Date: November 17th, 2008
Article by: Joe Anderson (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Gelid
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PRODUCT PICTORIAL AND WALKTHROUGH
As you can see, the fin/fan assembly is canted at a slight angle, letting the user direct the airflow in a particular direction around the socket. The base is compact and there is ample room under the fins so that the cooler can be mounted in whichever orientation best suits the particular platform. (On an Intel board, anyway. AMD users will be more restricted by the OEM retention bracket.) The Intel pushpin retention mechanism comes pre-attached to the Silent Spirit, and in most cases this will mean that one won't have to remove the motherboard to install this cooler. We'll see how this goes later on.
There are also some aluminum fins atop the base that could aid in cooling although, if the heatpipes are doing their job properly, this shouldn't be necessary. The fantail is nicely sleeved in a black mesh material and terminates in a black, 4-pin PWM connector.
The Silent Spirit is relatively compact, with the fan is listed as 100.5mm on a side. The fan design is similar to some Arctic Cooling models we've seen before.
Even the rubber fan mounts are very similar to the Arctic Cooling solution. This should come as no surprise, considering at least one of the partners who incorporated Gelid was heavily involved with Arctic Cooling.
While there is nothing earth shattering about the design of the cooler itself, the aluminum fins have a distinctive texture…
…and an unusual configuration that meld into what Gelid calls “Unique Fin Architecture.” It certainly is unique, but will it perform? We'll see.
The AMD clips are easily installed in place of the Intel units, and the clips will interface with the OEM retention bracket. As you can see, the Silent Spirit comes with some of their GC-1 thermal compound. While this is a fine product (see the Tweaknews review of this product HERE ) we'll be removing it and using Arctic Silver 5 for consistency.
The base doesn't have the highly polished finish seen on some other brands, but it's dead flat and should provide good heat transfer. Let's get the Silent Spirit on the testbed and see how it performs.
