Phanteks PH-TC90LS review

Phanteks PH-TC90LS review

Manufacturer: Phanteks
UK Price (as reviewed): £24.98 (inc VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): $29.99 (approx)

The last Phanteks cooler we looked at, the PH-TC14PE, picked up Approved awards on LGA1155 and AMD Socket AM3+ thanks to great looks, low noise and fantastic cooling. It announced it's first low profile cooler a couple of weeks ago and we've managed to obtain one of the first units to hit our shores. The PH-TC90LS is certainly as vertically challenged as they come at just 43mm tall with its 80mm fan attached.


This is a whole 10mm shorter than the Arctic Freezer 11 LP, which at the time we thought was pretty small. The 80mm fan is PWM-controlled and sits close to the heatsink, secured by a couple of fan clips. It looks extremely neat and feels very well made, but then it does cost £25, which is £7 more than the larger Arctic Freezer 11 LP.


There are no external heatpipes here, instead a single-piece contact plate and heatsink hides three 6mm heatpipes internally, helping to allow the PH-TC90LS to boast a 130W cooling capacity. Phanteks is keen to push lots of fancy technological terms with PH-TC90LS, including Cold Plasma Spraying Coating Technology. As far as we can fathom, this involved applying the various coatings to the heatsink at high speed, meaning the metal surface underneath is kept clean and oxidation-free. All we can say is that the paint finish is very nice.

At first glance, the combined contact plate and mounting plate looks pretty large - maybe too large to ensure full-compatibility on all motheboards, but Phanteks is keen to stress that it does meet the Intel recommended dimensions to avoid territory wars with capacitors and the like. There is certainly more room round the contact plate than the Arctic Freezer 11 LP.


The PH-TC90LS supports Intel LGA1155, LGA1156 and LGA2011 and mounting is done using four sprung screws that pass through the contact plate and into a mounting bracket that sits on the rear of the motherboard. Given how small the cooler is, you should be able to do this without removing your motherboard, so long as you case sports a CPU area cut-out.

Head over the page to see the results.

Specifications

• Compatibility Intel: LGA1155, LGA1156, LGA2011
  
• Weight 273g
  
• Size (mm) 95mm x 95mm x 43mm (W x D x H)
  
• Fan 1 x 80mm, (PWM controlled)
  
• Stated Noise 19-26dBA

*Edit - Phanteks has since advised that we managed to mount the fan incorrectly so we've just dropped the new results into the graph from re-testing. This didn't have a massive impact on noise, though, although it does now beat the Arctic Freezer 11 LP.*