It's no secret that water and phase change cooling are the best choices if you're a serious overclocker. At the same time, those solutions are considerably more expensive and complicated to setup than traditional air cooling.

Today, we'll be looking at Cooler Master's latest air cooler, the Vortex TX. For those of you familiar with Cooler Master's heatsink product line, the Vortex TX borrows on the best design principles of the Vortex Dream and Ultra Vortex. The heatsink is truly universal, covering both AMD and Intel's entire product line.

Socket Type	Socket A/370/462/478/754/939/940/LGA775
Heat Sink Dimension	88x88x35 mm
Heat Sink Material	100% Copper
Fan Dimension	92X92X25 mm
Fan Speed	1800 ~ 3200 R.P.M. (Control by PWM)
Noise Level	26~36 dB(A)
Weight	440 g (Without fan)
Thermal Resistance	0.29 ~ 0.40 C/W (w/Pentium 4 570J)

Unlike some of Cooler Master's recent heatpipe based coolers, the Vortex TX is considerably smaller and lighter than the likes of the Hyper 6 and Hyper 48. Given that it's still 100% copper, the Vortex TX is still a heavy cooler and requires its own special mounting tools for installation. While motherboard removal is required for almost all installation scenarios, the heatsink support backplate is universal and the Vortex TX supports every AMD and Intel CPU released in the past 3 years.

A circular 92mm fan is preinstalled on the Vortex TX and is rated between 26dBA to 36dBA depending on the CPU temperature. Under full load, the heatsink was quite audible, but is more of a loud whoosh rather than a high pitched whine. The pitch and volume is about on par with AMD's stock cooler under the same circumstances.

Looking at the base, we can see it's well polished, but not to a mirror shine. There are four holes in the base and this is for installing the required mounting parts needed depending on the CPU that is being used.

Cooler Master goes the more traditional route this time around by using fins soldered into the base rather than relying on any heatpipes. We didn't count them, but there are a load of copper fins extending from the center of the base in a circular pattern. One problem we had, and this probably has to do with the fact that Cooler Master uses a form fitted plastic package rather than a box, was that some of the fins were a little banged up from shipping. Nonetheless, there was no damage that would affect performance.

Installation Notes

Installation of the Vortex TX, regardless of the platform, is a bit tedious, but not terribly complicated. As mentioned earlier, you'll need to remove the motherboard for both AMD and Intel applications. To complicate matters, each platform requires completely different screws (included) so if you tend to misplace the packaging and parts after an installation, you may have problems porting the heatsink to a new setup. I did not find the instructions were the greatest, mostly because of the tiny images used for the documentation.

For Athlon 64 installations, you'll need to install the required mounting plate, which is also the same for the LGA775. You cannot use your motherboard's heatsink retention plate as the heatsink will not make proper contact with the CPU if you do, so you must use Cooler Master's. Once that is done, you run a couple screws through the board and tighten them with nuts (included). Afterwards, you can reinstall the motherboard into your case.

Performance

MSI 915P Neo2: Pentium 4 560, 2 x 512MB Corsair TWINX DDR2, ASUS Extreme X800XT, 120GB SATA Seagate, Lian Li V1000.

ASUS A8N-SLI: Athlon 64 3500+ (11x200: 2200MHz), 2 x 512MB Corsair TWINX DDR400, 2 x MSI NX6800GT, 120GB SATA Seagate, Lian Li V1000.

All tests were done with the V1000 Case opened and stock 120mm fans configured at full speed. The comparison coolers for both AMD and Intel will be the Cooler Master Hyper 48 with stock cooling. For AMD testing, we also added the Cooler Master Hyper 6 with dual Enermax 41cfm fans, Swiftech's MCX6400-V with a single Enermax fan, and AMD's stock cooler to the equation. For Intel, we've included the stock cooler in the mix. Arctic Silver 5 is the thermal compound used for all the coolers, and ambient room temperature was maintained at 23°C/74°F.

Prime95 was run for six hours, with Folding @ Home running in the background everyday for seven days to allow the thermal paste to even out. During the actual tests, we ran Prime95 run for 20 minutes, with Folding @ Home running in the background.

AMD Performance

AMD Coolers	Idle	Load
Vortex TX	40	48
Hyper 48 w/Stock	40	49
Hyper 6 w/Dual 80mm Enermax (High)	38	44
AMD Stock	43	52
Swiftech MCX6400-V w/Enermax	42	51

Intel Performance

Coolers	Idle	Load
Vortex TX	46	68
Hyper 48 w/Stock	46	68
Intel Stock	48	72

None of the coolers were able to catch up to the Hyper 6 in AMD testing, but by the same token, none were nearly as loud as the Hyper 6. The Vortex TX compares well against the Hyper 48, outperforms the stock and Swiftech coolers by a considerable margin. On the Intel side of things, we can see that the stock cooler is no where near the other two, which are pretty much dead even.

Final Words

Having gotten used to heatpipes for air cooling, I had some concerns of how the Vortex TX would compare against those coolers. Overall, the Vortex TX had a strong showing and managed to more or less tie the Hyper 48 but it couldn't hold a candle against the Hyper 6. Keep in mind that the Hyper 6 is quite a bit bigger, and uses two fans at high settings for maximum performance.

As with many of Cooler Master's recent coolers, I found the installation process to be a little more involved than I'm normally used to. While this isn't something I can really point out as a fault (it is a universal heatsink after all), it is an annoyance. However, two areas that they should improve on are the documentation (needs bigger pictures) and the packaging so that the fins don't get bent.

The Vortex TX, while much quieter than the Hyper 6, is not a silent cooling solution, but it will not be much noisier than AMD's stock cooler. AMD performance is decent, whereas over at Intel it ties our best Intel air cooler, but the performance isn't anything to write home about.

Pros: Good performer, universal installation, decent AMD performance.

Cons: Some elbow work needed for installation. Poor documentation and packaging. Intel performance is average.

Bottom Line: If you're going to be overclocking the Pentium 4 Prescott, we do suggest you consider water or phase change. For AMD owners, the Vortex TX is a suitable cooler under most circumstances.

If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.

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