Phanteks PH-TC90LS review

Performance Analysis

Being so small, it's not surprising that the PH-TC90LS didn't set the world alight when it came to cooling. It managed to knock 10°C off the temperature achieved by the reference cooler, and was only 2°C warmer than the larger Arctic Freezer 11 LP. This is of course in a standard tower case, so in a typical scenario for this type of cooler, you'd be looking at using it in a much smaller, potentially toastier case.


However it still managed to tame our overclocked Intel Core i7-2600K, which is no mean feat, although the fan was noticeable when we put the CPU under load - the Arctic Freezer 11 LP was certainly a quieter beast. We'd never recommend using a low-profile cooler like this in an LGA2011 system, and with far larger, more powerful coolers failing to deal with our LGA2011 test system, we've only tested LGA1155 despite the PH-TC90LS being compatible with LGA2011.


Conclusion

The PH-TC90LS wasn't quite as quiet as we'd hoped, although it was certainly quieter than the reference cooler and managed to record a delta T well below it. This is all you can ask for really as coolers like these are designed to do one thing - do a better job than the reference cooler, while taking up the same amount of space or less. Of course, at these dimensions, if you do have extra space, then a Arctic Freezer 11 LP or even a Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 would certainly do a better job and produce less noise. However, if you're limited to a cooler of 50mm in height or less, then the PH-TC90LS is definitely worth considering.