| Cooler Master V6GT CPU Cooler |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Cooling | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by David Ramsey | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 07 July 2010 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cooler Master V6GT RR-V6GT-22PK-R1The progress made in the design and implementation of CPU coolers over the last few years has been little short of amazing. While both Intel and AMD provide perfectly adequate coolers with their boxed retail CPUs, enthusiasts will want to consider a third-party CPU cooler for their rigs from both performance and styling standpoints. Overclocking your CPU mandates something better than the stock cooler, and if you've a windowed case, looks don't hurt either. Cooler Master was founded to produce advanced cooling products, and in this review Benchmark Reviews looks at the latest in their line of "V" coolers, the Cooler Master V6GT RR-V6GT-22PK-R1.
Vendors of aftermarket CPU heatsinks face an uphill battle: most retail CPUs are delivered with a heatsink from the manufacturer, and any pre-built computer will of course have one, so the demand for an aftermarket unit is always going to be only a tiny fraction of the total computer market in terms of quantity. Aftermarket CPU coolers are the province of overclockers, and although performance is the primary consideration, other factors such as price, noise, and aesthetics can come into play as well. Cooler Master has a broad line of coolers ranging from stock-level replacement coolers to high-end enthusiast coolers; the V6GT represents the latest in their line of "V coolers" (which include the V8 and VTEC-enhanced V10) for the enthusiast market. About Cooler MasterCooler Master was founded with the mission of providing the industry's best thermal solutions. Since its establishment a decade ago, the company has remained faithful to this mission, emerging as a world leader in products and services for companies dealing with devices where heat issues must be resolved. In pursuing this mission, Cooler Master is absolutely committed to delivering solutions that precisely meet customer requirements for features, performance, and quality. Moreover, we strive to be a reliable long-term partner for our customers that they can truly depend on. Cooler Master aims to be the first and foremost name that comes to mind for companies around the world seeking thermal solutions, and seeks to build such a reputation through outstanding technology, sophisticated design, and superior service. Cooler Master's current business encompasses a comprehensive lineup of thermal solutions for a full range of applications. Our products range from heat sinks and fans to component housing, chassis, and ducting for computers, industrial machinery, telecommunications equipment, and many other devices. Features
Specifications
The specifications look good. Now let's take a closer look at the cooler... Closer Look: Cooler Master V6GTThe retail box is the first thing most people will see, and Cooler Master does their best to make sure you'll notice it:
Opening the Velcro-secured top flap of the box reveals the top of the cooler peeking through a clear plastic cover. I'm not sure what those things on either side of the cooler are supposed to be, but they look somehow impressive.
The Cooler Master RR-V6GT-22PK-R1 CPU cooler includes the mounting hardware for Intel Socket 775/1156/1366, and AMD Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3.
The cooler itself comprises 55 0.6mm-thick fins pierced by 6 heat pipes. Snap-on shrouds secure a 120x25mm fan on each side of the cooler, while a plastic plate on the top of the cooler contains an LED light strip whose color is controlled by pressing on the "Cooler Master" logo button on top of the unit. Both fans use four-pin PWM-controllable connectors, and Cooler Master supplies a "splice" cable that gangs both together so you can run both fans from your motherboard's CPU fan connector. A separate four-pin Molex connector provides power for the LED light strip at the top of the cooler. The fans are rated at 34-94 CFM per fan, which means the cooler can make use of over 180 CFM of air with both fans at full speed. The very observant might note that only the red connector of the splice cable provides the fan tachometer lead, which makes sense if you're plugging both fans into a single motherboard header. 
The snap-off shrouds that secure the fans make changing the fans, or removing them for cleaning, easy. I prefer this type of fan mounting to fiddly wire clips or push-through rubber pins. The fan sits neatly in the shroud, which has a relief opening for the cable. It's a little hard to see in this photo, but each shroud has a rubber pad near the corner to isolate the fan vibrations from the cooler body.
