Spire Verticool III CPU Cooler Review

Test System

To test the Verticool III I will be comparing it to a Zalman 9700 LED, and a stock Intel cooler for reference.

As you can see in the above images the Verticool III and the Zalman 9700 LED are about the same size, but the Zalman cooler uses a 120mm fan and 3 long heat pipes instead of a 90mm fan and 4 short heat pipes like used in the Spire Verticool III.

The test system:

CPU: Intel P4 560J 3.6GHz LGA775

Motherboard: MSI PM8M2-V mATX

Memory: 1GB Kingston PC2700

Hard Drive: 360GB Seagate PATA Hard drive

Optical Drive: Sony DVD Rom

Power Supply: Ultra X-Finity 600W

Testing

Temperatures taken after 30 minutes of idle and 100% load. To obtained 100% load I ran Super Pi 32m calculation and an instance of http://folding.stanford.edu/ to take up any extra head room that Super Pi wasnt using. Temperatures and fans speeds taken from Speed Fan, and an ambient room temp of 72 degrees Celsius. All of the coolers were tested with Arctic Silver 5 as the thermal interface material.