TechRadar Verdict
Pros
- +
Good performance
- +
Integrated fan
- +
130mm fan
Cons
- -
Price too high
- -
Struggles with overclocked chips
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The ThermoLab Trinity looks like a pretty conventional cooler at first glance. A big fan, a large stack of aluminium cooling fins and some copper heat pipes. Same old.
But this is no knock-off job. Your suspicions should have been aroused by the odd 130mm spec of the cooling fan, where most of the competition goes with 120mm. That should allow the Trinity to either shift more air for a given noise level or shift just as much with a bit less rattle and hum.
It's also a little unusual in that the fan is an integrated part of the cooling stack. It's not a clip-on item. Both of these facts have advantages, but the downside is you can't just whack on another standard 120mm spinner if you fancy pepping up the cooling performance.
This is also one of the simplest coolers here to fit thanks to the design of the mounts and the tool-free assembly. Likewise, props to ThermoLab for being one of the few hardware vendors to supply a decent amount of cooling paste in a proper syringe. The pitiful little sachets some coolers come with are borderline offensive.
A little less impressive, however, is the Trinity's cooling performance. It's no slouch, but the idle and load temps at stock clocks are good rather than spectacular and the overclocked load temp of 76°C is several degrees off the best air coolers.
If it was dirt cheap, that would all be just dandy, but the Enermax ETS-T40 costs less and performs better. 'Nuff said.
