Keeping things cool: 4-way heatsink roundup Review - PAGE 3

Thermaltake Contac 29

We have had mixed impressions on Thermaltake's cooling products before so hopefully these two heatsinks will bring our faith for the company back up. We're not quite certain what the 29 stands for, but what we're sure of is that it ships in good looking, simple and, most importantly, solid packaging. The heatsink itself is yet another affordable aluminum tower, but this one has three large, 8mm direct touch heatpipes. The mounting system with just about everything out there from AMD's socket 754, 939 and AM to intel's LGA775, 1156 and 1366.

The Contac is yet another compact tower style heatsink, just as large as a 120mm fan, but thin enough not to infer with memory slots. Our previous experiences with Thermaltake heatsinks have consisted of a couple letdowns, but build quality on this one is excellent and it's obvious they payed attention to details. The fins are bent on both ends as to create a tunnel for air to travel and they also bundled the necessary hardware to mount a second fan.

The three direct touch heatpipes are better finished than Coolermaster's Vortex Plus and the gaps are also significantly smaller, although I'm still not convinced on the merits of this technology.

The accessory set includes everything you need and the mounting system is easy to use. Thermaltake uses four push-pins, each on their bracket which allows them to cover all three Intel sockets with a single set. It's simple and it works. The cooler's svelte profile does not block any memory slots.

Thermaltake Frio

The Frio is sort of a beefed up Contac 29. It's just a tad higher, but twice as wide and a couple centimeters longer. Besides its sheer dimensions, this one also comes with two fans, each controllable via a variable resistor knob. Thermaltake claims the cooler is "designed for overclocking" and while I don't doubt it, right about every heatsink at and above that price range are so it's a moot point. Anyway, the Frio's packaging does an excellent job at protecting it and happens to also look good. Processor support is slightly more limited than the Contac, with AMD's sockets 754 and 939 missing, but quite frankly I don't see that as a problem considering both of those are nearly extinct.

With the Frio, Thermaltake continues to impress with very good build quality. The cooler is unfortunately quite plastic-happy, although it does give it an interesting, unique look, especially with the red bars even though they serve no purpose other than spicing up the appearance. It's also the sole heatsink in this roundup to come with two fans. The base is flat, well finished and the five 8mm heatpipes are not direct touch, instead they are more traditionnally squeezed between two blocks of aluminum.