Thermaltake Frio Extreme Cooler Review

Allan 'Zardon' Campbell May 9, 2012 Cooling, Featured Tech News

The Thermaltake Frio Extreme ships in a large box with a picture of the cooler on the front. There are some details here, such as support for LGA2011 and the included fan controller. Thermaltake rate the cooler as capable of handling 250W of heat output.

The cooler and fans ship protected inside thick, soft foam. Installation instructions are placed on top of the foam.

The fans are stored in a separate section of the padding, alongside a little box containing some components required for installation.

The little fan controller can accept two fans, built for the Frio Extreme. There is a fan controller knob and a switch to allow for direct, or PWM control.

The accessory package contains all the necessary items for installation on Intel and AMD platforms. There is a backplate, screws, thermal paste and a various screws and bolts. We will look at this in more detail later in the review.

The Frio Extreme Cooler ships with two large 140mm fans. These are coloured blue and are rated to spin between 1,200 rpm and 1,800 rpm. No noise emission information is detailed, but we will look at these shortly.

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11 comments

Davis
May 9, 2012 at 5:16 pm

wow thats expensive. its good, but the prices are crazy for these coolers.
Ernie McDongle
May 9, 2012 at 5:17 pm

I still like the D14, but this is a good job. im glad they ditrched the plastic bit around it, made the fans easy to attach but it was sure to stop the airflow a little.
Peter
May 9, 2012 at 5:18 pm

Very impressed with that, but i think the liquid coolers make more sense as you have a ton of room inside the case and no problems with memory fitting etc.
Dogmuncher
May 9, 2012 at 5:19 pm

The all important question was never answered.

Can they technically get them any bigger in the future? 🙂
Jasper John S. Cecilio
May 9, 2012 at 5:41 pm

Great review.I’m still thinking which Air Cooler should I use when I buy the i7 3930k or the i73820
Luke
May 10, 2012 at 5:05 pm

Very interesting read, thanks.

Nice to see Thermaltake finally challenging the highest performing air coolers on the market. What speed were the fans when running the cooling test? No doubt the Frio Extreme has shown good performance but the PH-TC14PE performs closely with much lower RPM fans which I bet are much quieter too.

As you said in the review though, the fan installation method seems awkward. They closely resemble the method used on Thermalright’s Silver Arrow, another heatsink which was a PITA to install fans onto.

Well done to Thermaltake though. Extra competition is usually good for the consumer :D!