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Thermaltake have been vocal in their literature that the Frio is built from the ground up for overclocking and today we have tested this by using the most powerful Intel CPU on the market, the mighty Core i7 980x.
Our results show that the Frio is indeed capable of cooling even the hottest, highest performing processors on the market today. Technically we have been very impressed with the cooling prowess of the unit and it is clearly living up to Thermaltake's claims of being a viable choice for stable overclocks with hot running processors.
If you are overclocking we suggest you use two fans as the temperatures increase a few degrees with only one. That said, as we detailed earlier in the review people with oversized heat spreaders on their memory will have issues with this as the second fan won't fit.
When comparing directly against the Noctua NH D14 it falls a little short, but in reality the two price points need to be carefully analysed. The NH D14 is retailing for around £67 in the UK while the Frio is £38 inc vat which certainly opens the product up to a much wider audience. The difference between the Noctua NH D14 and the Frio on medium fan settings is 5c which translates to a cost of around £6 for every reduced degree. In regards to our Intel 980x processor, the Noctua wasn't able to push it further when overclocking – both coolers could handle 4.5ghz but the Frio needed to be on high fan settings which was unbearable.
KitGuru says: With slightly better fan selection this product would have scored even higher than it did today, however I still highly recommend it, because for under £40 you really aren't going to get a better air cooler.
Guys temporary problems with review pages, forcing back to first page, we are aware of it and are looking into it now.
Thanks for letting us know Zardon, i was wondering what was going on there.
i want to read this any news on a system fix?
we are working on it, sorry for this !
Well you can now see the content but unfortunately it is on a single page. we are aware of the issue now, we just need to sort it out. thanks.
Hey I have a FRIO ! I love it. was contemplating going to a Noctua NH D14 but its a bit much money for only slightly improved cooling. Might just change the fans to high end ones.
Cool. literally 🙂
Its a really good looking bit of engineering. not so sure about all the plastic and the fans seem a bit noisy, but I guess with variable controls you can adjust that to suit. Good reviews, thanks.
This is a great cooler, and I like the price. The NOctua NH D14 is better, but it costs a fortune.
Thermaltake standards are better lately they used to be really shoddy. last year they are putting out some solid products.
Good article, interesting to see the noise levels on this thing cranked ! over 60db, bloody nora.
Thank you for the review, very helpful in my purchase. decided to order one of these, seems really good value for money and I can set the fans on low as you say for my 875k
Nice article – good testing. I like the looks of the cooler and the design is good also. I never though Thermaltake could make something this nice, I have never liked their cases.
Most useful, especially the fan information.
£38 is a great price isnt it? cant believe they are selling it for £30 less than the noctua sandwich thingie
What is the fitting like for AMD?
I wonder what it would be like if they made it slightly bigger, almost the same size as the noctua cooler and put better fans on it, I bet that diference in performance would drop.
This seems like a good 2nd choice for people who find the Noctua D14 is incompatible with some of their hardware.