Tuniq Tower 120 Cooler Review

INTRODUCTION


Does anyone actually remember back in the days when you could run a CPU without any cooling? If I recall correctly, the first 486SX PC I bought, an IBM PS1, did not have a fan on the CPU. I’m not even sure it had a heatsink although it probably had. For each new generation of CPU, the heat generated has gone up and the need for cooling has increased.

Today’s review looks at the Tower 120 cooler from Tuniq. I’m comparing it to the stock cooler of my AMD64 3200+.

TECH SPECS


The Tower 120 is a mighty beast. It is 15.5 cm high, and it needs at least a case with 19 cm height. Tuniq claims it is compatible with most cases and motherboards, and since it did fit in my smaller Antec LANBoy case I’m sure it is true. The cooler is pretty heavy at 798g (without the fan).

Inside the huge slab of metal (aluminium and copper) you’ll find a huge 120 mm 9-blade fan. With the cooler you get a fan controller that allows you to set the speed of the fan between 1000 RPM and 2000 RPM. The speed of the fan of course affects the noiselevel and while the fan is rated at 34DB at 200RPm it is rated at just 20DB at 1000 RMP.

With the fan you get a small syringe of high performance thermal grease (Tuniq TX1 Thermal Grease, thermal conductivity: >3.3W/m.K) as well as the pieces needed to attach the fan on various motherboard types including Intel and AMD motherboards.