Hardware Review
Spire VertiCool IV
There has been an constant need for better cooling solutions as CPUs become faster and faster. We've take a look at several coolers over the years and we've always been impressed with Spire's CPU cooler offerings. Tonight we will take a look at Spire's Verticool IV CPU cooler. We would also like to thank the Spire team for making this review possible.
Let's get right to it. The VertiCool IV carries a very massive heatsink. The heat sink for the cooler is made entirely of copper. For dissipating heat the VertiCool IV uses a 123mm fan as well as an optional fan controller to control the fan's operational speed.
Click the image to see it full view...
Now on to the installation… We will be using an EVGA 680i motherboard to test the coolers capabilities. Installation was pretty much straight forward and wit the manual, installation was easy enough to install it in about ten minutes. For the installation, we had to take out our 680i motherboard out of the case and place the 775 brackets supplied by Spire. We would've liked it even more if we didn't have to do the extra work of taking our test motherboard out. Once we had it nicely installed, we were ready for the performance test.
There are two things we take a hard look at when we're reviewing CPU coolers, noise level and cooling performance. We placed the VertiCool IV under normal CPU load as well as over clocked CPU speeds to see how well it handles heat from the CPU. For testing we will be using the following hardware.
| EVGA 680i Motherboard |
| Intel E6750 2.66GHz(Over clocked to 3.6GHz) |
| Crucial Ballistix 2x1GB PC2-6400 |
| 2x XFX 880GTS 320MB (SLI Mode) |
| 2x WD 80GB SATA - Raid 0 Configuration |
| 2x WD 250GB SATA |
| Creative X-Fi Soundcard |
Click the image to see it full view...
3D Mark 06 was used as our CPU load, running the benchmark application for about 15 minutes for each test. As you can tell from the charts above, the Verticool handled our E6750 very well. With temperatures just topping at just about thirty-six degrees, we can say that the VertiCool IV performs very well even at over clocked CPU speed. Ambient noise was pretty silent as well throughout our bench testing.
We've taken a look at many CPU coolers since our site have started reviewing hardware. We've been impressed with Spire's offering always. Not only their coolers are so effective, they're also almost dead silent on normal operations. The VertiCool IV is no different. It's near silent noise and effective cooling of our E6750 impressed us enough to give it a score of 8 out of 10 and our Unique Rig's recommendation.
Pros:
Excellent cooling performance
Very silent
Nice large heatsink
Fan is very easy to remove with the fan retainer
Cons:
You have to un-install your motherboard to install the cooler
Manufacturer Link:
