CONCLUSION

As we saw in testing, this cooler posted some of the best Dual Core results we have seen. It easily bested much younger designs like the Silentator and Ultima 90 and more importantly it was whisper quiet throughout all of the tests. In fact it was easily the quietest cooler that we have tested and even beats the Asus Triton 77 for its lack of noise.

Unfortunately, not everything is wine and roses when it comes to the Big Typhoon. Thermaltake has had three years to improve the installation process and they did not. Yes, Thermaltake did release a refresh of this cooler and called it the Big Typhoon VX, but they did not pull this older model from the marketplace. In all honesty would it have been so hard to add the improved mounting system to this model at the same time? Either pull the older model, or retrofit it; this matter of two coolers sharing the same name is just confusing and it would not surprise us if people considered the VX not an enhanced version but a “Lite” version.

Even when you push the clumsy installation process to the side, you are still left with an aging design that was never meant to handle quad cores. Three years ago AMD was king and the idea of a quad core was still only a gleam in some engineer’s eyes. That being said the design certainly is efficient as the respectable quad core results prove, but they are not the best.

Simply put, the Big Typhoon is the best down draft cooler we have tested, but even the best down draft cooler is not great when compared to a tower CPU cooling solution. In the end the Big Typhoon may still be the king but its country (to beat an already ragged metaphor to death) is now a lot smaller than it was 3 years ago. If you are looking for a great dual core cooling solution the Big Typhoon is hard to beat and (due to its quiet nature) the same goes for any HTPC systems that can accommodate its huge size. However, if you want to cool down that raging inferno of an overclocked quad that you have, you may be better served by looking elsewhere.


Pros:

- Very Good dual core cooling
- VERY, VERY Quiet Fan
- 6 Heatpipes
- Decent Quad core cooling
- Funky Name

Cons:

- Horrible Installation (fixed in VX model)
- Outdated Packaging Scheme
- Not everyone LIKES Funky Names