Thermaltake Jing CPU Cooler Review

With cars, a frequent trade-off buyers must consider is performance versus mileage. All other things being equal, higher performance cars generally use more fuel than lower-performance cars. There are ways to work around this: for example, reducing a vehicle's weight will improve both performance and mileage. CPU coolers make similar trade-offs: better performance is often accompanied by more noise, and the workaround is to make the cooler larger, since more metal dissipates more heat with a slower, quieter airflow. Thermaltake's new Jing CPU cooler attempts to hit the sweet spot of the performance/noise compromise, and Benchmark Reviews pits it against a collection of high-end air coolers and water coolers to see how it compares.

Since all retail CPUs are boxed with perfectly good coolers (which are pretty quiet), the main reason to buy an aftermarket cooler is its performance when your processor is overclocked. (There might be some who buy coolers based on the aesthetics of their appearance through a windowed CPU case, but we'll assume they're in the minority.) But while performance is certainly the main criterion, other factors must be taken into consideration as well, such as noise, size, and price. The ideal cooler keeps your processor at or near ambient temperature, is silent, free, and unfortunately doesn't exist. Manufacturers vary the performance, noise, size, and cost factors of their products to address different segments of the market.

Thermaltake makes dozens of CPU coolers— there are thirteen separate models for Socket 1366 alone, of which the Jing is the most expensive at an MSRP of $69.99. Thermaltake bills the Jing as having "Optimized performance cooling and ultra-silent design", claims which I'll put to the test with an overclocked and overvolted Intel Core i7-950 CPU.

Manufacturer: Thermaltake, Inc.
Product Name: Jing
Model Number: CLP0574
Price As Tested:$64.99 at Newegg

Full Disclosure:The product sample used in this article has been provided by Thermaltake.

Thermaltake Jing Specifications

Closer Look: Thermaltake Jing

The Jing's box is pretty standard: a nice photo of the cooler on the front, technical specifications on the sides and back. The front of the box notes that the cooler is allegedly capable of dissipating up to 200 watts of heat. This sounds like a lot (and it is, really), but an overclocked Core i7-950 can easily pull this much power.

Inside the box are the cooler and its accessory pack. The latter is unusual in that it's a contoured foam box with each piece placed neatly in a labeled cutout, rather than simply a plastic bag full of loose parts. The plastic universal backplate which normally sits just under the lid of this box has been removed to show the other parts.

The cooler itself is a fairly common design: a stack of fins, pierced by heat pipes, with two fans in a push-pull arrangement. The fans themselves are an unusual open-frame design unique to this cooler. Each fan is rated at 42CFM.

The fans snap onto plastic frames which are themselves removable, but the clip mechanism won't work with standard 120mm fans because the rim of the plastic frame of most fans is too thick to fit under the snap. This could be corrected with a file or Dremel tool, of course, but does make replacing or upgrading the fans difficult. The fan mounting frames have vibration-damping elastomer pads for the fans to rest on.

The nickel-plated copper base is flat and has a mirror finish.

In the next section I'll take a closer look at the Jing and its mounting mechanism.

Thermaltake Jing Details

With its fans and fan brackets removed, we can see the 41 aluminum fins more clearly. Five heat pipes loop through the nickel-plated copper base and up either side of the heat sink. Although the design of the fins is slightly different, the overall appearance is very similar to Thermaltake's own Frio cooler.

The Jing's two 42CFM fans are configured in a push-pull arrangement. This design— a relatively narrow heat sink with fans on either side— is becoming more common. It's a good compromise between airflow, cooling, and something that will fit in the majority of computer cases.

The Jing's unusual open-frame fans are not PWM; they use standard 3-pin connectors, and each one has a spliced-on control knob that can be used to manually vary the speed of the fan between 800 and 1,300RPM. If you unplug the knob, the fans run at their minimum speed. Thermaltake doesn't supply a "Y" power cable, so you'll need two motherboard connectors (or a Molex to 3-pin adapter) to power both fans. This is the same mechanism used on the Thermaltake Frio cooler we reviewed previously.

The mounting system comprises a plastic "universal" backplate that supports Intel Sockets 775, 1155, 1156, and 1366 as well as AMD sockets AM2, AM2+, and AM3. Screws inserted through the back are secured by black plastic screw-down retainers (on the left in this image), which support the metal mounting brackets for the heat sink (on the right in this image).

Mounting brackets with captive, spring loaded screws attach to the heat sink base and secure the heat sink to the motherboard brackets.

Now that the heat sink's installed, it's time to test it.

