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Rather than invest heavily in machining interesting designs into the actual heatsink of a CPU cooler, most manufacturers opt for relatively simple designs and then accessories them with visually striking fans. As the TPC 800 is only available as a heatsink only, it looks quite plain in terms of aesthetics.
This means you can choose fans which compliment your other components aesthetically, though, which makes this a positive trait. You also don't end up with one or two substandard fans at extra cost.
Like the vast majority of quality air coolers on the market, the stack of aluminium fins is straddled across six U-shaped heatpipes which are made from nickel-plated copper. The two tips of the vertical vapour chamber is also visible as they protrude from the top of the heatsink like the heatpipes.
Turning the heatsink over reveals a congestion of heatpipes passing through the nickel-plated copper CPU block on the underside of the cooler as Cooler Master have also had to make room to attach the vapour chamber on the top.
As you can see in the picture above, the CPU block on our sample was actually quite dirty when we removed the protective film. We expect that this is because we have an early sample of the cooler, though which was tested internally before shipping. We cleaned the CPU block before installing the cooler to restore its beautiful polished finish.
As we mentioned earlier in the review, the TPC 800 isn't supplied with any fans. Cooler Master do supply two sets of fan brackets, though, so you can either attach one or two 120mm fans to the cooler. We decided to test the cooler with two Be Quiet! Shadow Wings 120mm fans which spin at 1500 RPM. They offer decent airflow and generate a virtually inaudible level of noise which makes them ideal for building a quiet system.
