Is the king back? Does Thermalright reclaim the thrown of best P4 air cooling solution? All results point towards it. The final verdict will come soon when we complete our roundup of 12 P4 heatsinks including the current champ, the Cooler Master Hyper6.

Update: Our Intel P4 roundup is finished and can be read here.

Our testing today showed you the great potential of having a heatsink which natively supports a 120mm fan. Combined with the popular heatpipe technology it makes the XP-120 a killer thermal solution. The only obvious downside is compatibility. With its large footprint it can cause installation problems on some motherboards.

Weight is no issue thanks to the use of aluminum; installation is easy and straightforward although motherboard removable is recommended. Thermalright leaves it up to end user to choose his favorite fan, although they do recommend a Panaflo model which produces ~70CFM at 30dBA, expect performance between the Papst & YS-Tech tested here.



We can heartily recommend the XP-120 if you are looking for a high performance heatsink which also allows silent operation at the same time. Priced near $50 it won’t burn a whole in your pocket!

We would like to thank JC from Bacata for sending the XP-120 our way.

Questions/Comments: forum thread