Today for review I’ve got the new
Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro CPU cooler. This cooler is small in
size, and it’s actually compatible with both LGA775 and 1155/1156
sockets so you’ll be able to use it on that new upgrade you’re
planning on doing. The Alpine Pro 11 is a black style cooler, meaning
it’s a solid block of aluminum, no fancy heatpipes, this is
old-school style cooling at its finest. I’ve put it up against the
stock Intel cooler on my C2Q6600 CPU for comparison and found it’s a
decent upgrade over the stock cooling solution. It’s small size make
it great if you’re short on room in your case, and it’s silent as
well, so it might make a nice cooler for an HTPC setup. Read on…
Product
Name: Arctic
Cooling Alpine 11 Pro CPU Cooler
Author: Kristofer Brozio
Sponsor: Arctic
Cooling
Tech
Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Ultra Quiet Coolers for Intel
Socket 1155/1156
The Intel Core i5 for socket
1156 is expected to be released in Q3. Multi-compatible with both the
new sockets and 775, this new Alpine series is definitely a perfect
choice for those who would like to go for a future-proof cooler.
Designed for silent-enthusiasts
and system builders – Alpine 11 Pro
Main features:
-Ultra quiet 92mm PWM fan with
low noise impeller
-Optimized heatsink efficient
heat dissipation
-Patented fan holder eliminates
the buzzing sounds
-Patented vibration absorption
-Pre-applied MX-2
-Easy installation with push
pins
The Alpine 11 Pro is for users
who look for an extremely quiet, high performance and easy-to-install
cooling solution.
The Alpine 11 Pro features a
more sophisticated acoustic design than the stock cooler. Thanks to
the patented vibration absorption and fan holder, the cooler is
barely audible – only 0.4 Sone at 2,000 rpm – a standard that the
stock cooler cannot compete. With a 92mm PWM fan and a bigger
heatsink design, the maximum cooling capacity of the Alpine 11 Pro
achieves 95 Watts.
Moreover, the unique mounting
system is very user-friendly and provides an absolutely transport
safe solution. The cooler is fastened by screws, no back plate is
necessary nor has the mainboard to be disassembled. The whole
installation can be done in less than a minute. This is a totally
peace of mind solution for Intel users.
Application:
-Intel Socket 1156, 775
-Up to 95 Watts
MSRP (excl. VAT):
-9,90 € / US$ 13.90
Specs:
Heatsink: 105.3 L x 113.4 W x
85H mm
Fan: 92mm x 1
Fan speed: 500 -2000 RPM
(Controlled by PWM)
Air flow: 36.7CFM / 62.2 m3/h
Maximum Cooling Capacity: 95
Watts
Weight: 428g
Warranty: 6 year
A
Better Look at Things:
The first thing we look at in any
review is the packaging, and with the Alpine Pro 11 we’ve got the
basic Arctic Cooling style, with information and pictures on the box.
Inside we find the cooler,
instructions sheet, and a bag with an AC sticker along with the
fasteners from the mounting bracket. These fasteners are either
pieces of plastic, four are black and four are an off-white in color.
The bracket gets set on the board over the mounting holes, the white
pins have bottoms that expand and a slot in the top. The black pins
are made to fit inside of the white mounts, when pushed in they force
the bottoms of the white pins to expand and secure the bracket to
your motherboard. It sound like a lot, but it’s actually a very easy
mounting system.
The cooler comes with the bracket
already installed, it’s held on with two screws on each side of the
fan. The heatsink part of the cooler is aluminum, with a plastic fan
shroud on top. The fan isn’t actually attached to the cooler, it’s
part of the mounting system, it essentially pulls the cooler down
onto the CPU when the screws are turned.
The Alpin 11 pro comes pre-applied
with Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound to make you life a bit
easier. The base of the cooler isn’t exactly finished, but it appears
flat.
Installation,
Testing and Comparison:
The mounting bracket is already
installed on the cooler when it arrives, so you’ve got to remove it
from the cooler by removing the two screws on each side, then you can
install the bracket onto your motherboard. Once thing nice about this
cooler is that you won’t need to remove the motherboard from the case
for installation, the mounting system pushed in from the front.
Here it is installed on my
motherboard on top of an Intel Q6600 CPU, the cooler comes very close
to the Gigabyte heatsink, if either the heatsink of the cooler were a
hair larger it would not have fit. A lot of motherboard these days
use large heatsink for the chipset, so this will have to be taken
into account before thinking of buying this cooler. The Alpine 11 Pro
is a small cooler in height, but it’s fat and covers quite a bit of
the area around the CPU socket.
For testing I ran two instances of
Orthos Stress Prime to be sure full, 100%, load was on the CPU. You
have to remember one thing, it’s not ever likely that average person
will be running a quad core CPU at 100% for any real amount of time,
so this test is the extreme of things really.
Ambient room temperature during
the testing was 23.1C (+/- .3C).
I used CoreTemp to monitor and log
the CPU temperatures, which were then averaged out to get the
results shown in the chart below.
It
should be noted that the Xigmatek
SD964 HDT CPU Cooler I
used for this comparison had Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound on
it, the same as the Alpine 11 Pro does. The stock Intel cooler
actually was never used until now, so it had the Intel thermal
compound on it, it was one from another Quad Core CPU that I never
installed.
I knew the Xigmatek would beat out
both of the coolers in terms of cooling abilities, but I put it in
for a comparison between heatpipes and block style coolers.
The Alpine 11 pro does an
admirable job of cooling when compared to the Intel Stock cooler, so
it would certainly be an upgrade from it. Another big difference is
the sound, the Intel Cooler, when under loud has a fan that almost
makes a buzzing sound, it is rather loud and can be a bit annoying,
on the other hand the Alpine 11 Pro fan is virtually silent.
The cooling ability compared to
the stock cooler is very good, but compared to a heatpipe solution
it’s not that great as you can see, but we knew that was going to be
the case already, heatpipes have proven themselves to be very
efficient cooling products.
The Alpine 11 Pro is silent, I
could not hear the fan over the rest of the system even when under
load for long periods of time, which is a very nice feature.
The Apline 11 Pro is also small,
at least in size, so it would make for a good CPU to install in cases
where space is limited.
At the end of the review I’ve got
‘Pre-applied Thermal Compound’ listed under both the Pros and Cons,
and I feel I should clarify that. The idea of pre-applying thermal
compound is a good one in theory, sure it’s nice to have the correct
amount already applied, makes life a bit easier, but that also means
you can basically install it only once. It would be nice is a small
amount of extra thermal compound was included so you could possibly
install it again if need be.
Summary
and Comments:
The Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro
cooler is a nice upgrade over the stock Intel cooler, if you’re
looking for a way to lower your temps and lower the volume of your
system then this would be the way to go. The Alpine 11 Pro is also
small in size making it a great choice for small cases or even an
HTPC setup.
DragonSteelMods gives the Alpine
11 Pro a 4.5 out of 5 score.
Pros:
+Nicely made
+Silent
+decent cooling
+Small size
+Pre-applied thermal compound
Cons:
-May not fit on all motherboards
-Not the best cooling ability
overall
-Pre-applied thermal compound
I
would like to thank Arctic
Cooling for the chance to review the Alpine
11 Pro and for their continued support of DSM.
review# 606