Conroe heatsink group test

Thermaltake Big Typhoon

Price: £30.00 inc VAT
Supplier KustomPCs
Manufacturer ThermalTake

The Thermaltake Big Typhoon is as its name implies – big. The fan dictates its size - there is a massive 120mm beast attached to the top. Once again the heat sink is made of a copper base, which is connected to a large, finned, aluminium heat sink.

Unlike most of the other heat sinks, it uses six separate heat pipes instead of three pipes doubled over. However, because of the design, only three of these are aligned correctly (pointing vaguely upwards) when the unit is installed in a tower case.

Like the other, better, heat sinks these heat pipes thread into the copper base, before swinging up into the Aluminium fins.



Base: The Big Typhoon is designed to fit a number of different socket types, including LGA775, and Athlon 64. However, because it weighs 850g – almost as much as a bag of sugar, it needs to be bolted through the motherboard, and attached to a back plate.

Since this requires removing the motherboard, and a spanner isn’t supplied for the nuts, it’s not an easy job to install the behemoth in your system.

Noise: The Big Typhoon’s 120mm fan is impressively quiet, almost as quiet as the Freezer 7 Pro and slightly quieter than the Akasa AK-960. The fan itself uses a 3-pin connecter, as you would expect from a cooler that is designed to fit on all current socket types.

Because it’s a 120mm fan the blades don’t have to move as fast as they would in a 92mm fan to push the same amount of air. This means the fan doesn’t suffer from the characteristic whooshing that most of the other fans suffer from. It does however create a slight resonant throb, which is inaudible over the background hum of the graphics and case fans.

Performance: As you might assume from the design, the Big Typhoon performs almost identically to the Freezer 7 and Auras 775. At 19°C below the Intel CPU reference temperature, it’s a superb cooler, and is four degrees cooler than the next best performing cooler. It didn’t manage to keep the internal temperature of the case as low as either the Freezer 7 Pro or the Auras 775, but it still managed to keep the internals 4°C cooler than the Intel reference.

Conclusion: The Big Typhoon’s a very good cooler, but at the price it’s difficult to recommend when both the Auras and Freezer cost almost half the price and do a better job. It’s also a pain to fit into your case. What it does have in its favour is the oh-my-lord-what-the-hell-is-that factor, something it has in spades.

Score:

Value 2
Performance 4
Noise level 3
Assembly and mounting difficulty 2
Quality and aesthetic 3

Overall 3