Best CPU Cooler Performance - Q2 2008 - BmR

BIKeINSTEIN · July 18, 2008, 12:46am

Interesting read overall.** :)**

Best CPU Cooler Performance - Q2 2008
Benchmark Reviews launched a quarterly roundup of CPU coolers beginning with the article Best CPU Cooler Performance - Q1 2008.
That first article has been very successful and showed how well our collection of coolers performed, but I will be the very first person to admit that the methodology wasn’t perfect.
While it idea of testing each product with a common fan is good, it was decided that future articles would utilize the included stock fan in addition to a high-volume fan.
After publishing the first quarterly comparison article of the series, our methodology was adjusted to include test results with both reference and performance cooling fans. A follow-up article comparing the Vendetta 2 vs TRUE vs HDT-S1283 was later published using the new methods, and the results more accurately illustrated the performance an overclocking enthusiast might receive compared to someone who buys the product and uses it in the stock form.

The Aftermath: Editors Notes
The nice thing about competition between hardware manufacturers is that it forces product improvements; or at least it should.
I don’t have to please anyone with my test results, since they are what they are (I test, and I report).
There’s no doubt that the manufacturer would like a positive review, but if I make one manufacturer angry because I don’t give their product a glowing review and they decide to ignore future product requests I can just simply move on to their competition. But if they’re serious about producing excellent products worthy of praise, they’ll be back with a bigger and better design the next time around.
There’s a flaw in this design though. Operating a review site requires a balance of several key skills: organization, perseverance, ambition, and aptitude for the topics. Unfortunately, it takes a lot more than operating the site to make it productive; you need products to test. This is where sites like Benchmark Reviews depend on the cooperation from the product manufacturer to receive test samples of their products when it is not available elsewhere.
The largest hardware sites have been around for over ten years, and have a very large staff. Most operate like a large corporation, and when their popularity with a large audience isn’t enough to persuade manufacturer cooperation they utilize advertising leverage to pay for the products they review. This is convenient, but at some point they have to pay the bills and retaining advertisers can sometimes mean bending your opinion.
I won’t allow this for my website.
Benchmark Reviews operates very differently.
If the manufacturer doesn’t send us samples, I will usually use product from the shelves of my computer company to complete testing. But on many occasions this is not possible for a timely product launch, or when a product becomes “used” after its first installation. So like most sites, we rely on manufacturer donations and samples.
One such case of this is with Thermalright, whom has been requested to send us their Thermalright TRUE Black cooler. We’ve seen it reviewed elsewhere so it exists, but it can’t be purchased at the moment. So I make my requests, but sometimes the response is worse than receiving a bad product.
Here are some excerpts from the correspondence with Hank Peng and Loren Hrabak of Thermalright:
Olin Coles 06/10/08: Hello Loren, I am writing you to request the Thermalright TRUE Black Edition cooler. I have already made this request with you over the phone last month, but now it has come to my attention that our affiliates have already received this product. Please let me know if you will be sending Benchmark Reviews a sample for testing.
Loren Hrabak 06/11/08: As of right now I don’t have any of these heatsinks available. Hopefully I should have some in a month or so for review sites.
After this Q2 2008 article published, I resumed correspondence with Thermalright.
Olin Coles 07/16/08: Does Thermalright have any interest in sending us the TRUE Black 120 for review? I’ve been trying to receive one for testing for over four months.
Loren doesn’t answer my request, but his supervisor Hank Peng does: As you know, all reviews are not created equal. Knowing that Ultra-120 eXtreme didn’t do too well particularly in your tests time after time (not claiming the top spot) and knowing that TRUE Black 120 puts out similar performance, if you were working for Thermalright’s marketing team would you go ahead and send the test unit?
This didn’t sit well with me, so I issued a response:
*My experience with your Ultra-120 eXtreme has given the product more than its share of limelight. It was included in the Q1 2008 round-up article. We then tested it with a high and low volume fan for our Vendetta 2 vs TRUE vs HDT-S1283 article, where it performed right at the very top. Again in our Q2 article, it was tested and performed in the top positions. So what I am to understand is that because your product has not yet received the #1 position (or an award), Thermalright is not going to support my requests? It seems to me that the purpose of sites like Benchmark Reviews is to dispel marketing myth and prove which products really work. *
The TRUE really works very well, but it is far from a perfect product and most who use it must modify and alter the product to make it worth their trouble.
Perhaps I’ve missed something in my two years of product testing, but I believe this would be the very first time a product has not been sent to us because another product the manufacturer had sent did not receive an award for the top position. Antec has done the same thing to Benchmark Reviews, but moreso because we didn’t rate their product highly and not because it wasn’t the “best”. Maybe I’m reading into things but it seems to me that if you sell a product, than the performance should speak for itself.
There’s no need to intimidate review sites with (the lack of) cooperation simply because your product doesn’t get an award.
Shame on you Thermalright.
First you hassle consumers with poor mounting clips systems, then you change the product with multiple revisions. Now you punish those of us willing to give the product a fair representation of performance?
Perhaps it’s a good thing that there’s some strong competition, because these HDT coolers are putting the overpriced Ultra-120 eXtreme in its place. It appears that Thermalright knows this, which is why they can only respond to an evolving industry by coloring a two-year old design black.

For the ‘Q2 2008- cpu cooler comparo’ by BmR and more masala gupshup>
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=163&Itemid=1

Note: i post this here as i preferred leaving the ‘OCing and Modding’ section to actual OCing and modding, especially from our own members.
Mods may please do the needful if violating any rules.

tangentray · July 18, 2008, 6:16am

That is rude of thermalright. They do have good products, but as the editor has pointed out those are really old designs, nothing new coming from thermalright (one shouldn’t consider coloring a product makes it new). Anyways still in terms of availability and performance in India, TRUE and Ultima are still on top.
Hope thermalright eventually gets things right before it’s products get thrown out of the top spot.