Thermaltake ISGC-100 CPU Cooler Review - PAGE 2

The Thermaltake ISGC-100 is packaged in a black cardboard box. Along with a picture of it, there is a woman labeled as "Zoe, Goddess of Victory."

At the back, most of the space is used to explain Thermaltake's latest innovation in terms of cooling: the ISGC fan.

Here is that ISGC fan in all its glory. As one can see, the fan blades have a rather odd shape. First of all, they are much more inclined than on other standard fans. Furthermore, each of them has a small indent at its end. Once again, this allows for 15% more airflow while reducing the noise down 3%.

On one side of the heatsink, two heatpipes enter the fin array. These heatpipes also continue on the other side so it has twice the effect. The middle one is one-side only though. The fin array is secured there by three plastic caps at the ends of the heatpipes.

Perpendicular to the heatpipes is the cavity where the retention bracket for the AMD socket will be inserted. The base also has a few thick fins.

Pulling off the sticker on the base reveals a highly polished surface . One can see the reflection of the door that was behind it. On each sides, two threaded holes will allow the installation of the Socket 775 retention system.

Removing the fan is pretty easy compared to what I have experienced on some other heatsinks using the same type of system:

The sleeved wires of this fan lead to a 4-pin power connector so that means its speed can be controlled automatically by enabling such function in the BIOS.

Here are the accessories provided with the ISGC-100. First of all, there is the retention systems. Since the Intel socket uses nuts to tighten the heatsink to the motherboard, four plastic and four black foam washers are provided so that any potential damage done to the motherboard can be avoided. A small amount of thermal paste is also provided. Finally, there are installations instructions and a paper about the warranty policy. Lastly, this heatsink is part of the Key 3 Spirit concept, which states that performance, silent operation and thermal consciousness are part of the product. A sticker of it is provided.

Here is what the heatsink looks like once installed on a motherboard. As you can see, the heatpipes block the two closer DIMM slots, which is very inconvenient. Also, I just could not install it the other way around because they would interfere with the voltage regulators' heatsink. This is also the case on many other motherboards; the same problem arises on Gigabyte boards, and I am sure I could find many others. Anyway, the black pipe ends would also prevent tall memory to be installed in the first DIMM slot. If the retention bracket would have been installed parallel to the heatpipes instead of perpendicular, this problem would have been avoided.

Let's now head on to the testing phase. We'll see if at least this cooler can provide a decent performance.