Intel Core i7 / LGA1366 CPU Cooler Roundup

ZeroTherm Nirvana 120

We don’t usually gush on and on about boxes, but if there was one out there that we respected for its design and protection, it is that of the ZeroTherm Nirvana 120. It has all the necessary information you could ask for on it and it’s made from impressively thick cardboard for some serious protection. Did we mention that it also looks pretty damn good?


While the Nirvana 120 may not look exactly akin to the butterfly-like BF90, you can see the same underlying principles at work here. Actually, if you cut out the center of the cooling fin array and stuck a cheesy looking butterfly face on the top of this cooler you would certainly see the resemblance to that classic cooler.

Even though the pictures above don’t do the finish any justice, it is done in an all black affair which we just love. The cooling assembly is also a sight to behold as the fins are densely packed while the single caseless fan is perfectly placed to provide optimal cooling across all the surfaces. All of this technology is wrapped into a svelte package that weighs in at a mere 638 grams (sans fan) which is far from heavy by today’s standards. Indeed, the only real down side of the Nirvana is that is only accepts one fan…and a proprietary one at that. This of course is the nature of the Butterfly beast, so hopefully this single fan will really impress us.


Now that’s a perfect base there folks! This thing is so beautifully polished it looks like the surface of a calm lake reflecting the sky. When you add this base to the obvious effort that was put into the rest of the design, it is hard to see anywhere that ZeroTherm went wrong. Count us impressed with this one so far.


In classic ZeroTherm styling, the 120mm fan which accompanies the NV120 is case-less with a proprietary mount built in. The upside to this is that air movement isn’t restricted and can be sucked in from the sides (and over the “wing tips” of the fin array) to help enhance the cooling performance of this CPU cooling solution. The down side is that if it dies, or you just want to change it, you are out of luck. The specifications of this fan are nonetheless impressive; it is rated from 1000 all the way to 2300RPMs and at its maximum speed it is rated to move 84.7CFM.

Even though we can’t tell who makes this fan, it is most likely an APACK unit that has been adapted to fit this cooler. At its heart is a 2 ball “UFO” bearing, which is a fancy way of saying it’s a normal 2 ball bearing which has been enhanced in some proprietary way. When it comes to fan itself, we found it does not have much shaft or off axis slop and we would have no hesitations in using it for the life of the cooler.

While the 4 wires of this PWM fan are not sheathed as we would have preferred them to be, they are fused together to help reduce air restrictions.