Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme Copper Cooler

A CLOSER LOOK: THE PACKAGE & COOLER

As previously mentioned the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme Copper can only be a premium cooler, so we expect nothing but the best when it comes to packaging. Not only must it fully protect the expensive cooler, but it should leave the buyer with the feeling they purchased a quality product.

Anyone that has previously purchased a Thermalright product will be familiar with the usual product packaging, namely a brown cardboard box with the company logo printed on the lid. The TRUE Copper arrives in an equally sized box as its predecessor, but that is about where the similarities end.

In contrast to the original Ultra 120 Extreme’s packaging, this was an amazingly heavy, glossy box. It doesn’t show well in the photo but the box was given a pure, glossy white finish with the logo and cooler name professionally embossed on the lid.

Inside we find the cooler, miscellaneous reference sheets, and a few other items. All mounting hardware is located within the second box to prevent any possible damage during transit to your door. We will get to those in a moment.

Removing the cellular foam block from the box we found the cooler to be well cocooned within the foam. At first glance it might not appear to be a sufficient amount of foam, but very little is needed when considering the Thermalright box will ship inside a standard peanut filled postal mailer. All this foam block needs to do is prevent anything from shifting so nothing will be bent of damaged. While probably not necessary, Thermalright went a step further and wrapped the TRUE Copper in a thick plastic bag.

The contents include a professional looking Thermalright sticker, a crib sheet on the bag accessories, the bag of accessories, and lastly the installation guide.

The crib sheet will likely make more sense when considering each bag was given a unique number, and the crib sheet lists both contents and quantity of each individual bag by their designated number. It is a nice gesture, but we suspect most of the hardware is fairly self-evident. The tube of thermal compound is Thermalright's own Chill Factor 2 paste.

Unwrapped, the TRUE Copper proved to be a true pain to photograph with any sort of flash photography. Nonetheless the beauty, if not simple monstrosity, of this cooler still are still fairly self-evident. As far as the weight goes, just imagine holding onto a large brick!

Here we can see the secret sauce to the Ultra 120 Extreme’s success, namely the six/twelve heatpipe arrangement. The original Ultra 120 offers only a four/eight ratio of heatpipes. Densely packed fins make for plenty of surface area to dissipate heat, not to mention plenty of bling for your motherboard!

Those unfamiliar with the Ultra 120 design may be wondering how a fan mounts to this cooler due to the beveled, inward sloping curve, but suffice to say a 120mm fan can easily be mounted in place on either side (or both) of this cooler. We will mention bit more about this on the installation page.

The base of the cooler retains the same cooper patina as the rest of the cooler, including the same mirror-like finish. No worries here, the base is completely flat.

This is a quick reference shot of the mounting system. As with most coolers there is a notch inset into the base to lock the mounting bar over the base of the cooler. This does allow for mounting the cooler so it s oriented in almost any direction.

The only real drawback with this is it does not lock the cooler into position, allowing the cooler to rotate along this single axis after it is mounted. This honestly doesn’t matter much with fresh thermal compound, but after the thermal compound “cures” and sets most tend to harden slightly. After this point any twisting will break the set compound and cost one or two degrees of cooling efficiency.