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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.
