MACS Monsoon II Lite Intel Active TEC CPU Cooling System

The Monsoon II Gets A Lower Price Point

It has been nearly six months since Legit Reviews has done a review for the guys over at Vigor Gaming and when they contacted us wanting a review of a new Lite version of the MACS Monsoon II cooler we were happy to help them out. The company in China that makes the MACS Monsoon II is now also making the same exact cooler under other companies names, so starting last month there is a price war and battle going in the market of TEC Coolers. While this is unfortunate for companies like Vigor Gaming, consumers stand to win as prices must be lowered to win your business. Vigor Gaming did just that and has released a new version of this cooler that cuts off the unnecessary fat and by doing so reduces the price by 25% without impacting the cooling performance one bit.

If you read our review of the original Monsoon II you will remember that the Monsoon II was a bit tricky to install and came with a system the control interface system that had to be installed in a 5.25″ bay in the case. These were areas we were not impressed with and when we learned that Vigor Gaming did away with the use of a the 5.25″ bay system and improved the mounting system and nothing more were were looking forward to seeing the new design.

The Monsoon II one of the largest heat sinks that we have ever used and believe it or not it tips the scales at 839.15 grams or 1.85 pounds for all those die hard folks in America. The cooler dimensions are 139.95mm(L) x 94.99mm (W) x 160.02mm (H) making the Monsoon II the by far the heaviest and tallest cooler that we have reviewed in recent times. The Monsoon II is cooled by a seven blade 92mm fan that puts out an unknown amount of air, but since it tops out at 2600 RPM’s a logical guess would be about 46CFM at 2600RPM +/-10%. The top of the Monsoon II says MACS, which stands for Monsoon Active Cooling System. The heat pipes come through the top of the housing and the overall assembly is visually nice.

The MACS Monsoon II has four copper heat pipes that transfer heat from the base of the heat sink to the set of 45 aluminum cooling fins. These heat pipes are sealed in design and look to be well attached to the cooling fins. One other thing to note is that the cooling fins are actually split into two groups of 45 and each set of cooling fins has a pair of heat pipes connected to them. The base of the heat sink comes covered with tape to help protect it and keep it looking brand new until it is ready to be installed.

The finish on the base was flat and without machine marks, but it was more of a matte finish rather than a polished bottom. The heat pipes go all the way through the base as seen above, but as you can tell the base has a couple of plates and wires connected to it. The Monsoon II Lite is a thermoelectric cooler (TEC cooler) which means it used the Peltier effect, the theory that there is a heating or cooling effect when electric current passes through two conductors. A voltage applied to the free ends of two dissimilar materials creates a temperature difference. With this temperature difference, Peltier cooling will cause heat to move from one end to the other. A typical thermoelectric cooler will consist of an array of p- and n- type semiconductor elements that act as the two dissimilar conductors. The array of elements is soldered between two ceramic plates, electrically in series and thermally in parallel. As a dc current passes through one or more pairs of elements from n- to p-, there is a decrease in temperature at the junction (“cold side”) resulting in the absorption of heat from the environment. The heat is carried through the cooler by electron transport and released on the opposite (“hot”) side as the electrons move from a high to low energy state.

If everything goes as planned the electron flow should carry the heat from the hot plate to the cold plate thanks to the flow of electrons that is feed from the included control interface system that runs on a 12V power input. It sounds complex, but the Monsoon II is a plug-in-play cooling solution!