Heatsink Test Methodology

Benchmark 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 heat sinks by replacing their included fan with a common unit which is then used for every CPU cooler tested. Many manufacturers include fans with their heat sink 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 heat sink 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 heat sink, 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 Thermaltake Jing 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 heat spreader with a thin nearly-transparent layer. The heat sink 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. AIDA64 Extreme Edition is utilized to create 100% CPU-core loads and measure each individual processor core temperature. 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 ADIA64 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

• Processor: Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601950, core voltage set to 1.35V
• Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth X58 Intel X58-Express chipset) with BIOS 0603, BCLK set to 175MHz for a processor speed of 4025MHz

Support Equipment

• AIDA64 Extreme Edition version 1.50.1200
• MG Chemicals Heat Transfer Compound 8610-60G
• Stock fan (for heat sinks without fans): Thermalright TR-FDB-12-1600 (63.7CFM advertised)
• High-speed fan: Delta AFC1212D (113CFM advertised)

All of the tests in this article have been conducted using vertical motherboard orientation, positioned upright in a traditional tower computer case. Air-cooled heat sinks are positioned so that heatpipe rods span horizontally, with the fan blowing air out the top of the chassis. The radiators of water coolers are mounted as per manufacturer instructions. In both cases, 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 AIDA64 system stability tests are started with Stress CPU and Stress FPU options selected. AIDA64 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 20 minutes for the heat sinks in this test; larger heat sinks typically take longer to stabilize.

The second test segment involves removing the stock cooling fan and replacing it with a high-output 120 mm Delta AFC1212D cooling fan, then running the same tests again.

Note: The CoolIt Vantage A.L.C. is designed to drive its own PWM-controlled fan directly, and an alarm will sound continuously if the fan is disconnected. Since I don't believe anyone would ever run the cooler this way, I left the fan connected to the cooler (with the cooler set to "Extreme" mode) for stock fan testing. For high speed fan testing, the Delta fan was connected directly to the power supply, and the alarm was ignored.

The Accuracy Myth

All 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 heat sinks, 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 Results

For this test, I used the following heat sinks in addition to the Thermaltake Jing:

• Thermalright Venomous X
• Cooler Master V6 GT
• ProlimaTech Super Mega
• Corsair Hydro Series H50
• Corsair Hydro Series H70
• CoolIt ECO A.L.C.
• CoolIt Vantage A.L.C.

For heat sinks without a stock fan (the ProlimaTech Super Mega and the Thermalright Venomous X), I used a Thermalright TR-FDB-12-1600 fan, which puts out 63.7CFM at 28dBa according to Thermalright. This mid-range fan provides good air flow and reasonable noise levels. For "apples to apples" testing, where each heat sink is tested with the same fan, I used a Delta AFC1212D. This high-performance PWM fan puts out 113CFM at a claimed 46.5dBa at full speed...which means that while it moves quite a bit of air, it's very loud.

The Intel Core i7-950 I used in this test runs much hotter than the Core i7-920 I've used previously. At 1.35 volts, with a BCLK of 175Mhz, the 4,025Mhz CPU pumped out enough heat to stress the very best heat sinks. AIDA64 would report throttling once any single core reached 100 degrees Celsius, so any throttling resulted in cancelling the test and recording a "FAIL". Although this overclocked and overvolted Core i7-950 represents an extreme, these are expensive, high-end heat sinks.

The chart below summarizes the results with the stock fans. The twin-fan units (the Cooler Master V6 GT and the Corsair H70) have a real advantage here, since their dual fans move more air than the stock single fan of any of the other units. While the Jing is also a dual-fan heat sink, its fans are obviously optimized for silence over performance. Even running at full speed, the Jing's fans are very quiet, and would probably be inaudible in most settings.

Stock Fan Tests

With its dual, high performance fans (according to Cooler Master, each fan is rated at 93CFM at full speed, for an aggregate airflow of over 180CFM) the Cooler Master V6 GT takes the lead here, keeping the blistering hot Core i7-950 over 12 degrees Celsius cooler than the Jing. The Cooler Master H70 also benefits from dual high-performance fans, but the Thermalright Venomous X turns in a surprisingly better performance than the ProlimaTech Super Mega, considering that both are using the same fan. In previous tests I've run, the Venomous X has always placed slightly behind the Megahalems, and while this is a slightly different heat sink (Super Mega rather than Megahalems), this result is still puzzling. Oh, well: different CPU, different "stock" fan, different motherboard, different stress test software, and perhaps more importantly, much higher CPU temperatures. The most interesting part of these results is the 5.8-degree "break" in temperatures between the CoolIt Vantage A.L.C. and the ProlimaTech Super Mega, which divides the test products into two distinct groups by performance.

Delta High Speed Fan Tests

As you'll know if you've read the previous sections, the Jing's unusual mounting system only works for its unique fans. Remove the stock fans and fan mounting frames, and you're left with no way to secure a fan to the bare heat sink. Indeed, the broad surface of the finned tower is obviously not shaped for a standard 120mm-square fan to fit to. I secured the Delta fan with shipping tape, but in the real world, you're going to be stuck with the fans it came with.

