Earlier in the year we published a roundup of entry level coolers. Although these solutions were an improvement on the cooling system supplied by Intel with the Core i7-2600K, they nevertheless proved limited when it came to overclocking. What about the higher end solutions?
To get a clearer vision of what the available solutions can do, we chose to compare several different models. As we had to draw a line somewhere, we selected seven models with a weight over or equal to 1 Kg with the fan or fans supplied (we didn’t include heatsinks sold on their own):
- BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro C1
- Noctua NH-C14
- Noctua NH-D14
- NZXT HAVIK 140
- Scythe Mine 2
- Scythe Susanoo
- Thermalright Silver Arrow
To give us a vision of the mid-range, before we get round to a mid-range roundup, we also included the model down in the range from three of the high end solutions:
- BeQuiet Dark Rock Advanced
- Noctua NH-U12P SE2
- Thermalright Silver Archon
In total, then, we compared ten processor cooling systems!
