Thermaltake Frio OCK Cooler Review – better than Noctua D14?

Rating: 8.5.

The Frio has been a runaway success for Thermaltake, combining killer performance at a very competitive price point. Today we are looking at the revised and ‘improved' version, the ‘OCK', which according to Thermaltake can significantly outperform the class leading Noctua NH D14.

In January KitGuru published an editorial from inside the Thermaltake laboratory. This was no ordinary, boring look at a list of upcoming products no one wanted to see, this article showed that the OCK could outperform the Noctua NH D14 by a staggering 7 degrees Celsius.

I will be honest, at the time we published the story, I was more than a little dubious. Having had many months hands on experience with the Noctua ‘Austrian Sandwich' D14 , this seemed like a rather tall order. One to three degrees was perhaps possible, but 7c? Surely not. After all there is only so far you can go with air cooling.

So what has changed since the original model was released? The OCK uses six heatpipes, an increase from five, and there is a fatter aluminum fin stack with slightly larger 13cm fans placed on either side.

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