Thermalright IFX-14 – Possibly the best air cooler you can buy

I have had my quad core for about 2 years now and it has always seemed to run hot, (like if i leave my computer on and not the heater it would heat the room up by itself quite nicely). This is why I finally decided to do some thing about it, especially with the weather getting hotter, and so too my room. I looked at forums relating to this problem and eventually went with a cooler a friend recommended, the Thermalright IFX-14. He has one in his dual core machine and said it would perform well.

I ordered the monster and within a few weeks it arrived (Why is there always [ED]. a delay in stock) when i pulled it out of the box i was in amazed at the size of the cooler, at 146mm in length, 124mm in width, 161mm in height and 790g in weight it is huge. The cooler came with a back plate to support it on the motherboard, thermal paste, 2 fan brackets and all brackets to suit Intel LGA775,  AMD AM2 and socket 939. Installation was easy it required taking out the motherboard, removing the old cooler and thermal paste, reapplying thermal paste,  mounting the cooler using the brackets and screws provided and installing your 2 fans of choice. (For mine I choose 2 120mm Antec 3 speed fans).

Now to the difference it made. (Ambient temp was 25 deg C)

Idle Stock cooler – 44C

Idle Thermalright IFX-14 – 40C

For stress testing i used two test from Prime95 small FFT’s (this hammers the cache of your CPU creating maximum heat) and in place large FFT’s (this is a more realistic CPU load as it uses cache and RAM)

In place large FFT’s Stock cooler – 74C

In place large FFT’s Thermalright IFX-14 – 45C

Small FFT’s stock cooler – 90C (I stopped this test after 2 Min’s as the temp kept on going up and i thought it would melt)

Small FFT’s Thermalright IFX-14 – 50C (This i left for 10 Min’s and it didn’t change)

All in all the Thermalright IFX-14 in my opinion was a worth while investment as you can see from the information above it dropped the CPU temps by 40C in some cases, after running these tests i went on overclocking my q9300 which runs at 2.5 GHz stock to 3.2 GHz and the above temps for the Thermalright IFX-14 didn’t move. This cooler is reasonably pricey at around $170 for the cooler and 2 120mm fans but it performs, to add to its performance it is compatible with the new Core i7 cpu’s and motherboards. I am extremely happy with this cooler and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a cooler for socket LGA775 mother board.

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