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Thermalright IFX-14 CPU Cooler Review

Cooling/CPU Cooling by jmke @ 2008-02-11

CPU coolers keep growing in size, this monster from Thermalright is proof of that. The Inferno Fire eXtinguisher is a heatsink large enough to accommodate up to three 140mm fans! Furthermore it comes with a separate smaller heatsink which sole purpose is to keep the backside of the CPU socket cool. Will this powerhouse CPU cooler grab first spot in our performance charts? Time to find out!

Closer Look

Closer Look

The size and weight of the IFX-14 make it a daunting construction, at 790gr, it’s bound to have some aluminum on board, Thermalright cleverly hid the “base material” from view, we can’t see what’s aluminum and what’s copper.

See for yourself:

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Logically the fins are made from aluminum, the massive 4 heat pipes from copper, joined in a copper base, which an excellent finishing. While we have read reports of the IFX-14 samples with uneven bases, this one is adequately flat.

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This is the first heatsink we’ve tested which makes a 120mm fan look small:

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Unfortunately the market is not flooded with high quality 140mm fans, in fact, we have none in our test labs. The abundance of quality 120mm fans at competitive prices does mean you’ll most likely want to pair the IFX-14 with one or more of those.

The fan mounting clips Thermalright provides still require you to use fans which have “open” mounting holes at the sides. Our Globalwin NCB fan had to be modified to fit with the standard fan clips.

The space between the two towers of the IFX-14 is wide enough to fit a 38mm fan, this gives you 3 possible mounting possibilities for such a fan, or you can fit multiple fans at once, do keep in mind that each fan will add 100~400gr to the weight total!

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In the photo above the IFX-14 is equipped with two heavy duty 120x38mm fans:

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That’s 1.550kg total (3.42 pounds)!

Installation next ->

Comment from Rutar @ 2008/02/11

A Q6600 at 1.6V above 3 Ghz would be bette to test, 138W isn't that much for todays quadcore standards. I like those passive results tought.

Comment from geoffrey @ 2008/02/11

Jmke has been using Prescott all the way, it's not easy repeating every test, again and again, whenever a new generation of CPU's hit your local retailer. The Prescott is off the older generation Prescott CPU's and does produce quite an amount of heat for heatsinks to deal with, heck the high differences in our chart. Why would you want to use 1,6V with your air cooled Q6600, do you really want that extra clock in favor of such high voltage?

Comment from jmke @ 2008/02/11

what's the TDP of Intel's highest end Quad Core?

Comment from Rutar @ 2008/02/11

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmke

what's the TDP of Intel's highest end Quad Core?

125W stock, Overclocked and overvoltet, a lot more is possible.

Comment from jmke @ 2008/02/11

125W for Q6600? the QX6750 scores lower? what about QX9750 and QX9770 ?

Comment from Rutar @ 2008/02/11

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmke

125W for Q6600? the QX6750 scores lower? what about QX9750 and QX9770 ?

http://www.golem.de/0710/55669.html

130W

Comment from Faiakes @ 2008/02/11

Nice!
But I think if one has the Ultra 120 Extreme there is no real need to upgrade to the IFX, is there?

Comment from jmke @ 2008/02/11

will be testing the Ultra-120 eXtreme soon, not sure if the IFX-14 is an upgrade

Comment from Kougar @ 2008/02/12

Argh, was thinking that was the Extreme in those results. Was a shocking difference between the regular and the Extreme versions, so I suspect the IFX-14 isn't going to last very long at the top of those results....

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