Thermalright True Spirit CPU Cooler Review

Final thoughts of theThermalright True Spirit

Like with the Cogage True Spirit LGA1366, I am very happy over all with the Thermalright True Spirit. Actually more so. The changes Thermalright made to the mounting system have made the installation of the True Spirit much easier, and more solid, than the old X style hold down that was used on the Cogage model.

The new mounting system also allows for more users to use the True Spirit. With the old mount it was LGA1366 or LGA775 only; getting it on an AMD system wasnt an option. Now not only can AMD users use the cooler, but all the current Intel LGA sockets are covered, as well.

I only found a couple of things that stuck out to me. One is how close the upper mount plate was to the heatsinks around the socket on my Intel DX58SO motherboard. This could be an issue for some that have motherboards with large heatsinks that crowd the socket.

Thermalright told us that the True Spirit has a target MSRP of $29.95 in the US. With that in mind let’s look at how the True Spirit did. Over all the testing the Thermalright True Spirit did nicely. At 2.8GHz it was evenly matched with the similarly priced Corsair A50. At 3.5GHz and 4.0GHz it performed better. With our i7-930 the sweet spot for performance was at 3.5GHz where the True Spirit performed on par with the Prolimatech Super Mega, a cooler that is almost 400g heavier and costs almost 3 times as much.

Now the target MSRP that Thermalright has told us is not set in stone, but the previous Cogage True Spirit 1366 can be found for around $37 on Amazon. With the updates to simplify the packaging, changes to the base, and now there is only one model to keep track of the sub $30 price doesnt seem to out of line. Going by price the main competition for the True Spirit in our charts is the Corsair A50 that can be found for $25 on Amazon. The coolers perform close to one another cooling wise, but the True Spirit does it quieter than the Corsair A50. At the $25-30 price point, looking at these two coolers on a shelf I would pick the True Spirit due to it being quieter.

Legit Bottom Line: In bringing the True Spirit to their lineup Thermalright has improved it by making it universal, and the sub $30 target MSRP would make for a very nice budget upgrade from stock cooling that can hang with the big coolers.