Hardware Bistro

Product: Jing
Manufacturer: Thermaltake
Supplied by: Thermaltake
Price: 69.90USD/RM219
Launch Date: July 2010

 

Today we are going to bring you another existing and latest cooler from Thermaltake; Jing. Thermaltake Jing is a high end tower cooler which is equipped with five Φ6 copper heat-pipes, copper base, huge amount of aluminum fins, universal mounting compatibility, and come with dual 120mm extremely silent cooling fans. Without further delay, let us deep dive this silent monster in detail.

 

Company Profile

Started from the passion for the DIY (Do It Yourself) concepts and the desires to realize the goal of "Ideas are originated from humanity; Realizing ideas is our belief." Thermaltake Technology was established in January, 1999 and has been market to the world with "Thermaltake" brand name ever since.

Thermaltake became the number one choice for PC DIY enthusiast worldwide with its innovatively breakthrough product designs. The concept of "Quality", "Performance", and "Reliability" have been incorporated into the design of Thermaltake PC Chassis, Cooler and Power Supply to assure the components meet the highest standard.

 

Features

Optimized cooling performance

- Large Aluminum fins with five Φ6 heat-pipes offers good cooling capacity. It supports to OC 4.0G in i7 CPU.
- All nickel plated fins, copper base and heat-pipes for better heat transmission.

 

2 extremely silent 120mm VR fans, speed from 800~1300RPM

- Ultra quiet operation with 16 dBA under minimum fan speed.
- Dual unique inhale-exhaust 120mm reverse fan design generates greater air flow to enhance thermal performance.
- Vibration-absorbent gaskets decrease noise while operation.

 

Universal Socket Compatibility & Accessory Package

- All-in-one back-plate design for accelerated installation
- Universal support: Intel socket LGA 1366/1156/775 and AMD socket AM2/AM2+/AM3.
- Superb thermal grease maximizes heat transfer

 

Compatibility

Intel® Latest 6-Core Processors
Intel® Core i7 Extreme (Socket LGA1366)
Intel® Core i7 (Socket LGA1366 & LGA1156)
Intel® Core i5 / i3 (Socket LGA1156)
Intel® Core 2 Extreme / Quad / Duo (Socket LGA775)
Intel® Pentium D / 4 (Socket LGA775)
Intel® Pentium (Socket LGA775)
Intel® Celeron D (Socket LGA775)
Intel® Celeron (Socket LGA775)

AMD® Latest 6-Core Processors
AMD® Phenom II X6 / X4 / X3 / X2 (Socket AM3/AM2+)
AMD® Phenom X4 / X3 (Socket AM3/AM2+)
AMD® Athlon II X4 / X3 / X2 (Socket AM3)
AMD® Athlon 64 FX / X2 (Socket AM2)
AMD® Athlon 64 (Socket AM2)
AMD® Sempron (Socket AM2)

 

Specifications

Package & Contents

 

As usual Thermaltake Jing is well packed with an eye-catching box and the whole cooler is also well protected by two pieces of quality foam. Besides that all accessories are well organized and kept inside another small box except the universal mounting back bracket; we'll explain the installation kit in detail later.

 

In term of documents, Thermaltake Jing comes with Thermatake policy and two user's manuals; one is for Intel platform while another one is for AMD platform. The bundled universal back plate can be used for both of the Intel and AMD platforms which is good to mitigate the confusion if too many parts are dedicated for different sockets.

In term of mounting kit, Thermaltake Jing doesn't come with many unique parts as both of the AMD and Intel platforms are sharing most of the components; a real universal cooler. The included parts are plastic spacer x 4, grease x 1, t-mounting bar x 2, nut x 4, short screw x 4, long screw x 4, mounting bar (Intel) x 2 and mounting bar (AMD) x 2.

 

A Closer Look On Thermaltake Jing

 

Our first sight of Thermaltake Jing was not that well as we thought Jing is just another eye-catching cooler from a branded vendor based on the marketing material that we received. However we were wrong after we have physically touched the cooler because Thermaltake Jing is not just a well-marketed CPU cooler with attractive design because it comes with plenty of great features to make sure it is able to performs well too. FYI, "Jing" in chinese means quiet. 

 

Thermaltake Jing comes with dimension of 131 x 123 x 162 mm (L x W x H) and total weight including two bundled fans is around 920 grams; it is not light at all so better deal with it carefully. Thermaltake Jing is a tower cooler which is able to support dual 120mm cooling fans at both ends. However unlike other Thermaltake coolers, Jing does not come with usual sharp color and in fact green is something new for their cooler if we are not wrong; maybe this is their company initiative to be "Greener" for the environment.

 

In order to maximize the performance and to minimum the cost of Thermaltake Jing, aluminum fins are used where these quality strong fins are stacked on each other firmly. Both of the cooling fans are mounted on the cooler with a fan mount; it is not really a fan duct since it does not conceal the air ventilation at both sides. Both of these 120mm fans have to be installed in opposite directions so that it can maximum the airflow movement.

