Prolog
Today we have a very special product in for review, the Thermalright AXP-100 R
A low profile top down small form factor CPU cooler from Thermalright © .
Established since 2001, they have been dedicated to engineering professional computer cooling solutions for more than a decade.
They are based in Taiwan with headquarters in Taipei and also with an oversea branch in Shanghai, China.
Its products include high-performance aftermarket heat sinks for desktop computers, high-end mouse and high-quality iPhone case.
It also produces components for other manufacturers, including AMD and Intel.
Thermalright products are primarily marketed towards gamer and enthusiasts who commonly overclock different parts of their computer, generating large amounts of heat.
And almost yearly they are nominated and win for best cooling solutions on various specialty sites.
Price when reviewed – 69.90 $ – Via Amazon.com – Thermalright AXP-100 R (Designed for ITX and HTPC Systems.)
It has 6 pipes, a 100 mm cooler with the possibility to put 120 or even 140 mm fan via its adjustable bracket. Very nice.
The “R” at the end comes from, “Red” as an homage to the ROG series color scheme.
It comes in other ‘flavors’ too.
The ‘stock’ one is the green and light brown combo, followed by the ‘Muscle’ one with white and black (to mention that this one doesn’t come with the adjustable bracket for bigger fans and the fan itself has no PWM and thus is cheaper) and the one reviewed today.
Specifications:
Heatsink
Dimension: L105 mm x W121 mm x H44 mm
Weight: 320g
Heat pipes: 6 mm heatpipe x 6 units
Fin: T = 0.5 mm ; Gap = 1.9 mm
Fin Pcs: 28 + 6 + 5 = 39 pcs
Copper Base: C1100 Pure copper nickel plated
Motherboard to Fin: 27 + 8 = 35 mm
TY-100R FAN Spec
Dimension: L108 mm x H101 mm x W14 mm
Weight: 40g
Rated Speed: 900 ~ 2500 RPM ± 15%
Noise Level: 22 ~ 30 dBA
Air Flow: 16.0 ~ 44.5CFM
Motherboard Compatibility
Intel: Socket LGA 775/1150/1155/1156/1366/2011
AMD: Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/AM3+/FM1/FM2/FM2+
Furthermore, another advantage of the AXP-100 is that it can fit any mITX motherboard regardless of their CPU socket position in relationship from the video card slot, thus not interfering in any way as shown here.
Pictures
Comes with a nice and simple box, very well packed and protected.
A lot of accessories including the adjustable fan bracket.
An the heatsink itself.
We notice the brand logo and every pipe end. Very nice touch.
The 100 mm fan with PWM.
You can use it to push down air into the heatsink or put it upside down to draw it away for cases like Lian-Li Q03 where the psu is very close to the fan and by reversing the airflow it creates a wind tunnel effect, pulling hot air straight out of the case and in turn increasing overall performance.
It also has a point of reinforcement with 2 extra wires underneath.
It has a nicked plated copper plaque with a perfect mirror finish.
Installation
Almost all Thermalight products seem to use a very simple and efficient method of mounting.
Backplate with screws and plastic washers for extra insulation and distance.
The cooler is so light you can even install it just using the screws + the plastic washers if the motherboard has larger components or protruding pins on the backside.
After inserting this into the socket holes you locked them via 4 thumbscrews.
On top goes the cover.
Then the heatsink with its holding plate via 2 screws.
But we had a problem initially because with this particular board, the ram slots are too close so the heatsink and the fact that the module’s heat spreaders are kind of tall – so it’s safe to suggest that this cooler for maximum compatibility is to only use normal memory modules (with very low heat spreaders or none at all).
Our solution was to remove that side of the heat spreaders and voila, problem solved, since no normal modules available in our stock.
(We advise no to this because will void the warranty, we did it for testing purposes only!)
And the last part we put the fan with its own screws directly into the heatsink.
We notice no vibration absorption system so be careful to not over tighten the screws and it can bend the frame of the fan.
Versus stock Intel.
And starting the final assembly.
With the final form.
Testing facilities
Because of our intention of a mITX build we felt no need to overclock the CPU because we are after compactness and efficiency.
We used prime95 as the ‘torture test’ with the option “In place large FFT” so it will use 100 % of the CPU power including the hyper threading feature.
Also we did a real time usage mostly a 20 minute gaming session in Crysis 3.
We used a digital thermometer, measured everything at room temperatures (23 Celsius).
And for the cores we used speedfan and the MSIs own control center program for extra feedback to read the temperatures.
For the noise we used also a digital noise meter placed on top of the case.
We compared the results with as many old coolers we had including Intel’s stock and other Thermalright product as well (some i could not close the case because of their size, like tower coolers.)
And also a Scythe S-Flex 1600 RPM 120 mm fan was used to see if it profits from bigger fans as well.
Hardware:
Processor: Intel i7 2700k – TDP 95 W
Motherboard: MSI B75IA-E33 mITX
RAM: 2 x 4 GB Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracers 1600 MHz CL8
HDD : WD 640 GB AAKS
Video card: MSI GTX 760 OC 4 GB Twin Frozr
Case: NCase M1 mITX
PSU: Seasonic S12II 500W ATX
Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate X64 SP1
Prime 95
Speedfan
MSI Control Center v2.5.06
Crysis 3 – 20 minutes gameplay session
And here are the results, in Celsius :
And for a better view:
Analysis:
In PWM mode, we only saw a few degrees less than in manual mode so no problem there.
With the 120 mm fan, it doesn’t improve very much over the stock 100 mm fan and even worse, we guess with a 140 mm (maybe that’s why they made the AXP-200 version).
We can also speculate after seeing these numbers that it will also hold a CPU from the LGA 2011 socket with no problems, although the same conditions stand true, no OC should be involved.
Regarding noise, only if it is spinning at maximum rpm then it becomes a loud little chopper, but in gaming (real life usage) like Crysis 3 we didn’t seem to be bothered by it at 70-80% RPM.
Conclusion
In terms of performance, the AXP-100R performed very well considering its overall small size specially against a big TDP CPUs like the 2700k. It outperformed the stock Intel by a great deal also in noise (and in size!) so it’s a clear win here.
Thus, from a compactness and versatility point of view, it’s perfect for HTPC and SFF builds. The possibility to use your own 120 mm or 140 mm fans enforces this idea even more.
The price, in our opinion it’s worth it regarding its overall quality which is excellent and it’s like a small piece of jewelry, if we had to give it a cool factor description.
These being said we offer it our
Globetrotters Award – 4.5 out of 5
