GlacialTech F101 PWM Cooler Review

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Product: F101
Manufacturer: GlacialTech
Supplied by: GlacialTech
Price: 54.9USD/RM190
Launch Date: Sept 2009

For the past few months, we have reviewed couple of newly launched GlacialTech products such as X-Wing R1 notebook cooler, UFO V51 gaming CPU cooler, Altair A381 HTPC case and GP-AL650A 650W PSU. Today we will take a look on GlacialTech latest retail product; F101. Let us deep dive this GlacialTech F101 in detail which is a high end CPU cooler with dual 120mm cooling fans supported.

Company Profile

GlacialTech Inc. was established in June 2001 by a team of 8 world-class researchers (PHDs) and three factory owners. Its technological areas of expertise include specialized thermal theory, soldering and mounting technologies, mechanism design, test and verification environment build-up and advanced conduct material development.

As a total thermal solution provider, GlacialTech is committed to using lighter weight materials, lower noise and lower manufacturing cost to deliver superior cooling solutions. Price performance, noise performance and weight performance are our three cooling design philosophy.

Features

- Additional 15% convection area for the system fan
- 5X high performance sinter heatpipes
- Copper base
- High efficiency 12 cm axial Bullet fan
- Fan speed adjustable by PWM function.
- Vibration proof mechanism for fan
- Light weight/easy to install
- High quality Thermal compound included.
- Multi-platform (Intel LGA775/1156/1366, AMD AM2/AM3 included)

Specifications

Package & Contents

At first sight of GlacialTech F101, we are pretty impressed by its packaging quality because it is packed extremely well with a giant and well protected cardboard box. Some important features of GlacialTech F101 are highlighted at the back of the cardboard box such as dual fans supported, 5 sinter heat pipes, additional 15% convection area, vibration proof mechanism and etc.

There are two versions for GlacialTech F101; Silent and PWM where both of the cooling fans are only the key difference between these two models. Basically GlacialTech F101 PWM is a higher end version which comes with more intelligence and powerful fan but of course louder noise as well. As you can see, the whole GlacialTech F101 cooler is protected by thick foams while other accessories and fan are packed in two separated boxes.

Here are the full bundles of GlacialTech F101 where it consists of multiple of backplates, clips, spring loaded screws, key screws, push pin for cooling fan, spanner, 120mm PWM fan, thermal paste and a user's manual. Unlike other tower CPU coolers, the cooling fan is mounted on the GlacialTech F101 with four individual black push pins rather than fan clips. Besides that a big tube of high quality thermal compound is included as well; GlacialTech IceTherm.

GlacialTech didn't create a universal backplate for F101 coolers but it comes with three individual backplates for different sockets; LGA1156, LGA1366 and LGA775 (AMD socket doesn't need any backplate). Besides that there are plenty of mounting accessories for GlacialTech F101 which are specified clearly in the user's manual and individual plastic bag.

A Closer Look - GlacialTech F101 PWM

Just few months ago, GlacialTech just launched their first ever gaming CPU Cooler UFOV51 which has gained pretty good reputations but it is still not good enough for insane cooling and hence F101 was born recently. Unlike UFO V51, GlacialTech F101 is a tower CPU cooler which can support dual 120mm cooling fans; pretty similar concept with other high end tower CPU coolers but GlacialTech F101 comes with additional 15% convection area for massive of aluminum fins.

The cooling fan of GlacialTech F101 comes separately at default as this fan has to be installed lastly else it will block the heatsink to be fastened on the motherboard. The overall dimension of GlacialTech F101 is around 143 x 86 x 148 mm (LX W X H) with single 120mm cooling fan. The weight is pretty heavy with its 750gram for single fan setup so the installation must be done correctly. The aluminum fins of GlacialTech F101 is a bit unique than other coolers as it is a upsite-down L-shaped fins for enhancing its cooling performance without creating any incompatibility issue especially motherboard northbridge heatsink.

Most of the high end tower CPU coolers will come with either three or four heat pipes (usually 4) but GlacialTech F101 comes with five 6Φ mm heat pipes for enhancing its cooling performance by increasing the heat transfer rate between the base and the aluminum fins. As usual all these heat pipes of GlacialTech F101 are made by copper material which has stronger cooling capability than other material with acceptable price.

Here are the closer looks on the heat pipes of GlacialTech F101. All these five heat pipes are nickel chromed for avoiding corrosion issue and both of the longest heat pipes are not really in U-shaped as it helps to transfer the heat to the unallocated aluminum fins so that heat can be dissipated more evenly and faster. FYI U-shaped heat pipes are better than C-shaped heat pipes in term of cooling efficiency since it allows bidirectional flowing.

GlacialTech F101 comes with pretty shinning and fine finishing copper base with nickel chromed. However direct heat pipe touch technology isn't implemented for GlacialTech F101 which is the latest method for enhancing heat transfer between the processor and the heat pipes. Since GlacialTech F101 supports multiple sockets, it comes with multiple set of mounting accessories as well where the mounting clips have to be fastened manually on the side of the cooler's base.

