Heatpipe technology has come a long way, The very first review I ever wrote was for a heatpipe based cooler and I remember thinking, "Man, this will never get off the ground" This was back in the day of big, solid copper heatsinks like the SLK 800 being the dominant force in air based cooling solutions. These days just about every high end heatsink is built around heatpipe technology.

The cooler on the test system today is the Spire VertiCool II. Spire has been in the cooling business for a long time, about 15 years to be exact. All of that experience should pay off as processors continue to get faster AND hotter.

Specifications:

The Verticool II

When I received this cooler I thought maybe they had sent the wrong one, I was expecting something much bigger after seeing the pictures on the Spire website. Don't get me wrong, it isn't a tiny cooler, just looks bigger in the pictures. The packaging is pretty basic with a few details about Spire as well as the Verticool itself.

Included in the box is the cooler itself, mounting hardware for both AMD and Intel platforms, a tube of white thermal grease and a sheet of instructions.

The instructions are pretty sparse, but installation is pretty straight forward, at least it was for an Intel based mobo so it shouldn't be to hard to figure out.

The Verticool II

As the name suggests, the Verticool II is a tower cooler, it has two heatpipes running through an all copper base and extending upwards through 45 aluminum fins. The 90mm fan runs at 2000 RPM and pushes 38.8CFM of air at a very quiet 19dBA.

As with most current coolers this one requires removing the motherboard to install. You may notice two different motherboards in this review, the first system windows refused to install, so I installed the Verticool II on my "daily driver"

For Intel systems you will be using the black X shaped rear plate on the back of the motherboard. The 4 holes on the arms line up with the holes on the motherboard, there is some two sided foam tape on the bracket to help hold it in place as well as offer some insulation between the bracket and the motherboard. (As you can see I made a slight modification to my motherboard tray)

Once the hold down plate is installed on the back of the motherboard all that is required to finish the install is a Philips head screw driver. The Verticool has little rubber retention rings to keep the screws and springs in place so you don't have to worry about trying to hold onto them with one hand and the screw driver with the other, the screws on the fan side are a little hard to get to unless you have a long screw driver, the handle gets in the way if you use a short one. One thing I really liked about this cooler is the way that it is designed it doesn't get in the way of anything. RAM slots are easily accessible as well as nothing blocking the NB.

Testing
The test system is as follows:
Intel P4 socket T 3.4GHz
Foxconn NF4SLI7AA-8EKRS2 mobo
1GB Kingston HyperX PC4300
HIS X800XL
Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 sound
1 X WD 80GB IDE HDD
2 x WD 74GB Raptors
Cooler Master Real Power 550W PSU
ASUS DVD burner
Lite-On DVD burner

For testing purposes I did things a little differently than just running a program like F@H or Prime95 for a while. I used Cusoft AVI to DVD converter and converted an 800MB .AVI to DVD format then burned it to DVD. The entire process took about 45 minutes to an hour each time and I feel it gives a more accurate example of some real world use. Testing was done after at least 24 hours of normal use in order for the thermal compound to set. AS 5 is the thermal compound of choice. Results will be compared to the Thermalright XP-90C as well as a Swiftech Apex water-cooling set up.

Stock

At Idle the Verticool and XP-90C are dead even with both showing only a couple of degrees higher then the Apex H20 kit. The main difference here was the amount of noise produced by each cooler. The Verticool and Swiftech Apex H20 are both virtually silent while the XP-90C was considerably louder. You can see at load is where you have to make a trade off, when it comes to air cooling the quest for silence usually means you give up a little cooling performance. This is the case here, the Verticool's 2000 RPM 19dBA fan doesn't push as much air as the louder, 5000 RPM fan on the XP-90C so it looses a few points in cooling performance, but for a processor that runs VERY hot as it is, 50c at full load is nothing to get alarmed about.

Overclocked

With the CPU Overclocked to 4.0GHZ we still see similar results, the silent Verticool is within a couple degrees both at idle and load of the Thermalright XP-90C Naturally The Swiftech Apex H20 set up comes out on top. Again, 54c looks like a lot on paper, but I've seen this same processor run as high as 70c on the Intel approved stock cooler.

Final Thoughts

I was quite happy with the performance of the Spire Verticool II, sure there are other coolers on the market that may cool a few degrees more but for the most part they do so at the cost of increased noise. I used a computer loaded with fans that sounded like a turbine and always swore the noise wasn't that big of a deal. That was until I built/tested a silent cooling set up. Once you go quiet you will never go back to a loud rig. For around $35-40 the Verticool II is priced right for someone looking to build a quiet PC but either cant afford, or just isn't ready to make the jump to water-cooling, or something even more advanced like phase change. Even in an Overclocked environment the Verticool II provides more than adequate cooling.

Installation on the P4 platform was a snap, and looks like it isn't much harder on the AMD platform. Throw in support for all of the current CPU's on the market with the more than adequate cooling and you have a win win situation. Silent cooling, nice performance at a nice price.

Pros: Silent, Ease of install, price, well designed and doesn't interfere with other components.

Cons: Wouldn't recommend for overclockers, cooling performance was acceptable while Overclocked but most enthusiasts will give up silence for better cooling.

Bottom Line: If you are looking for a silent air cooling solution there are only a few on the market that I personally recommend, the Verticool II has just been added to that list. There may be quieter coolers on the market, but they usually come at twice the price. A quick Google search returns prices as low as $34. For a silent cooler with more than adequate performance that's a hard price to beat.

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