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Thermalright True Spirit 120M CPU Cooler Review

Cooling/CPU Cooling by leeghoofd @ 2013-03-31

The Thermalright company is one of the market leaders in processor, graphics cards and chipset cooling. Sporting great designs with innovative ideas, Thermalright has truly deserved it's current position in the very competitive world of aftermarket cooling solutions. Today we review the latest addition to their lineup, the True Spirit 120M CPU cooler. The new kid on the block is based on the their best selling True Spirit cooler. Hence why the product name is practically the same. The addition of the M comes from the increased Memory compatibility this new 120M CPU cooler has. Let's see what all the fuzz is about.

Test Setup and Methodology

S Sabretooth X79 motherboard

Intel i7-3960X OC'ed at 4500MHz 1.35Vcore

G.Skill 16GB 2133MHz C9 rams

Western Digital 1TB Green Caviar HDD

2 x ASUS Geforce GTX480 videocards

Corsair HX1000W Power supply

Corsair C70 Vengeance case

Prime95 is still our favourite CPU torture test. By selecting the Custom test and setting 12-12K we force the CPU to go straight flatout. After 30 minutes we verify in RealTemp the maximum load temperature results accross the 6 cores. For the idle temperatures we just let the sytem during 15 minutes warm up, practically doing nothing then just monitoring the temperatures.

For the motherboard readouts we trust the ASUS Sabretooth Thermal Radar application, included in the AI suite. Reading out chipset, PWM, mobo temperatures, all these being monitored during the CPU torture test.

Noise measurement done via Corsairs Reviewers' Guide, measuring the generated noise at 1 meter from the fan front. Fans were hooked up straight to a PSU via a molex adapter. Noise tests were only conducted at 12V.

The Madshrimps testbed comprises of the following parts:

ASUS Sabretooth X79 motherboard
Intel i7-3960X stock and OC'ed at 4500MHz 1.35Vcore
G.Skill 16GB 2133MHz C9 rams
Western Digital 1TB Green Caviar HDD
ASUS Geforce GTX480 videocard
Corsair HX1000W Power supply
Corsair C70 Vengeance case with Air Series FANs installed.
Ambient air temperature is 20°C

Prime95 is our CPU torture test. By selecting the Custom test and setting 12-12K, we force the CPU to go straight flatout. After 60 minutes we verify in RealTemp the maximum load temperature results across the 6 cores. For the idle temperatures we just allow the system to warm up during a period of 15 minutes. Just basic idling at either stock for the air cooled setups and/or 4500MHz for the AIO units, doing nothing more then just monitoring the temperatures.

The monitoring software we use is RealTemp version 3. And the output results are the average out of three runs.

We compare the Thermalright True Spirit 120M versus two other air coolers: the single fan Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure (similar price league ) and the Zalman XPS14, this chart is only with the I7-3960X at stock clocks (3900MHz due to the ASUS Turbo implementation). Once we add the different All In One Cooling liquid solutions in the mix, the CPU speed gets crancked up to 4500MHz.

Noise measurement for the fans is done via Corsairs Air Fan Reviewers' Guide. Thus measuring the generated FAN noise at 1 meter from the FAN's front. Fans were hooked up straight to a PSU via a molex adapter. Noise tests are only conducted at 12V.

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