Gelid Silent Spirit LGA 1366 CPU Cooler Review

[Apoptosis]

Gelid Silent Spirit LGA 1366 CPU Cooler Review

Gelid Solutions has designed the Silent Spirit, a top-flow CPU cooler, to be silent and to perform better than retail boxed CPU coolers. The open frame structure that is set to a unique orientation angle is said to be best for airflow. Read on to see if this cooler runs silent and cools as the corporate site says it does.

The latest trend in heatsink design has been to add more heatpipes, add more fins, and make everything wider and taller. GELID's Silent Spirit flips this concept on its side with a small heatsink with an unusual design and unique fin shape. With a 100mm fan spinning on average around 1600RPM, 46 max CFM, and only 370g of material, the Silent Spirit hopes to pack a lot of punch in a very light frame. It weighs less than half of the popular Thermalright Ultra 120, clears every motherboard I could mount it to, and is silent to boot.

Article Title: Gelid Silent Spirit LGA 1366 CPU Cooler Review
Article URL: http://legitreviews.com/article/893/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $29.75 on Google Products

[DX]

mmmmm on the mounting system, what if you have a back plate mounting system http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835233027 Not sure you could get it to work right but I'm betting you could. At least for Intel processors. Those push pins are just pure crap from the nation of crap. Being able to put the screws to the heat sink you can really put the pressure on.

[FeRaL]

Question about the heat pipes. I've never used a heat pipe heatsink and question the strength of them and the use of them as the only thing holding the heatsink up. How sturdy are they?

And, the dimples are just no brainers but genius at the same time. Kudos to Gelid.

[GI-JOE]

Question about the heat pipes. I've never used a heat pipe heatsink and question the strength of them and the use of them as the only thing holding the heatsink up. How sturdy are they?

And, the dimples are just no brainers but genius at the same time. Kudos to Gelid.

The heat pipes on mine are quite sturdy.

[Apoptosis]

Heat pipes are fairly strong. If you've ever run copper 1/4" piping to your refrigerator then you know first hand what a copper tube is capable of handling... With heatsinks having 4+ pipes they are stronger than one might think.

[martini161]

they are more than sturdy under normal conditions; IE anything they would under go during normal use. but if you try to bend them on purpose than they will bend fairly easily

[SAMSAMHA]

I HATE THE intel mounting mechanism. it's so easy to break the plastic tab. I think if manufactures wish to use it, they need to include extra mounting kit.

[FeRaL]

Heat pipes are fairly strong. If you've ever run copper 1/4" piping to your refrigerator then you know first hand what a copper tube is capable of handling... With heatsinks having 4+ pipes they are stronger than one might think.

Nice to hear. I remember when the first heat pipe coolers came out, the heat pipes were pretty flimsy. One could easily bend them and spring a leak.

Also, was 3.5 GHz the max overclock you could get with the heatsink, or was it just for review purposes?

[Gomeler]

Question about the heat pipes. I've never used a heat pipe heatsink and question the strength of them and the use of them as the only thing holding the heatsink up. How sturdy are they?

And, the dimples are just no brainers but genius at the same time. Kudos to Gelid.

They are quite sturdy, you will have to put a good bit of force into it if you want to bend them.

I HATE THE intel mounting mechanism. it's so easy to break the plastic tab. I think if manufactures wish to use it, they need to include extra mounting kit.

Agreed. I hate the push-pins but for a stock-mounting system they are as simple as it gets. Intel tried to make it idiot proof and they did a decent job.

Also, was 3.5 GHz the max overclock you could get with the heatsink, or was it just for review purposes?

3.5GHz is a "safe" overclock with my chip. It's a fricking dud regarding overclocking so I stuck with 3.5GHz which it actually does with 1.35v. Anything above ~3700MHz though is a struggle requiring insane voltages(1.55v+).

[AbyssNOLF]

With this HSF being aimed at those who prefer silent solutions, it seems like this review might make more mention of the noise level. Suggesting that it simply wasn't heard is only worthwhile if we have an idea of the ambient noise surrounding the test system. It's not necessary, perhaps, to have an accurate decibel rating of the fan, but I believe it necessary to give the reader a better idea of the volume based on comparisons and descriptions.

For instance, if you say you can't hear it while you're surrounded by other computers, that may not mean so much as far as silence is concerned, but if you can't hear it when you're in a place where the sound of a pin drop is loud, then that's really a quiet piece of equipment.

[Gomeler]

You raise a good point. However a huge problem with sound is that it is highly subjective unless calibrated instruments are used to measure the sound pressure in which case science trumps opinion. My idea of quiet probably differs greatly from your idea of quiet but I tried to address universal issues like reducing the number of fans needed(which is generally agreed to reduce noise) and in the introduction I mentioned the fan size, rotating speed, and resulting CFM. I unfortunately don't own a tool for measuring decibel ratings otherwise I'd use it in all my reviews so I'm more or less forced to dance around the subject. So in closing, since I'm stuck using statements like "it's too loud" or "it's very quiet", it's very hard for me to accurately quantify the volume and quality of the sound.

Just as a heads up, I rarely perform heatsink reviews and rarely use 3rd party heatsinks as I have no need for additional cooling. I was just in need of universal heatsink to use between LGA1366 and AM2+/AM3. My idea of a cooling solution involves compressors and condenser fan arrays that blow 400+CFM

[Skippman]

Nice review.

I wish we would see more inovaton in heat sync design other than "here there are 5 heat pipes instead of 4" or "they decided to put the fins .2 mm appart rather than .1". It seems all the current heat sync designs are becoming derrivitave. True there's only so many ways to "cut the cake" so to speak.

I don't know, having made the jump to water cooling this year I'm wondering what the next step is. Phase change while it works in theory isn't very practicle. Water cooling works effectivly but has large capital costs and requires a great deal of hardware. Other solutions like Liquid Nitrogen and Dry Ice are to extreme for everyday use.