The fans are this cooler aren't lighted, but pressing the "Cooler Master" button (the company refers to this button as an "oil can") on the top of the V6GT will cycle a two-color LED under a light pipe between off, red, blue, and both (purple). The cooler will retain your last color choice between power cycles.
Join me in the next section as I continue examining this cooler. V6GT Heatsink DetailsThe base of the cooler is flat, and although it does not have a mirror finish, the surface texturing is too fine to be felt with a fingernail. The base and heat pipes are copper, but Cooler Master has plated these components with nickel to prevent corrosion, giving the RR-V6GT-22PK-R1 a nice shiny appearance.
Stripped of its fans and top plate, the Cooler Master V6GT seems to be a rather standard modern heat-pipe design. The fins are tilted at a slight 5 degree angle, which Cooler Master says improves cooling by allowing slightly more surface area in the same space and reducing turbulence in the airflow over the fins.
From the top, it's obvious that the heat pipes are not in the ordinary linear arrangement. Cooler Master claims that their "V" arrangement improves cooling ability by allowing the airflow to reach each heat pipe. Fans must blow into the open side of the V (the top of the photo below) for best performance. The "L"-shaped channel at the top of this photo is for the power wire for the LED strip on the top plate. 
Installing the Cooler Master V6GT on an Intel LGA1366 platform consists of three steps. First, the back plate: 
Next, the Intel-specific mounting brackets. These are adjustable to fit LGA775, LGA1156, and LGA1366 socket mounting holes: 
To install the cooler, you must remove the fans, since they block access to the mounting screws. A central mounting bracket clamps over the base of the cooler to the brackets on the motherboard, and is secured by a spring-loaded screw on each side. After these screws are tightened, you snap the fans and their shrouds back on.
So far, the Cooler Master V6GT looks pretty good. We'll see how it performs in the next section. Heatsink Test MethodologyBenchmark Reviews is obsessed with testing CPU coolers, as our Cooling Section has demonstrated over the past few years. We've solicited suggestions from the enthusiast community, and received guidance from some of the most technical overclockers on the planet. As a result, our testing methodology has changed with every new edition of our Best CPU Cooler Performance series. Because of this, each article is really its own stand-alone product, and cannot be fairly compared to the others. Benchmark Reviews continues to test CPU coolers using the stock included fan (whenever applicable), and then replace it with a high-output fan for re-testing. Manufacturers are not expected to enjoy this sort of comparison, since we level the playing field for all heatsinks by replacing their included fan with a common unit which is then used for every CPU cooler tested. Many manufacturers include fans with their heatsink products, but many 'stock' fans are high-RPM units that offer great airflow at the expense of obnoxiously loud noise levels, or, conversely, quiet fans that sacrifice performance for low noise. By using the same model of cooling fan throughout our heatsink tests, we can assure our results are comparable across the board. This is one of the more significant changes we have made to our test methodology, since many of the benchmark tests we have conducted in the past have compared the total package. Ultimately we're more interested in the discovering the best possible heatsink, and we believe that you'll feel the same way. For each test, ambient room temperature levels were maintained within one degree of fluctuation, and measured at static points beside the test equipment with a digital thermometer. The Cooler Master V6GT and the comparison coolers used a common Thermal Interface Material of our choosing (listed in the support equipment section below) for consistency. The processor received the same amount of thermal paste in every test, which covered the ICH with a thin nearly-transparent layer. The heatsink being tested was then laid down flat onto the CPU, and compressed to the motherboard using the supplied retaining mechanism. If the mounting mechanism used only two points of force, they were tightened in alternation; standard clip-style mounting with four securing points were compressed using the cross-over method. Once installed, the system was tested for a baseline reading prior to testing. At the start of each test, the ambient room temperature was measured to track any fluctuation throughout the testing period. Lavalys EVEREST Ultimate Edition was utilized to create 100% CPU-core loads and measure each individual processor core temperatures. It's important to note that software-based temperature reading reflects the thermal output as reported from the CPU to the BIOS. For this reason, it is critically important (for us) to use the exact same software and BIOS versions throughout the entire test cycle, or the results will be incomparable. All of the units compared in our results were tested on the same motherboard using the same BIOS and software, with only the CPU-cooler product changing in each test. These readings are neither absolute nor calibrated, since every BIOS is programmed differently. Nevertheless, all results are still comparable and relative to each products in our test bed (see The Accuracy Myth section below). Since our test processor reports core temperatures as a whole number and not in fractions, all test results utilize EVEREST to report averages (within the statistics panel), which gives us more precise readings. The ambient room temperature levels were all recorded and accurate to one-tenth of a degree Celsius at the time of data collection. When each cooler is tested, Benchmark Reviews makes certain to keep the hardware settings identical across the test platform. This enables us to clearly compare the performance of each product under identical conditions. Benchmark Reviews reports the thermal difference; for the purposes of this article, thermal difference (not the same as thermal delta) is calculated by subtracting the ambient room temperature from the recorded CPU temperature. Please keep in mind that that these test results are only valid within the context of this particular test: as the saying goes, your mileage may vary. Intel Test System
Support Equipment
All of the tests in this article have been conducted using vertical motherboard orientation, positioned upright in a traditional tower computer case. Heatsinks are positioned so that heatpipe rods span horizonally, with the fan blowing air out the top of the chassis. The heat sink fans are connected directly to the power supply (rather than motherboard headers) and run at full speed during the test. At the start of our test period, the test system is powered on and EVEREST system stability tests are started with Stress CPU and Stress FPU options selected. EVEREST loads each CPU core to 100% usage, which drives the temperature to its highest point. Finally, once temperatures have sustained a plateau (no observed change in average temperatures for 5 minutes), the ending ambient room temperature and individual CPU core levels are recorded thus completing the first benchmark segment. The time to reach stable temperatures varied between 10 and 30 minutes for the heat sinks in this test. The second test segment involves removing the stock cooling fan and replacing it with a high-output 120 mm Yate Loon D12SH-12 cooling fan, then running the same tests again. The Accuracy MythAll modern processors incorporate an internal thermal diode that can be read by the motherboards' BIOS. While this diode and the motherboard are not calibrated and therefore may not display the actual true temperature, the degree of accuracy is constant. This means that if the diode reports 40°C when it's actually 43°C, then it will also report 60°C when it's truly 63°C. Since the design goal of any thermal solution is to keep the CPU core within allowable temperatures, a processor's internal diode is the most valid means of comparison between different heatsinks, or thermal compounds. The diode and motherboard may be incorrect by a small margin in relation to an actual calibrated temperature sensor, but they will be consistent in their margin of error every time. Testing and ResultsI used the following heat sinks in this comparison: Prolimatech Megahalems, Scythe Mugen 2, Thermalright Venemous X, Titan Fenrir, Xigmatek Thor's Hammer, and of course the Cooler Master RR-V6GT-22PK-R1. Of the comparison coolers, the Megahalems, Venemous X, and Thor's Hammer did not come with a fan, and the Scythe SY1225SL 12LM-P 'Slip-Stream' fan, rated at 68CFM, was used for the "stock fan" testing. For these tests, I overvolted the Intel Core i7-920 processor to 1.375 volts, but left all other settings, including the clock speed, as stock. The charts below report the thermal difference (processor temperature vs. ambient temperature) as well as the difference in degrees Celcius from the Cooler Master V6GT, in order of performance, with the best results listed first (lower is better): Stock Fan Tests
The Cooler Master V6GT (with its fans on high) places first in this test, with the Prolimatech Megahalems, Thermalright Venemous X, and Scythe Mugen 2 clustered a few degrees higher. (It's interesting to note in this test that the Megahalems, despite depending on a single fan providing less than half the airflow of the V6GT's two fans, is only at a 1.2 degree disadvantage.) There's a larger 6-degree jump to the Xigmatek Thor's Hammer and the Titan Fenrir. The V6GT has a real advantage in the stock fans test since it's the only cooler here with two fans. If the Cooler Master specs for these fans are accurate, we're looking at the results of about 180CFM through the heat sink—remember that although these are PWM fans, for this test they're connected directly to the power supply, and so run at full speed. The noise produced by the V6GT fans at full speed is quite loud, but lower pitched and less annoying than the higher, "buzzy" noise of the Yate Loon fan used in the next test. Yate Loon High Speed Fan Tests
This test is the one that levels the playing field: by testing all coolers with the same fan, we can get a better idea of the relative performance of the coolers given the same airflow. The Prolimatech Megahalems proves again that it's one of the best air coolers you can buy, and the Cooler Master V6GT RR-V6GT-22PK-R1 drops from first place to second from the bottom, almost 5 degrees behind the Megahalems. There's just no substitute for a great mounting system and lots of metal...unless it's moving more air through the cooler. The V6GT's two fans are rated for an aggregate 180 cubic feet per minute of airflow, while the Yate Loon D12SH-12 fan is rated at 88CFM, which means that we've removed over half the airflow through the heat sink with this fan replacement. While upgrading the fans on a third party heatsink is the first thing many enthusiasts do, the fans provided with the V6GT provide top-tier performance. CPU Cooler Final ThoughtsPicking the right CPU cooler is rarely an easy choice, and Benchmark Reviews hopes we've made this process easier by providing information in this and other CPU cooler reviews. The market is changing rapidly enough that the top cooler of 2008 wouldn't be considered a serious contender in 2010; and manufacturers continue to asymptotically approach the theoretically ideal cooler than will bring your CPU down to ambient temperature. It's important to remember that there's a reason there are so many different coolers available: not every cooler works in every situation. The top-performing Prolimatech Megahalems is available at FrozenCPUfor $61.99, and adding one or two fans can easily kick the total price over $80.00. Also, the Megahalems is a very large heatsink that may not fit in your system...and frankly it's overkill for all but the hottest, highest-clocked processors. While low processor load temperatures are always good, reducing them another 5 degrees will make no difference to the stability or longivity of most systems (unless the load temperature is near the thermal limit of the CPU).
The dual-fan design of the Cooler Master V6GT is very similar to that of the Thermaltake Frio I reviewed recently, and I think it represents a growing trend in CPU cooler design. As I test more CPU coolers, I've noticed three things that seems to make the most difference in performance: the size of the cooler (i.e. the amount of metal and fins); the attachment mechanism (one reason the Megahalems performs so well is its incredibly robust mounting system, which ensures firm and even pressure across the processor's heat spreader), and the amount of air moving through the cooler. The Megahalems remains the best CPU air cooler I've tested for any given airflow, but it's a truism that moving a given amount of air with two fans will almost always be quieter than moving the same amount of air with a single fan. Shrinking the cooler core to allow room for dual fans results in a cooler that's quieter than a larger cooler with a single fan while providing equal or better performance in many cases. While many coolers can accept two fans, I think providing two fans in the box will become more common. One thing I didn't like about the Thermaltake Frio was that each fan had a special lead for an optional fan controller knob; and that these leads precluded the use of standard fan controllers, so that you either did without the separate knobs (in which case the fans ran at their minimum speed), or had to deal with two knobs-on-leads dangling inside your case. The Cooler Master RR-V6GT-22PK-R1 uses PWM (pulse width modulation) controllable fans with four-pin leads, and provides a splice cable so that both fans can be connected to a single motherboard fan header. Although I connected the fans directly to the computer's power supply for performance testing, I prefer to use PWM control in my day to day systems, keeping the computer quiet when I'm not gaming or running benchmarks. Of course you can always connect the V6GT's fans to a separate fan controller or directly to the power supply if you wish; it's nice to have these options. This gives you the maximum amount of versatility and is the best fan control solution for dual fans I've seen so far. Like the