A few coolers swap places here, and there are a few more surprises. Even with the Delta fan, the Jing brings up the rear, and despite its thicker radiator, the Corsair H70 is very narrowly edged out by the CoolIt ECO A.L.C. Perhaps the thicker radiator requires multiple fans for best performance. We again see a substantial "break" (of 4.4 degrees) between the high-end air coolers and everything else. While all-in-one water cooling kits are making progress, Big Air still has a significant advantage.

CPU Cooler Final Thoughts

With its pale green accents and open-frame fans, the Jing presents a unique aesthetic, albeit one I don't think will do it any favors in the American market. The dangly fan controller knobs that I complained about in my review of the Thermaltake Frio make another appearance, and they're no less annoying here, dangling about the interior of your case until you stuff them under the heat sink or zip-tie them off somewhere. As long as Thermaltake was designing a unique fan for this cooler, it would have been nice if they could have integrated the fan controllers.

In previous reviews I've noted how rapidly the CPU cooler market was advancing, with new designs and new performance benchmarks appearing so frequently that it was hard to keep up. We seem to be approaching an asymptote, though: the size of air coolers is reaching the constraints imposed by standard computer cases, and performance is leveling off. Since any retail CPU is shipped with a perfectly good CPU cooler in the box, you might think that the only reason to purchase an aftermarket cooler is performance. While this is certainly the primary consideration, there are others, such as acoustics (how loud the cooler is) and aesthetics (for windowed cases). Also, bear in mind that not every cooler works in every situation: top-performing air coolers tend to be both large and expensive, and are overkill for all but the hottest, most overclocked systems. There's room in the market for many different types of coolers, and the best solution for you is probably not the best solution for me.

That said, there's no getting around the fact that the Thermaltake Jing placed at or one above the bottom in both of my tests, beaten by virtually every other cooler I tested. Now, you could reasonably argue that this cooler was never designed to handle the thermal loads I threw at it, and you'd probably be right. But there's the price: at an MSRP of $69.99, the Jing is the most expensive air cooler that Thermaltake makes, coming in at $5 more than the Frio, which (although it wasn't available for this test) would likely outperform it rather handily. At this price, its competition is stiff. At FrozenCPU, the top-performing Thermalright Venomous X and ProlimaTech Super Mega coolers (admittedly without fans) are several dollars less, and while the Jing's silence is impressive, if you're willing to trade off performance for silence in your CPU cooler, there are much cheaper ways to go.

Thermaltake Jing Conclusion

Please remember that these test results reflect our experience with each cooler on a specific motherboard, with a specific processor, BIOS revision, BCLK and voltage settings, and test programs. The results of this test cannot be directly compared to other tests since many factors will have changed.

The Thermaltake Jing was easy to install: its universal backplate handles any CPU socket made in the last few years, and its clearly labeled accessory pack makes poking through a pile of similar screws and fasteners, wondering if you have the right one, a thing of the past. Frankly this was the most impressive thing about the cooler, and I wish other vendors would emulate it.

At 920 grams, the Jing is more than double Intel's maximum recommended cooler weight of 450 grams. Still, it's lighter than coolers like the ProlimaTech Super Mega (945 grams without any fans). The quality of construction appears to be excellent, and the flat, mirror-finished base is something I'd like to see become more common on other coolers, although it apparently didn't help the performance much. I cannot understand the what rationale might be behind the fiddly fan controllers: would you really ever want to run the two fans at different speeds? A "Y" cable with a single controller would make more sense and reduce the clutter around the cooler once it's installed.

The Jing's overall performance, even with the Delta high-speed fan, was poor, and I'm not really sure why. The base appears to be flat (paste dispersal was even), and with five heat pipes, 41 fins, and a mirror-polished base, I expected better results. Of course, in any comparison test like this, someone has to finish last, but the Jing's results are still below what I'd expect.

Priced for $64.99 at Newegg, the Jing simply isn't a very good value given its observed performance. Despite its similarity to the Frio, which fared better in our tests, the Jing doesn't offer the cooling performance expected at this price level, and due to its design, replacing the fans won't be an option for most people...not that you should have to replace the fans on a cooler this expensive. Again, Thermaltake obviously didn't design the cooler to compete with the likes of the Super Mega or Venomous X, but given its price, it does so whether Thermaltake wants it to or not. If this cooler were $30 cheaper, I'd have a much higher opinion of it. But it's not, and you can do a lot better for the price.

Pros:

+ Very quiet, even with fans at full speed
+ Easy installation onto any motherboard
+ Unique color and appearance may appeal to some
+ Excellent organization of accessories

Cons:

- Poor performance
- High price pits it directly against the very best air coolers
- Fiddly, dangling fan controllers
- Cannot easily replace fans
- Color scheme

Ratings:

• Performance: 6.5
• Appearance: 7.5
• Construction: 9.0
• Functionality: 8.5
• Value: 6.0

Final Score: 7.5 out of 10.

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