Spire Coolers
www.SpireCoolers.com 
Price: Around 40$


Spire Coolers has been one of our favorite suppliers for PC cooling accessories for the last few months, and today we are going to be taking a look at yet another one of their interesting CPU Coolers that not only performs great, but also looks great!

If you have not heard the name Spire before, their intro gives a good description of them as a company:

Founded in 1991, Spire is the premier brand for computer thermal solutions. In order to meet the needs of the global market, we have established the production facilities in China, our corporate office in the USA and overseas branches in The Netherlands, U.K., Germany, France, Taiwan, Japan and Brazil. All are strategically located to better work with the customers we serve.

I personally feel that they are one of the best companies for thermal solutions (CPU Coolers, Case Coolers, Fans, etc.) and they make some fantastic products.

So now that you know a little about the company lets take a look at the product, the SP601B3 VertiCool II. The VertiCool is a universal mount, horizontal fan CPU Cooler. The design is made so that it can be mounted on AMD and Intel Systems (Socket 754 / 940 / 775 / 939 ), plus from the spec sheet it even has the grunt to cool the latest AMD 64FX and Intel EE processors.

Here is what the VertiCool II comes along with:


Coming in one of Spire?s standard boxes (a nicely designed box that is just the right size for the cooler), the VertiCool II comes with everything you will need to get up and running. In the box you will find the VertiCool II, a tube of Thermal Compound, and Mounts for AMD and Intel Sockets.

The design of the VertiCool is simple yet effective. On the bottom is the copper plate that sits on top of the processor. This has two copper heat pipes that extend up into fins that run horizontally (parallel to the copper plate) (note it looks like four heat pipes are coming out, but the heat pipes are actually sandwiched in the copper plate so that they come out on either side). Finally, on the one side of the fins there is a 80mm fan that blows air through the fins. In my prior experiences with other CPU cooling systems, I have found these ?tower? coolers to work extremely well and be able to keep low temps with not a lot of noise. The specs on the 80mm fan lend me to believe the VertiCool will also be like this (25 CFM at 19 dBA), Good Performance, Low Noise.

To further make the design of the VertiCool unique, Spire has made the fan housing UV Reactive so that it will have a neat glow to it under UV case lights (although it would have been nice if the fan was an LED lit fan for those of us that do not have UV lights), plus on top of the fins there is a metallic blue plate which adds a bit of class to the cooler (since the top is usually what you will see if you have a case window). The side opposite the fan is also curved (the fins are curved) which in my mind finishes the coolers look and makes the cooler have a great appearance for those with case windows (me for one!).

Installing the VertiCool II on our LGA775 Processor turned out to be a bit tougher than some CPU Coolers, but overall not a bad experience at all. You do need to take out the mainboard to install the plate that the VertiCool II screws into on the back. Once the back plate is in place, simply grease up the CPU with the included thermal grease and screw in the VertiCool II onto the back plate. Also, make sure to have the arrows on the top of the VertiCool II pointing towards the back of your case as that is the way the air is flowing and you want the hot air being pushed out the back of your case.

Close up of mounting screw, notice the rubber ring to help keep the pressure on the CPU even:

Here you can see the comparison of (in order from left to right) the Stock Intel Fan, Diamond Cool, and the VertiCool II:

Now on to the part that most of you have probably been waiting for, testing the performance. First off I must say that we only have the capability to test on Intel Systems as we do not currently have any AMD systems that we use for our testing. That being said, there are some other sits such as MadShrimps that have good reviews on the VertiCool II on an AMD Platform. But, you can still get an idea of what this fan is capable of by seeing our results on an Intel System.

For testing, we tested on the same rig we used for the Diamond Cool review. We used an Intel LGA775 3.4Ghz w/HT Processor on a PCChips M957G main board along with 1gb of DDR333 memory, and nothing else installed on the main board. We had this setup on our bench out of a case to take the whole case out of the equation. The power supply and hard drive were moved away from the main board and processor to prevent those from interfering as far as temperature goes.

To apply a load to the system, we used Prime95. Unlike on the Diamond Cool review, we gave it 100% load from the start instead of stepping from 50% to 100% after 5 minutes. Starting the test, we let the temperature stabilize by letting the system run for 10 minutes without load. After 10 minutes, the temperature was taken (this is the Idle temp.). Next, we ran dual instances Prime95 to put 100% load on the processor. We took a temperature reading at 5 minutes and 10 minutes after the start of Prime95, finally we turned Prime95 off and took temperatures 2 minutes and 5 minutes after Prime95 was turned off. This may sound a bit complicated, but it will be easier to understand with the visual later on in the review.

First up was the Stock Intel CPU Cooler. After idling for about 10 minutes after startup, the temperature stabilized at 120F.

Prime95 was started to supply full load to the processor, and temperatures were taken after 5 minutes (164F) and 10 minutes (164F). Finally after a 2 minute cool down (both Prime instances stopped) 135F and after 5 minutes of cool down, 122F. Just as before (in the Diamond Cool review), the Intel CPU Cooler liked to fluctuate back and forth by about 3-4F when it reached its max temp. under full load.

Then we had the Diamond Cool. After idling for about 10 minutes after startup, the temperature stabilized at 115F.

Prime95 was started to supply full load to the processor, and temperatures were taken after 5 minutes (154F) and 10 minutes (155F). Finally after a 2 minute cool down (both Prime instances stopped) 118F and after 5 minutes of cool down, 116F. Just as before (in the Diamond Cool review), the Diamond Cool liked to stay fairly steady when it reached its max temp. under full load.

Finally, we had the VertiCool II. After idling for about 10 minutes after startup, the temperature stabilized at 110F.

Prime95 was started to supply full load to the processor, and temperatures were taken after 5 minutes (150F) and 10 minutes (150F). Finally after a 2 minute cool down (both Prime instances stopped) 120F and after 5 minutes of cool down, 112F. The VertiCool II was more like the Diamond Cool in that it did not fluctuate very much in temp. under full load. It was also noticeable that there was more cooling mass to the VertiCool II because not only were the temperatures a bit lower than the Diamond Cool, it also was much more stable in its heat up and cool down phases.

To get a good comparison of the temperatures taken at the different stages, here is a graph of the 3 CPU Coolers tested and their temperatures at the different points.

For this review we did not include any SpeedFan Graphs, but you can see the graphs for the Stock Intel and Diamond Cool on the Diamond Cool review page. The VertiCool II?s graph is almost identical to the Diamond Cool except it tops out at a lower temperature and barely fluctuates at all.

Overall I would say that the VertiCool II is a very good cooler for an Intel LGA775 CPU. As said earlier, we do not run AMD systems so I do not know first hand what kind of results you would get on an AMD system, but from the looks of other reviews, the VertiCool II on AMD is quite a good performing CPU Cooler as well. I feel that the construction and performance is great and I would have no problem spending the money to use this CPU Cooler in my case. It is not the absolute best on the market, but it is a lot better than many of the CPU Coolers out there and should serve most people very well.

Pros:

• Good Looks
• Good Performance
• Low Noise
• Spire Quality
   

Cons:

• Larger than many CPU Coolers
• Fan Could be lighted instead of just UV!

Thanks to Spire Coolers for the Review Sample!