Cooling

Review: Cooler Master V6 GT

Cooler Master's V6 is named after the 'V' pattern of its six heat pipes, and follows on from the well-received V8 and V10 models. The arrangement is supposed to help spread the heat about better than other designs where the heat pipes are in a neat row, and Cooler Master has the thermal images to prove it. The V6 boasts of having over 200W of cooling power, which should be enough for even the most enthusiastic system builder. The automotive theme is carried over to the overall look and, like a modern car engine, all you get to look at are plastic shrouds. The set of densely-packed asymmetric aluminium fins sits in a fan sandwich of two 12cm PWN fans, all covered by a clip-on plastic covers. The copper pipes and heat spreader are nickel-plated. It'll work with all the latest processor standards: Intel LGA772, 1156 and 1366 as well as AMD's AM2, 2+ and 3. To fit it, you mount a backplate and a pair of brackets onto your board and then screw the cooler down onto this using a bar that passes over the top of the spreader. It's a little cumbersome and you'll need access to both sides of your board, but once the brackets are on its easy to take the cooler itself off and on again. There is an intriguing button on top and a 2-pin Molex connector, this turned out to be the LED light. The button cycles through off, red, blue and purple (red and blue together, naturally). It's bit of a Marmite feature. The two fans can certainly shift a lot of air (up to 93CFM to be exact). In fact we couldn't get the fan to shut up – for some reason, despite being PWM, our review sample appeared to run at nearly tilt all the time. The design looks purposeful and is a mix of thoughtful engineering and frippery. There's another version, lacking the 'GT' tag, that does away with the nickel-plating and the pretty but pointless LED lights. It performed as good as it looked. On our i7-930 test system, things were kept at a commendably cool at just 31.5 degrees at idle and an even more impressive 50 degrees at full power. This is as good as we've seen without liquid help. Titan's Fenrir EVO, a very capable tower cooler, lags a little at 32 and 51.25 degrees respectively. Given the relatively modest dimensions of the fin stack, it shows that having two fans certainly doesn't hurt. We liked:Cooler Master's V6 GT both looks good and performs well. We disliked:At £45, it's not cheap, and you have to be pretty certain you need this much oomph since you can buy a perfectly adequate tower cooler, such as the Gelid Solutions Tranquillo, for about £25, and the capable Titan Fenrir EVO for £30 or thereabouts. Running both fans on full revs is a bit noisy too, but this should only happen when you need the air pushed that fast, so its hard to complain too much. The individual fans are no noisier than the norm. Final word:For overclockers, the V6 GT is a good solid beast for when you don't want to go completely bonkers and fit the giant Noctua D14 or one of CoolIT's liquid-cooled systems. For more restrained use it's probably overkill, even if it does look rather swish.Related LinksRead more cooling reviewsTechRadar's Reviews GuaranteeRelated StoriesReview: Scythe Yasya SCYS-1000Review: Thermaltake Silent 1156Review: Gelid TranquilloReview: CoolIT Eco C240 A.L.C.Review: Titan Fenrir EVO

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