Summer approaches, slowly but steadily, and with it an increased interest of PC owners for better cooling for their electronic pets. Regardless of whether a particular user is a fan of overclocking or not, a high-quality CPU cooler is always an interesting topic before hot summer months arrive, and it’s of special significance to provide good, but quiet cooling for a home theatre (HTPC) computer, which, on one hand, mustn’t have an audible noise output, and on the other hand, usually isn’t positioned in a very well-cooled place, so increased heat output is to be expected.

The model which absolutely fulfils all these conditions was sent to us by Cooler Master. Vortex Plus is a new member of the popular Vortex series, and its low profile enables installation into the smallest of enclosures. Four heatpipes are conducted through a large number of aluminium fins, the former being in direct contact with the CPU, and the top of the cooler contains a bracket for installing a standard 92 mm case fan, this time containing RPM regulation as well. The package also contains an appropriate fan from the Blade Master series, one that we’ve reviewed several months ago. Blade Master proved to be very quiet in action, even at extreme CPU load. During the everyday usage scenario, watching HD films included, the fan is virtually inaudible and creates less noise than a quieter PSU fan.

Although this model is clearly aimed towards HTPCs, we’ve tested it on our Core i5 CPU overclocked to 4 GHz as well, which Vortex Plus managed to hold under control even at full load in Linx test. In “real world” conditions, when the CPU wasn’t under load and during medium intensity workload, Vortex Plus managed to pull off temperatures up to ten degrees lower than some notably larger and more massive coolers, which is a fantastic result having in mind its size and primary purpose. Add a very simple installation process which doesn’t require the motherboard to be taken out of the case to all this, but also support for all types of Intel and AMD CPUs since sockets 775 and 754 onwards, respectively, we can do little but appropriately award this excellent model.

 

Cooler Master Vortex Plus
Material	aluminum (fins), copper (heat pipes)
Fan	92 mm, 4-pin PWM regulation
Fan speed	800 - 2,800 RPM
Air flow	15.7 - 54.8 CFM
Noise	17 - 35 dBA
Supported processors	Intel LGA775/1156/1366, AMD s754/939/940/AM2/AM3/socket-F
Price	about 21 EUR
Contact	www.coolermaster.com