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- Date:
- Thursday , November 17, 2011
- Author:
- Marc Adams
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Thermalright TRUE Spirit CPU Air Cooler Review
The Cogage True Spirit CPU cooler was an instant hit with those wanting maximum degrees per dollar when looking at CPU air cooling a couple short years ago. The True Spirit is back, sans the Cogage branding, now in flying its flag under the beloved Thermalright banner that so many of us are very familiar with.
Conclusion
So far we have seen the True Spirit perform exceedingly well in our tests. The TS 120 and TS140 are great additions to the Thermalright family of coolers. These are both easy to install and take up little space around the CPU. About the only negative I encountered during my time with the coolers was the clearance issue with the TS140. If Thermalright reduces the width of the cooler by two millimeters or increases the minimum height the TS140 would be a perfect coolers.
The only thing that remains to be seen is if Thermalright was able to keep the price of the new True Spirits true to the original. Let's take a look.
Price/Performance
The charts below show the cost you will pay for each degree in temperature reduction the heat sink gives you over the stock cooler. The two areas that influence this chart are cost of the heat sink and its performance. An expensive cooler that gives you superior performance will be rated as average here since its cost hurts its rating. Conversely, a poor performing heat sink that costs next to nothing will be rated as average since its performance will hurt its ratings. We ideally look for low cost and high performance. All prices were gathered by doing a very quick search of the web for each cooler and listing it here sans S/H and tax (these can vary widely from region to region).
As an example, if a cooler outperforms the stock cooler by 10C and costs USD $5.00 it would be listed in our chart as $.50. You would pay fifty cents for each degree of better performance over the box cooler.
The Bottom Line
Thermalright has been on a roll as of late. With these new prices it is putting a lot of pressure on other companies to lower prices. At $30.00 and $40.00, the new True Spirit coolers bring more value to the table than any other coolers on the market. These may not be able to outperform the H80 from Corsair but the True Spirit coolers cost one-third the price of the water cooler from Corsair. This tells me that unless you absolutely need that extra performance you are better off saving upwards of $80.00 and putting it towards a new GPU or game.
Because of the rock solid performance, overall value, and amazing low price both The True Spirit 140 and True Spirit 120 earn the [H] Editor's Gold Award.
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