The black mounting bars which are affixed on the heatsink of GlacialTech F101 are used for mounting the cooling fan and both sides of the heatsink are identical since it can support dual 120mm cooling fans. The airflow, fan speed, noise for F101 Silent and F101 PWM are 1100RPM/44CFM/21dBA and 800-1700RPM/70CFM/32dBA. Both of these fans are high efficiency 12cm axial bullet fans and with the special fan mounting method, it provides vibration proof mechanism for reducing the fan operating noise.

As we mentioned before, GlacialTech F101 comes with two versions; PWM and Silent where PWM is the higher end version; automatically adjust the fan speed accordingly to the CPU temperature. One of the major selling points of such giant tower cooler is the universal socket supporting where GlacialTech F101 can support all the existing and new sockets such as Intel LGA775/1156/1366 and AMD AM2/AM3; higher second hand value as well.

Installation, Testing & Performance

Since we are going to test the GlacialTech F101 on LGA775 system, we have selected the right mounting clips which are sharing with LGA1156 and LGA1366 for being installed on the base of GlacialTech F101. Once these clips are installed then it is good to verify with the backplate to ensure right backplate is selected by fastening GlacialTech F101 on the backplate with four spring loaded screws.

Our Maelstrom case comes with pre-cut mounting hole for backplate installation but due to misalignment with the motherboard that we are using, we have to modified and enlarged the pre-cut mounting hole so that the back plate can be installed from the back without removing out the motherboard from the system. After that GlacialTech F101 can be fastened on the system with four spring loaded screws and remember the cooling fan can't be installed on the heatsink first else it will block the spring loaded screws to be fastened on the motherboard.

After the heatsink of GlacialTech F101 is completely secured on the motherboard then the final step will be mounting the cooling fan on the heatsink. Users can choose either install the fan at front (intake fan) or back (exhaust fan) and this will be varied case by case where compatibility is the first priority. For fan mounting on the heatsink of GlacialTech F101, users just need to snap in the black push pin but it is not that user friendly.

Here are the closer looks on GlacialTech F101 which is installed on our test bed with Maelstrom gaming full ATX tower case. Overall we didn't encounter any major issue since GlacialTech F101 is a slim cooler with well design (upside-down L-shaped aluminum fins). However we do hope GlacialTech will have some improved methods to mount the cooling fan on the GlacialTech F101 as it is not easy to snap in these tiny black push pins on the fan mounting brackets; maybe fan clips like what other high end coolers are using now then it will be great since it is easy to hold, install and uninstallation.

For complete step by step installation or other socket installation methods, please refer this user's manual for GlacialTech F101.

Test Bed

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3 (Gigabyte G31M-ES2L)
Heatsink: GlacialTech F101 PWM
Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR2 8500
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Seagate
Graphic Card: Galaxy GeForce GTX260+
Casing: In Win Maelstrom
PSU: In Win Commander 750W
Router: TRENDnet TEW-639GR
Optical Drive: DVD RW
Monitor: Dell 22" Wide Screen LCD
Speaker: Edifier R501
Mouse: SteelSeries Ikari Laser
Mouse Pad: SteelSeries QcK+
HeadSet: SteelSeries 3H
Operating System: Microsoft XP Pro SP2/Vista Home Premium
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

Here are the cooling performance benchmark results of GlacialTech F101. As you can see, GlacialTech F101 performs pretty well and even able to keep up/out perform certain of other high end CPU coolers. However with the design and cability of GlacialTech F101, we believe it can go further more and if stronger CFM fan or dual fans setup are used then it should able to achieve at least 2 Degree Celsius better. In term of noise, GlacialTech F101 does not generate loud noise even full load but just average and acceptable. However if you are looking for something extremely silent then you should consider GlacialTech F101 Silent version with lower noise; 21dBA.

Verdicts

Once again GlacialTech has proven their ability to step into this gaming and high end CPU coolers arena with their latest products; F101 PWM and F101 Silent. With the minimal incompatibility issue, GlacialTech F101 is definitely one of the most user friendly tower CPU coolers that we have seen but the fan installation method still needs to be further improved. Other fascinating features of GlacialTech F101 are a universal cooler, dual 120mm cooling fans supported, additional 15% convection area for greater heat dissipation, silent operating and so on. Besides that GlacialTech provides two versions for F101; Silent and PWM since some users prefer powerful cooling while some prefer moderate cooling with low noise. 55USD for GlacialTech F101 is not cheap but if you are looking for an awesome cooler in term of all aspects then GlacialTech F101 is not a bad choice.

Pros:

+ 5 heat pipes tower coolers
+ Additional 15% convection area
+ Support dual 120mm cooling fans
+ Universal CPU cooler
+ Less incompatibility issue
+ Well packed

Cons:

- A bit troublesome for fan installation
- Not cheap

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