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Thermaltake Frio Heatsink Review

Author: Dennis Garcia

As we mentioned before the tower style heatink has quickly become the aftermarket cooling standard for the desktop and enthusiast PC.  The difficult thing is determining how one tower differs from another and if it would be a good fit for your system.

Heatsink installation went incredibly smooth, and was actually very simple.  The mounting clips screw directly into the heatsink and then use the primary mounting holes to hold it in place.  There is no mechanical buildup of mounting hardware and since its using all four corners you know it will be secure.  The backplate seems to play a muted role in the Frio installation since it doesn't appear to be reinforced at all.  In fact it's just a flat piece of metal that wraps around the socket plate.  Not a huge deal by any stretch, especially considering that the OEM heatsink only uses 4 plastic clips, and does just fine.

Overall performance was excellent and our heat tests showed that the Thermaltake Frio had plenty of heat capacity to spare given that the C/W numbers were almost identical between the tests.  Cooling performance can be enhanced by installing the included secondary cooling fan; in fact it is almost required when total processor output gets close to 200w.

Now for our list of good things and bad things 

Simple and effective mounting hardware
Excellent Cooling
Large 8mm Heatpipes
Decorative Covers
Rubber Mount Fans
Multi Processor Mounting System
Slick White Fan Centers
Ninjalane Color Style

Second fan required for high wattage overclocking
Fans not thermally adjusted (3pin header)
Fan speed dials require system access to change

We would like to thank Thermaltake for making this review possible.

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