Discussion
Here we’ll discuss various pros and cons about Prolimatechs’ Design as well as what can (if anything) be done to help alleviate any problems.
- Installation: Installation for this cooler was relatively easy: Pick your bracket, apply backplate and thermal paste etc. However, connecting the fan took me a couple minutes to figure out the brackets. Eventually I got them secure but those little brackets seem cheap and a “quick fix”. Don’t get me wrong, the fan is secure and I have no question whether it will move or jiggle loose. Prolimatech has also included a 2nd set of brackets if you wanted to connect a 2nd fan. Overall the mounting method is secure but time will tell if screws wiggle loose or fan brackets fail.
- Design: The overall Design here is pretty stock and standard: Block Radiator and fan. A couple points worry me though: The contact between the Heat Pipes and CPU is indirect (Meaning there is a block of metal (probably aluminum but definitely not copper)). While this doesn’t show a difference in performance in our test rig, there will be a difference on hotter CPUs. Also, as stated before, the Fan brackets seem flimsy. Time will tell. A great aspect of their design is that the fan doesn’t cover the first RAM slot. Some larger coolers render that last slot inaccessible.
- Performance:
- Test Rig:
- AMD LLano A8-3850 APU
- Asus F1A75m-pro Motherboard
- Coolermaster HAF922 Case (3x 200mm fans and 1x 120mm fan)
- 4gigs Kingston HyperX Ram
- Windows 7 Professional
- AIDA64 Extreme v2.00.1700
- Thermal Paste Used: Nano Aluminum Thermal Compound
To test the efficiency of this cooler, we used AIDA64 Extreme System Stability test. With room temperature ~68F our reporting software shows a max temperature of 26C (78.8F). With the CPU at 100%, the included fan runs surprisingly quiet. Keep in mind however that the Llano Series is not a hot CPU whatsoever. Still for a cooler aimed at the average user, I’d say it holds its ground.
