Conclusion


Overall our impressions of Silverstone's NT06 are mixed.

It did manage to provide a slight improvement to cooling temperatures over the AC 7 Pro, and the results of the orientation testing suggest those results would have been better if it had been tested in a tower case. On the other hand, the inclusion of a sub-par thermal compound, the difficult mounting on S775 motherboards, clearance issues, and the Price / Performance ratio leave us wishing there was something more to this cooler.

Adding up the scores for the NT06 (disregarding the 6.5 from the Russian judge), we still find much more to report on the plus side than on the negative.

This cooler looks great, has excellent build quality, and the difficulty in mounting didn't cost it too many points as it is a function of the low profile design. This is, in our opinion, a fair trade-off for those looking to install a quality cooler into a confined space. There aren't too many after-market coolers on the market which will fit in SFF cases like the Silverstone Sugo series.

The only real fault we could find was the price / performance ratio. The AC 7 Pro sets a high performance standard to beat, but at over twice the cost, we would have expected the NT06 to have provided more than just marginal improvements, especially after we ditched the stock thermal compound for a quality retail one.

Quite frankly, at this price we expected better cooling performance.


Pros

• Low profile
• Excellent cooling of motherboard components
• Decent CPU cooling
• Great looks and build quality
• Quality fan

Cons

• Price / Performance ratio
• Difficult to mount
• Some clearance issues
• Sub-Par thermal compound