Hardware Review
Thermaltake TMG IA1 CPU Cooler
Cooling is a very crucial part in building a computer rig. With proper cooling you will ensure that your system will run smoothly. If you ever get crashes because of an overheating CPU, an ineffective cooler might be the culprit. Thermaltake was kind enough to send us a sample of their TMG IA1 cooler. We would like to thank the Thermaltake for making this review possible. So let's get this review started.
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The TMG-IA1 comes in a see through packaging. Looking at the cooler, the cooling fins are made of Aluminum while the base is made of copper. Weighing at just about 684g, it's actually pretty light. The cooler is compatible with Socket LGA775, AM2 as well as the older AMD 939 and 754 sockets. The TMG IA1 also comes with the Blue LED fan that lights up when operational. Looking at the structure more closely, the cooler sports fifty-one Aluminum fins to dissipate the heat away from the CPU. The contact point of the cooler and the CPU is made of copper which is pretty good heat conductor.
Click the image to see it full view...
Let's fire up our test system. We used an overclocked E6750 Core 2 Duo CPU at 3.8GHz. We also used two RAID-0 hard drive set-up to run our Operating System and our benchmark applications. We left our system on idle for about three hours and see if it was stable enough to test the cooler at 3.8GHz. We took temperature readings while the CPU was at default speed and with zero loads as well as when it was on full load. We also compared those temperatures with temperatures when our E6750 is overclocked on idle and at full load as well. For reference we used a stock Core 2 heat-sink and fan to compare our TMG IA1 cooler. The results were pretty much in favour of the TMG IA1 cooler. The temperature on the TMG IA1 was just about four degrees cooler than the stock cooler Intel includes with their CPUs. Please refer to the chart below to see our test result. The fan was also fairly quiet during our testing and didn't produced an abundance of sound.
We were overall very impressed with the cooling power of the TMG IA1. Pretty good cooling performance during our whole testing even when our E6750 was overclocked to 3.8GHz. It was also very silent during our testing sessions making it a more attractive replacement for any PC with stock cooling. The Blue LED was also a good addition. If you're looking to light up your case's interiors the LED should add a nice light effects for your case. It's cooling performance is enough for us to give a score of 9 out 10 with our Unique Rigs recommendation. Check Thermaltake's website for more information.
Pros:
Very good cooling
Silent fan
LED light
Copper based heatsink
Cons:
Not Socket F compatible
Manufacturer Link:
