Whilst in the process of moving to a new LGA775 test bed I was offered the chance to look at a new CPU Cooler, so naturally I said yes. Now this may not seem out of the ordinary until you see this cooler. It is without a doubt the largest cooler I have ever seen, it is made by a company known better for their excellent reputation as motherboard manufacturers and it supports all of the major new CPU socket formats as well as the previous generation P4's and K7's. Let's check out the .
Features
Universal - 4-in-1 cooler: Just want to be with you forever, no matter if you upgrade your CPU engine or platform!
Powerful - High performance heatsink, pure Copper base with Copper fins and 3 heatpipes
Expertise - Side airflow direction, the excellent "cold-in / hot-out" airflow management to stop air circulation
Upgradeable - Optional 2nd fan for extreme performance
Silent - Smart 3-in-1 fan: Matching any kind of gamer's demands
Stylish - Unique and fantastic outlook with UV LED lights make your PC attractive!
The packaging for the ASUS Star Ice Cooler shows off the Cooler with lots of clear plastic packaging allowing you to instantly see what you are getting. It looks like a 'jet' style cooler with its 'mutant Cooler Master Jet' looks, but further inspection also shows that the copper base has a triple heat pipe array and that a single standard fan (not a crossflow fan) are used. The base of the packaging holds all the extras for the ASUS Star Ice Cooler which are quite numerous.
We have three options for fan speed control (although only one can be used at a time), two of which are readily apparent from the photo's; A rear PCI slot dial and a 3.5" aluminum bay unit, again with a dial. The third option is included in one of the bags of extras and is a temperature probe. It's quite obvious just from looking at the extra's that ASUS have put a lot of thought into this cooler to make sure everything you could possibly need is there for you out of the box. We have frag tape for mounting the temperature probe, we have the dial controllers, we have a TIM (thermal insulating material), various screws and other mounting fixtures and of course the mounting brackets themselves.
Also included are a parts list leaflet (a must with the amount of parts here) and a small booklet which serves as an installation and usage manual. The manual could probably do with being a little larger, although the content is fine (I just have bad eyes and the small size of the text due to the size of the pages made reading a little difficult). Both the manual and the parts list contain multiple languages.
OK, let's finally move onto the cooler itself. As I mentioned before, this is one very big cooler, although it actually features only a single 80mm fan on the front. I say features only a single fan, but perhaps it would be better to say that only a single 80mm fan is mounted on the cooler, as the rear has holes for mounting a second 80mm cooling fan for a push-pull configuration. From the rear we can see the copper heatpipes extending up and into the multiple copper fins providing a lot of surface area for cooling. The copper part of the actual cooler appears to be square in nature so the circular nature of the surround in blue plastic would seem to be for aesthetic quality only.
Speaking of which, moving to the top shows off the blue UV plastic cover with the ASUS logo embedded into it. When powered up, two integrated LED's light this area, or rather the edges of this area so we get a rather nice glowing ASUS logo. In the pictures, the area looks to be bathed in light but this isn't the case in real life, as the light has a more subtle and edge enhancing aura.
The bottom plate of the cooler is flat to the touch and to the eye, but there are a few machining marks to be seen, and it might benefit from a bit of lapping.
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