Affordable heat pipe cooler arrives

WE HAD a chance to take a look at Asetek's VapoChill micro cooler in its early prototype phase and now we can tell you about the retail product.

It's very similar but still better than the prototype that we tried a few months back. The cheapest version will cost a very affordable €28 including VAT. You get a mounting mechanism for socket 939 or Pentiums socket 775 and even the mounting mechanism for Pentium 4 socket 478 can be bought.

Asetek VapoChill micro cooler on Epox Nforce 4 SLI for Intel motherboard

We tried this cooler with a very hot 3.8 Pentium 4 Socket 775 580 CPU and we have to admit that the cooler did a great job cooling this CPU. If you are brave enough to use Intel's stock CPUs you will easily get to 70+° centigrade and at some point our test machine was even crashing because the CPU got too hoot with the stock cooler. Once we moved to the Asetek cooler all the overheating problems disappeared.

The CPU worked at 32° Celsius after we booted the system. The cooler is very quiet and the CPU at 3.8GHz works at 33° Celsius averagely and you can barely hear the cooler. Once we started five to six applications and Counter Strike Source the temperature rose to a maximum 63° Celsius while you can tune it down to 55° to 57° Celsius if you tune the fan so it runs at its optimised speed.

Asetek VapoChill micro cooler at idle 33° Celsius at 4180MHz

After some time when you work with Word, a web browser and Winamp, the temperature drops to 35° Celsius with low noise settings. In games temperature rises to a maximum 61° Celsius but after gaming temperature goes faster to an idle 35° Celsius temperature. The cooler can cool a 3.8GHz Pentium 4 CPU to 4.180MHZ. When you use a browser, Word and Winamp the idle temperature stays at 39-44° Celsius while at full load machine works at 55-57° Celsius. The temperature is almost identical with the 3.8 speeds on a heavy load.

Asetek VapoChill micro cooler at 44° Celsius at 4180MHz

It's quiet enough and you get the bracket that can tune the cooler speed up and down and make your machine very quiet. It all depends which CPU you are using. Obviously in winter it will be much easier to cool your CPU than during the warm summer days. Unless of course you have air condition and you don't care about the season.

Asetek VapoChill micro three heatpipes in action

It's good value for money as it will cost from €24 for the cheapest to €40 something for the low noise cooler that we tested. It's cheaper than Zalman's 7700 cooler and it will fit on all the motherboards that we tried it on and won't be noisy. You won't regret getting one and as you see it can overclock from 3.8GHz to 4.2GHz with a click of a mouse.

Tested by Sanjin Rados and Fuad Abazovic µ