Conclusion

Our today’s test session showed that small compact coolers can also cope with overclocked processors including powerful quad-core ones. The only question here is in what case and what working conditions they will be used, because it will affect the processor overclocking potential directly. We have demonstrated their potential in an open testbed and inside a well ventilated ATX system case. Everything else depends on your personal needs and working conditions.

And if we had to choose between the three coolers discussed in our today’s review, then APACK ZEROtherm CF900 definitely wins from both: cooling efficiency as well as acoustic performance standpoints. But you should remember that this cooler is not compatible with all mainboards out there. Less efficient AURAS TwinW, unfortunately, is too noisy, while the expensive and universal Scythe Shuriken is too weak for an overclocked CPU. However, all three coolers proved indisputable quieter and more efficient than the standard boxed cooler from Intel, which means that they coped with their today’s task quite well.