the middle of the cooler and gets screwed down to lock it all into place.
Lastly the fan needs to be clipped into place. Two simple metal clips slot into the side of the cooler and are pulled over the front of a 120mm fan to hold it in place.
As mentioned above, the components of the mounting system feel very heavy duty, and once everything is setup and screwed down, it is reassuringly sturdy. A good cooler for those who tend to remove their motherboard from their case by yanking on the HSF, like me.
All bodes well for the Megahalems so far, but what happens once we turn the heat up?
Performance
Today we'll be putting the Megahalems and the Thermalright up against each other in two high-performance rigs. "Load" results are the highest temperature reached by the CPU after 30 minutes of running Prime95 on all cores - this test was run three times on each cooler and the average taken from the lowest two results (to mitigate against any anomoalies like poor mounting on my behalf). I also swapped the coolers over and applied fresh thermal paste after every test to try and get as accurate a picture of performance as possible. "Idle" temps are taken after 10 minutes of the computer sitting in a BIOS screen doing nothing. Lastly, a 2200 RPM 120mm Yate Loon fan and Noctua NH-1 thermal paste were used for all testing and ambient room temperature was 21'C.
Test rig #1 - pablo's gaming rig
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo
Mobo: Asus P5Q Pro
RAM: G.Skill DDR2-1000 CL5
GPU: Sapphire HD 4770
PSU: Corsair HX620
Test rig #2 - an i7 beast courtesy of Computer Lounge
CPU: Intel Core i7 920
Mobo: EVGA X58 SLI LE
RAM: Corsair DDR3-1600 CL8
GPU: Asus 9600GT Black Pearl
PSU: Corsair HX620
Looking at the Core 2 Duo results, there's just not much in it at all, with the Megahalems just doing a wee bit better than the Thermalright. This is still a good sign though! Even just matching the performance of the Ultra Extreme is quite a feat. Let's see what the hotter i7 chips have in store for us...
Interestingly, the performance gap is much wider in the i7 rig. This may seem a little odd at first, but according to Prolimatech this cooler was designed primarily for the Core i7, and the machining of CPU block is designed to match the machining of the i7 CPU itself. In other words, it appears that the Megahalems fits the Core i7 better than the Core 2 Duo, and this rings true in the results.
Conclusion
It's been a long time coming, but I believe that we finally now have a replacement for the Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120 as the top-dog CPU air cooler, especially when it comes to cooling a Core i7 chip. To buy the Thermalright cooler with fan and 1366 fittings costs roughly $165 at the moment, while the Megahalems will only set you back $139.
For cooling a Core 2 Duo system - while the performance difference isn't as pronounced, there are still the other benefits such as the excellent mounting design (and the psuedo-Transformers logo!).
Definitely another pablo approved product.
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Our thanks to Computer Lounge for providing the review samples.
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. Seems to be working well so far.
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