That was a question before it became a statement.
The backstory: I had a recent PC upgrade and my still quite powerful Intel Q6600 became redundant. Instead of having it "waste" in my guest/tester PC, I decided to upgrade my HTPC which was running an E2200. This presented a few challenges; first of all, the board it was in is ATX. HTPC cases that fit ATX boards are indiscriminately big and chunky (I don't know why). It's as if manufacturers feel that users want 10 fans running in their HTPC. I searched high and low but could not source a SFF full ATX case. I have an Athenatec Evo and that fits the board, but as I mentioned, it's tall and frankly I wanted to move to something smaller. Since I couldn't source a case to fit my needs, my only solution was to source a microatx board which could fit the Q6600 and also contained all the features I needed from the Abit IP35 Pro I had - specifically, 4 DDR2 RAM slots. I had a microATX XFX board which would fit the Q6600, but like most microATX boards made in 07/08', it only fit 2 DDR2 RAM sticks. The final challenge was to source a new case as well. I thought maybe it'd be better to buy new guts, but an Intel solution would have cost upwards of $300 to match the Q6600, new board and 8GB RAM while an AMD solution would have been $250 - these costs aren't including the case or fan. I ended up purchasing an Intel microATX board, a Silverstone Milo ML04 and this fan to cool the Q6600, since not just any stock fan can quietly cool this beast.The board came and has a huge heatsink right by the CPU socket so I got pretty scared. Even with measurements, it didn't look like it would work - but it did! I ended up saving 200+.
The point: Even if it looks big and wide, check it out. Measurements don't do it justice. If it can fit in the Intel DG45ID, it has to be able to fit almost any microATX board. I will say that you'll need to watch RAM height. It doesn't affect my board but I can see RAM with tall heat spreaders being an issue for some boards.
The function: Works well. Works VERY well. It is almost silent and cools the chip better than my Zalman CNPS9700NT, which is quite annoying since that was such a big, heavy fan to deal with. I'm a Cooler Master guy now I think. Between this and the Evo 212, I don't think I need to go with any other brand unless I get into extreme cooling. To give you an idea of the full size, the fan and the board totals roughly 80mm tall. The ML04 has a height of 105mm and is one of the thinnest microatx housing HTPC cases on the market right now.
The recommendation: I fully recommend this fan for anyone needing to cool older CPUs or ones that run hot, quietly. I could have used a stock Intel cooler but the stock coolers are pretty loud compared to this and they're also not fun to install. You can get away with a loose push pin on celerons and pentiums but not on quad cores or anything running 100w or higher.
This one takes 5 or so minutes to install, less if you can follow instructions properly quickly and has a very rigid and solid fit to the CPU and board. I generally take my time to make sure I get it right the first time, but since I had experience with the Evo 212 on a 1155 chip, this was very easy and very quick for me.
| Standing screen display size | 2.3 Inches |
|---|
