Asus Triton 88 Review - Page 1

The Core-i7 compatible Asus Triton 88 has been a hotly anticipated bit of kit since December 2008 (for me at least!), yet strangely over a couple of months later and there still aren't any decent reviews (in fact at the time of writing this, I can't find any). So today I have for you a little treat since I finally have a little time off work; some of the first tests on the interweb of the new LGA1366 compatible 'Asus Triton 88'.

The LGA1366-Compatible Asus Triton 88

The Asus Triton 88 uses a twin-pillared heatsink design that gives a quoted heat dissipation area of up to 8000cm2, which is enough to cope with up to 108W of heat. The heatsink uses six copper heatpipes to conduct heat away from the CPU, with a 120mm PWM fan mounted within the heatsink itself to give a combined push/pull effect for efficient cooling.

Sitting here looking at the Asus Triton 88 next to the venerable Tuniq Tower 120, I can't help but think that maybe it's the Tower 120's 'spiritual successor'. It's almost exactly the same size as the Tuniq Tower, it has a fan sandwiched in the middle in a similar manner, and it's supported by a whole mess of heatpipes in the same way (six U-shaped heatpipes vs the Tuniq Tower's three).

The venerable Tuniq Tower 120

One of the things I particularly liked about the Tuniq Tower was its shear brute force approach to cooling, the basic premise being that the bigger the heatsink, the cooler the CPU will be. This philosophy worked really well, and not only produced a cooler that could really keep temperatures down, but it also meant that swapping the default fan for something more sedate and easier on the ears didn't reduce the cooling performance in any significant way. This made the Tuniq Tower an ideal heatsink for both people who wanted the lowest air-cooled temperatures possible, and enthusiasts who wanted the quietest air-cooled machine that they could build (using 3rd party 'silent' fans).

The Tuniq Tower was a great heatsink, and the Triton 88 certainly *looks* like it should perform in a similar fashion, so that's why today as well as testing the Triton against the stock Intel heatsink on a Core i7 920 (which was the original plan), I'm also going to pit it against the Tuniq Tower in an LGA775 Core 2 setup (since the Tuniq Tower isn't currently compatible with the LG1366 platform). I'll even swap out the default fan from the Triton 88 for the same as that used in the Tuniq Tower to allow for a direct comparison of the cooling power delivered by these two heatsinks. So if you want to know how the Triton 'stacks up' against the Tower (bad pun intended!), then read on.

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Article Navigation:

• Introduction
• Specifications
• Packaging and a closer look at the Triton 88
• Installation
• Testing and Methodology
• Results
• Conclusion