The core design of the Spire TherMax Eclipse II resembles that of most tower coolers, with the exception that it is much larger and obviously highly capable of handling a heavy thermal load.
This cooler is designed to hold one or two 120mm cooling fans. Two “blackstar” 9-blade cooling fans are supplied with the cooler, both of which share the same exact design and specifications; however since these are standard 120mm fans they can be replaced with any 120mm computer fan available.
Each of the semi-transparent black fans Spire supplies with their TherMax Eclipse II has a rotational speed of 2200RPM, which means that without any means of speed control even one of these fans will be fairly loud, let alone two. Another interesting thing to point out is that the primary fan which Spire supplies only has a 3-pin power connector, while the secondary fan has both a 3-pin and a 4-pin connector.
Despite the large size, the TherMax Eclipse II has “only” 46 chrome plated aluminum fins. However the fins are very wide, providing ample heat dissipation surface, and they are dimpled; Spire claims that the dimples will increase the heat transfer rate of the cooler. The U shape of the fins reduces the airflow resistance and therefore the generated noise. The fin sides are bent in order to create a form of wall on the sides of the cooler, directing airflow by forcing all of the air to exit from the other side of the cooler and creating a nice visual effect.
Spire designed the TherMax Eclipse II with five 8mm thick nickel plated heatpipes. The heatpipes come in direct contact with the CPU, absorbing and transferring the generated heat directly to the aluminium fins. Even though they are nickel plated, the heatpipes are made of copper and the portion which comes into direct contact with the CPU appears to be very well machined to a smooth finish.
The rest of the cooler’s base however is made out of aluminium and the top part resembles a small heatsink. Given the direct heatpipe contact approach we fail to see how such a small heatsink would help at all, yet it seems that Spire engineers felt that it might aid the thermal performance of their product a little.