Processor cooling is a serious business these days and there is little room for sub standard performance. With such hot processors being produced by both AMD and Intel, the demand for high performance heatsinks has greatly increased. The average user is now turning to high-end air cooled heatsinks, where as the overclockers are heading straight for the water cooling kits. Recently reviewed high quality heatsinks from Swiftech and Thermalright have done a superb job of keeping the Intel Pentium4 560 processor's temperature down. However, these products feature a retail value of roughly $60 US. Given a reasonably high-end processor costs around $300 US, adding another $60 US on top of this can start getting costly.
Until recent times whenever I heard the word 揋igabyte?I automatically associated it with motherboards, graphics cards and even communication devices. This is because these are some of the products that Gigabyte has been producing for many years now. Things that do not come to mind used to include cooling. Generally I would have never associated any kind of processor cooling product with the word Gigabyte. This is obviously because Gigabyte has never produced a cooling based product, until recently. Late 2003 something unexpected happened, Gigabyte announced a cooling product.
December of 2003 the tier one motherboard manufacturer went out on a limb and announced a cooling product to cater for a wide range of processors. Dubbed the ?D Cooler-Pro? Gigabyte had cleverly designed this heatsink making it possible to be installed on not only the latest Athlon64 processors, but also the older AthlonXP processor. However, its cooling abilities expand beyond the AMD line of processors, as the 3D Cooler-Pro can also be installed on Pentium 4 processors. This kind of universal support is very unique, as very few heatsinks currently available on the market can cover so many products.
After releasing numerous versions of the original ?D Cooler-Pro? Gigabyte has now decided it is time to move on. Although the performance of the 3D Cooler-Pro was nothing earth shattering, it was the design and appearance that captivated the consumers. Surprisingly, the latest Gigabyte coolers do not have quite the same unique flare about them. While this was a little disappointing to find, the fact that these coolers should offer better performance is something to get excited about. Gigabyte has recently unveiled four new cooling products designed for the latest Intel and AMD platforms.
The Intel coolers come from the new Neon Cooler 775 series where as the AMD coolers are known as the Neon Cooler 8 series. Both series feature two coolers each, realistically there are just two new heatsinks, one for each platform. The Neon Cooler 775 comes in two versions based on the same heatsink and the same applies to the Neon Cooler 8 series. Both series feature a 揚ro?version and a standard version known as the 揃L? The 揚ro?series features a built in fan controller, where as the 揃L?series does not.
The most impressive aspect of these coolers is their retail value. The most expensive option is the Neon Cooler 775-Pro which is said to retail for just $20 US. Given this price includes the heatsink, fan and blue LED's, this is an exceptionally good value product. However, while the price is right, the performance is yet to be seen. If the performance of these new coolers is able to exceed that of the Gigabyte 3D Rocket Cooler Pro, then they certainly will be most impressive.
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