14 DAY TRIAL // Heatsink surface area is one of the most important aspects of a CPU cooler, or any air-based cooler really, which means that the ones with the largest area are also a bit too big for low-end and mid-range PCs. Not so for the new model from Cryorig though.
Called H5 Universal, it has an XL Surface area while still being no taller than 160 mm, and thus, perfectly ready to fit inside any mid-tower and even mini-tower PCs of sufficient width.
It's primarily thanks to the XL Surface Area design, where the surface area is extended to the back, leading to a cooling performance on par with those of dual-tower coolers and heatsinks.
Leading heat from the CPU to the fin array is a nickel-plated copper base plate and four 6 mm copper heatpipes, which are concentrated above the center of the CPU thanks to the Heatpipe Convex-Align design.
Then there's the XT140 slim profile fan, complete with Jet Fin Acceleration for faster hot air exhaust. All in all, the new cooler is as optimized as it could be.
For those who want details, the Jet Fin Acceleration System utilizes a larger air intake and narrower air exhaust section on the fins, compressing the air to move faster while exiting the heatsink.
Other features include an Air Turbulence Reduction System (a beehive-shaped structure at the front air intake of the heatsink) and patent pending solder-less environmentally-friendly manufacturing.
The XT140 cooler is compatible with both Intel and Advanced Micro Devices CPUs (central processing units) and APUs (accelerated processing units).
Finally, because of the mostly narrow design of the heatsink, the cooler will not interfere with the installation of memory modules, even those with very large heatspreaders.
It would have been a completely different matter if, say, the cooler had the heatsink placed parallel to the plane of the mainboard. It would have clashed with the RAM placement, unless you used low-profile modules (which, weak as they are compared to mainstream and high-end DIMMs, would have gone against the idea of an “Extreme Performance” CPU/APU cooler).
Cryorig will begin shipping the H5 Universal CPU cooler in Asia starting in August, and North America and Europe beginning in September. The price will be of $46.99 / €34, which is actually not that bad, especially when you consider that tags go down a few weeks after a product announcement (unless demand is really crazy, in which case it is maintained, sometimes even going the other way).