 

One of the issues of having giant tower cooler is the ease of installation and Thermaltake R&D did a good job to simplify the installation process on Jing where both of the fans can be removed and installed back on the cooler very easily (both of these fans are clipped on the fan mount); this might be something not significant for you if you haven't done any in-case installation but once you have that experience then you will appreciate it very much.

In order to give better idea of the Thermaltake Jing dimension, here are the diagrams which show the exact dimension for both of the single and dual fans setup. We recommend dual fan setup but if the environment does not allow it then have to make sure the operating fan is acting as a fan intake rather than fan exhaust. Anyway both of these fans have to be removed during installation unless a special screw tool is used.

 

Since Thermaltake Jing is a tower cooler hence it is having U-shaped heatpipes which is claimed to be much efficiency with its double flowing directions. There are total five Φ6 copper heat-pipes for Thermaltake Jing which is nickel chromed to mitigate the corrosion issue. Direct-touch is not implemented on Thermaltake Jing which could be due to design or cost issue although Φ8 copper heat-pipes with direct-touch method is still the ideal combination in theoretically.

 

Here is the cooler's base of Thermaltake Jing and the surface is flat enough to do its best job as currently manual sanding on the cooler's base is not popular anymore since it does not provide any significant improvement and it is really time consuming (we have done such sanding before in olden days; roughly 7 years ago). Both of the t-mounting bars have to be installed on the cooler's base regardless whether it is going to be installed on AMD or Intel platform.

 

The 120mm cooling fans of Thermaltake Jing are unique in order to reduce the overall cooler's thickness as well as simplifying the installation method. However we believe standard 120mm cooling fan is still mountable on Thermaltake Jing; maybe with some simple modification. Anyway these two bundled fans for Thermaltake Jing are silent fans where it just having 800-1300 RPM and producing 42CFM airflow and 16 dBA noise.

A VR fan knob is provided for each of these fans to provide user a choice whether they want better cooling performance or silent environment. For your information the MTBF for these fans are about 50,000 hours which equals to 5-6 years if the PC is turned on 24 x 7 x 365 hence theoretically Thermaltake Jing will serve you before end of its service since most of the PCs nowadays are having life span of 3-5 years or maybe even lesser than that.

 

Installation, Testing & Performance

 

Thermaltake Jing comes with quite unique installation parts and process so it will be better to study the user's manual first to avoid any trial-and-error. First of all the mounting bars have to be installed on the cooler's base with short screws and follow by securing the back plate on the motherboard with long screws and plastic spacers.

 

The plastic spacers have to be manually twisted with thumb in order to secure the back plate on the motherboard with long screws. This step is important in order to support the weight of Thermaltake Jing to avoid breaking the motherboard into half. After that it is time to install the t-mounting bars on top of the plastic spacers with thumb nuts; either in horizontal or vertical form which depends the component allocation of the motherboard.

 

Before mount the Thermaltake Jing on the motherboard, please ensure both of the cooling fans are removed else it will block the way to fasten the cooler on the motherboard. The final step will be slotted in back the cooling fan on the cooler and this can be done very easily; thanks to the simplification of the fan mounting bracket and this is the best way to mount the fan on the cooler effortless.

 

Test Bed

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3 (Gigabyte G31M-ES2L)
Heatsink: Thermaltake Jing
Memory: Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR2 8500
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Seagate
Graphic Card: Galaxy GeForce GTX260+
Casing: In Win Maelstorm
PSU: Aerocool V12XT-800
Router: TRENDnet TEW-639GR
Optical Drive: HLDS DVD RW +/-
Monitor: Dell 22" Wide Screen LCD
Speaker: Edifier R501
Mouse: SteelSeries Ikari Laser
Mouse Pad: SteelSeries QcK+
HeadSet: SteelSeries 3H
Operating System: Window XP Pro SP2/Vista Home Premium
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

 

Here are the performances of Thermaltake Jing with original dual 120mm silent cooling fan setup. If you compare the performance of Thermaltake Jing with other giant tower coolers, you might not feel the impressive and power of this Thermaltake Jing but in fact Thermaltake Jing has done a good job here as the major feature of this cooler is to deliver a low noise environment but still able to keep up with those powerful but noisy coolers. With the low CFM of the bundled 120mm cooling fans, only 16dBA noise is generated which is extremely good enough as it is not audible at all unless you sleep beside your rig and during a loney, silent night.

 

Verdicts

Thermaltake has just added another great cooler into their air CPU cooler product list where the major selling point of this product is to have a silent, quiet environment but still able to keep up with those high end air CPU coolers. Besides that Thermaltake Jing provides room for improvement if both of these fans are replaced by those crazy high airflow fans; >100 CFM then you should able to beat those high end tower coolers. If price and weight are not the main concerns but silent is important then you should really take a look on Thermaltake Jing. 

Pros: 

+ Extremely silent cooler
+ Support dual 120mm fans
+ 5 x Φ6 copper heatpipes
+ Real universal CPU cooler
+ Ease-of-installation
+ Built-in fan speed controller
+ Well-packaged

Cons:

- Price isn't that competitive
- Pretty heavy

 

Thanks to Thermaltake for providing this sample for us to review.

 

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