14 DAY TRIAL // If you don't like the cooler that shipped with your CPU but don't want anything too fancy, preferring silent operation instead, then the new SnowStorm from Gelid might be right up you alley.
Stock coolers often don't even have heatpipes of any kind. They're mostly heatsinks that double as CPU base and have one fan screwed on the top.
Sure, the higher-end processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices might have a tower cooler of some sort or other. But people who purchase those things aren't likely to even look twice as the SnowStorm we're going to examine.
After all, the Gelid SnowStorm is more of a silent, compact cooler for mainstream PCs instead of some super-advanced gaming/enthusiast piece of hardware.
Gelid SnowStorm
SnowStorm is part of the company's so-called Silent product line, usually written in ALLCAPS for whatever reason. Not that other companies aren't guilty of the same eye-watering tendency, but we digress.
The SnowStorm, as a mid-range cooler, has a reasonable balance between performance, noise and price. We dare say the price tag of $27 / €21 is fairly accessible for this kind of device.
Doubly so given the fin architecture that distributes air flow equally into the heatsink. The three copper heatpipes are great and all, but it's the heatsink's job to drain the heat from them. Well, at least half the job anyway.
The heatpipes use Direct Touch Technology (HDT for short), meaning that they are flattened and tightly aligned at the base, instead of passing through some base plate or other. Although there is a small second heatsink in the spot where such a thing would be, to help take the edge off, so to speak.
As for the actual dissipation of the heat, that task is handled by a fan with a diameter of 92 mm and intelligent RPM speed control (rotations per minute) reliant on the PWM (pulse-width modulation).
In layman terms, it means that the fan will get faster if the temperature goes higher and vice versa. Unless you connect it to a fan controller, but that's not likely to happen since mainstream PC owners don't bother with such things, most of the time.
Finally, the newcomer is RoHS and WEEE compliant, meaning that it's reasonably environment-friendly.
Availability
Sales of the Gelid SnowStorm CPU cooler should begin soon enough, if they haven't already. It will be accompanied by a 5-year warranty and a mounting system that renders it compatible with most Intel and AMD CPUs (central processing units) and APUs (accelerated processing units).