Prolimatech Megahalems, Thermalright Venomous X, and Scythe Mugen 2, the V6GT does without the trendy "exposed heat pipe" design, and perhaps the fact that so many of the top-performing coolers do without it says something about how effective it really is. My one reservation about this cooler is the price: although it's not available at retail as of the time of this writing, its suggested retail price of $69.99 places the Cooler Master V6GT is at the high end of CPU air cooler prices. While the Mugen 2 with its single stock fan can't quite match the V6GT's performance, it's better than the V6GT at any given airflow, and its much lower price (only $35 at NewEgg) leaves you plenty of leeway to add an extra fan. The $35 extra you'll spend on a Cooler Master RR-V6GT-22PK-R1 buys you an extra fan (and its performance/noise benefits), the nice fan mounts, and the glowing LED top plate. Note, though, that the Mugen 2 is also a much larger cooler (the heat sink core is about 50% thicker, front-to-back, than the V6GT core), and fitting it with two 120x25mm fans results in a cooler that's 150mm (6 inches) front-to-back, 0.8 inches more than the V6GT, which may be a problem inside some smaller mid-tower cases. Cooler Master V6GT ConclusionPlease remember that these test results reflect our experience with each cooler on a specific motherboard, with a specific processor, BIOS revision, and test programs. That said, the ranking produced by these tests is accurate and gives a good idea how the coolers will perform relative to one another on any given system. Obviously, your choice of fans can dramatically affect the performance of any air cooler, but the performance of the V6GT's included fans is excellent and I don't see any need to replace them. The cooler was fairly easy to install. Multi-piece adjustable mounting brackets make it less expensive for menufacturers to provide an all-in-one solution that will handle most systems without the need for accessory mounting kits, but they seem less robust to me. That said, the V6GT's system, once installed, was very firm and provided good clamping pressure. Having to snap the fans off to mount the cooler is a little fiddly, but you're not going to be mounting and unmounting it very often anyway. Perhaps co-incidentally, the V6GT's 165mm height exactly matches that of the Thermaltake Frio, so it will also be a tight fit in some narrower cases. Although Cooler Master does not specify the weight of the cooler, it's obviously far above Intel's recommended 450 grams, but then any high-end air cooler will be too. The metal backplate secures the cooler well, but I'd advise transporting a computer equipped with this cooler on its side if possible. The construction quality of the cooler is excellent, with perfectly-fitting fan guards and sleeved wiring on the splice cable. It would be nice to see a mirror-finished base on this level of cooler, although functionally I have to admit it would provide little if any benefit. Along with other manufacturers, Cooler Master seems to be mastering the art of making a cooler look good without going too far. It strikes a nice balance between functional and blingy: it's cool enough to justify a side-window case, and while the LED lighting can be turned off, even on it's not garish. The only aesthetic issue is how to handle the unsleeved cable and 4-pin Molex connector used to power the LED strip; perhaps replacing the connector with a 3-pin connector and using a spare fan header on the motherboard would make things easier. Functionally, the V6GT is excellent: its dual fans move enough air under PWM control to provide good performance without much noise, and provide exceptional performance at their highest settings. Overclocking enthusiasts may prefer manual fan control to the convenience of PWM-controlled fans, and the V6GT's standard fan headers make this easy to do. As of July 2010, the Cooler Master V6GT is sold at NewEgg for $69.99. The price of CPU coolers seems to be creeping up year to year; doubtless part of this is the market-mandated inclusion of multiple mounting kits. Still, while high, the price is similar to many other coolers at this level: the Prolimatech Megahalems is $62 at FrozenCPU, while the Thermalright Venomous X with a single 50CFM fan is $80 with the optional AMD AM2/AM2+/AM3 adding another $10. Although we could wish for it to be cheaper, the V6GT is a good value in today's market. If you're a hard-core air overclocker, you'll get better performance with a Prolimatech Megahalems, Scythe Venomous X, or similar cooler and a pair of high-speed fans— if you can live with a computer that sounds like an idling jet fighter. For anyone a notch or more down from this level, the Cooler Master RR-V6GT-22PK-R1 is an excellent solution. Pros:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
